Feed yourself on £1 a day

[Alison]

I gave a talk to a small gathering a year ago on "Food as a Cause of Crime" (happy to email anyone a copy!! ) and in the process of writing it looked up masses of stuff about the effect of junk food on children's brain development. The substance of my talk was that poor nutrition damages children's ability to learn and concentrate; it produces more autistic children and children with special needs; many under-nourished children do badly at school and often give the whole thing up and bunk off; they don't get qualifications and can't hold down a job; which means that they leave school unable to earn and have nothing to do all day; which leads to crime and vandalism.
I hate the idea of a nanny state, and positively do not want ID cards or have my kids' DNA recorded at birth on a national data-base; but I DO want the government to do everything it can to ensure that children are fed properly. Oldherbaceous is absolutely right, that there is a vicious cycle in that we have not only a current generation that doesn't know how to cook, but their parents don't either, so where are they meant to learn it? In view of this parental deficit, I think we have to put compulsory cooking back in the national curriculum and also I would like to see them all doing veg gardening! Nothing like cooking what you have grown...
Money spent on this would save millions spent later on remedial works, youth detention centres, and prisons for a start, not to mention adding to the sum of human happiness.
Sorry, rant over!
Alison.

[oldherbaceous]

Dear Alison, thankyou for putting in to words, exactly what i was thinking.
A very good rant, i must say.

[Primrose]

Alison - I couldn't agree more with you. A simple illustration of this is when I was talking to somebody much younger than me about making soups with home made chicken stock. She had never even heard of this, asked what "stock" was and looked at me totally unbelievingly when I told her that it was liquid prouduced by simmering chicken carcasses. Her response was "Yuk. That's disgusting. I could never eat anything like that".
Yet guess who, on a previous occasion had eaten my home made Minestrone Soup made with (yes, you guessed - Chicken stock) and pronounced it "Absolutely delicious". So many people these days are so far removed from food production or properly cooked meals that their tastebuds have been totally corrupted.

[Peejo]

When I saw the checkout girl at Morrisons` look at my meagre purchases I thought I would try to elicit a bit of sympathy from her so I said " You know us pensioners on average have less than £4 a day to spend on food!" She gave me a smile and told me "My dad lives on less than that". Surprised I asked "How does he manage that?" Well" she answered, grinning, "He comes around to our house!!"

[jopsy]

gosh alison-that was a rant n a half
i do try to cook im just pants at it and dh is better and enjoys it! i hate to say it but lily ate junk this morning at the pre-school party and i tried my best to choose the healthier options to go on her plate its the worst shes ever eaten
gotta go evil backache due to painting 30 childrens faces at xmas fate this aft

[oldherbaceous]

Dear Jopsy, sounds like you need a hot bath and a relaxng massage.
Hope your back soon gets beeter.

[John]

Nice one, Peejo.

[jopsy]

john nice festive bells!

[John]

Thanks Jopsy
You'll be pleased to know that my old avatar GWR loco 1420 'Ashburton' is probably doing the festive bit as a Santa Special!

john

[jopsy]

oh how lovely!
alison i think your piece would be an interesting read!

[Granny]

Following Alison's rant...
I totally agree with everything you say. I read some time ago that vending machines etc are now banned in secondary schools and that if healthy options are the only options then kids are going off the premises at lunchtime to buy junk food. Of course they are! Our local chip shop does a roaring trade. They should concentrate all the Jamie Oliver efforts into primary schools. After a few years of good dinners, the 11 year olds will be demanding decent food when they get to secondary school. Think long term and phase it in gradually.
By the way, cooking is included in the National Curriculum at primary level, and could be used very effectively in conjunction with good dinners.
----------------
Granny

[richard p]

our 11 year old is now doing "cooking" whoops its now called design and technology food, which says it all realy. weve had "were supposed to use margarine not butter cos butter is too hard to mix." "when cooking you should allways use the water from the hot tap to save energy" i had to explain about kitchen cold taps being directly mains fed where as the hot tap system is fed from a loft tank which may not have had a lid for years, i could go on but i wont . its time they went back to including food hygene and home economics

[Alison]

As well as the consequences for brain development and social behaviours mentioned in my last posting, poor nutrition is also leading to a huge increase in poor health and particularly in diabetes. I was told the other day that 8% of NHS spending is now on diabetes. That is a MASSIVE amount, and of course it is rising annually. Diabetes used to strike in middle age e.g. 40-50. Consequences of it can include poor blood circulation leading to amputations and blindness after a couple of decades. If you started it at age 50, that meant amputations etc could hit you at age 70. Now people are starting it at age 20 or 30, so the appalling consequences may hit them at age 40 or 50.
All of us will be affected by this, not only the poor sufferers. The rest of us will also be paying, partly in our tax money being used to sustain younger diabetics for many years and partly because that money will not be used for something else.
One consequence of research being funded far more by private companies than it used to be, is that the research is now far more likely to be concentrating on finding drugs to cope with and maintain those in a poor state of health than it is to research into preventative medicine or other policies that would stop people from getting the disease in the first place. Being horribly cynical... long-term sufferers on regular doses are much better for the drug business than people who are perfectly healthy and aren't taking anything!
So, given the enormous impact that poor food is having both on social behaviour, crime, employability and health, and that all of us are having to pay for it, how on earth can a government tackle it? That is, assuming you can persuade the government of the urgency. Should we be asking that the issue come top of the agenda in future general elections? Should they use compulsion? Provide compulsory cooking classes? Ban all non-fibrous, sugary, salty foods? Make fizzy drinks illegal for children just as alcohol is? Sue junk food manufacturers for the harm they do? Make everyone Dig for Food Victory again?? Declare a Gardening Hour must be provided by all employers daily and set Targets for every family to grow vegetables?!! Declare all allotments as protected Development-Free Zones and compel all councils to provide them? Declare a state of Food Emergency and set up a National Government of War on Bad Food??? Anyone got any suggestions?!!
Alison.

[Primrose]

I'm sure that obesity long term is going to wreak the same amount of financial havoc to the NHS that smoking has done over the year, and the more taxes rise and family budgets become squeezed, the more I think we're going to see kids eating cheap and nasty unhealthy products.
I'd like to see basic cooking and food education reintroduced into all primary schools to "catch them young". I'd like all TV snacks advertising to be banned too. But I still think parents are the main culprits here, often because they've never learned to cook healthy meals because of their own unhealthy upbringing or sometimes because they're simply too lazy. Of course it takes a little more time and effort to cook from scratch but it's usually cheaper and far more beneficial for the whole family.

[Tom Parsons]

Well, personally I blame the government, but being a Libertarian I would. Having spent many of my years trying to achieve self-sufficiency clearly I decided to just do it for my self and my family. We thought that we would try very hard not to spend money, which has became a virtue in itself over the years. Food soon becomes a completely different kettle of fish when you realise how good your own produce can be, the main draw back is the time it takes preparing the food. But then even the most stupid of us tends to put good quality oil in their car, but are quick to stuff rubbish in their mouths.