The North South Divide and Health

[Whatsthenews]

Originally Posted by dizzybint

Of course cancers and other illnesses are through more exposures than smoking. what were using daily to clean and on our bodies, not to mention, diesel, petrol. air fresheners etc.. all dangerous to our health....My uncle died aged 25, a non smoker of lung cancer when he worked as a ships plumber in the navy.. asbestos caused it when no one cared...

And all the c--- they put on/in our food too

[Eoin (pronounced Owen)]

Originally Posted by Jezer

No-one is asking you to do so.

There are alternatives!

Cheap and healthy recipes - Recipes - BBC Good Food

I completely agree with you that much of the population eats less healthily than it ought to (myself included!), and that for much of the population, this unhealthy eating is avoidable. However, the difficulty I have with the pricing attributed to the above recipes by the BBC, and more broadly to the notion that it's necessarily cheaper to eat healthily; is that it relies on certain assumptions. If one were regularly cooking for 2+ people and one has a reasonably healthy disposable income, I agree that eating healthily is probably cheaper.

However, if you are one of those people who happens to live/eat alone and subsists on benefits, I actually think to eat junk food isn't just cheaper - it's considerably cheaper!

The rationale is this: The BBC article you've linked to claims that the meals on offer cost less than £2. On a technicality I'm sure that's true; if you need 1 single lettuce leaf for a recipe and divide the cost of buying a lettuce by weight, then I'm sure 4p for a lettuce leaf represents the cost by weight of that lettuce. However one can't go into a shop and buy 1 lettuce leaf, or 1 teaspoon of fenugreek or 2 celery sticks. To take an example, this is the Tagliatelle with Vegetable Ragu:

Ingredients
1 onion , finely chopped
2 celery sticks, finely chopped
2 carrots , diced
4 garlic cloves , crushed
1 tbsp each tomato purée and balsamic vinegar
250g diced vegetables, such as courgettes, peppers and mushrooms
50g red lentils
2 x 400g cans chopped tomatoes with basil
250g tagliatelle (or your favourite pasta)
2 tbsp shaved Parmesan (optional)

The BBC article claims you can eat this for £2 or less, which is probably true if the aforementioned assumptions are held to. However the true cost of buying all the ingredients necessary to make this dish is likely to be nearer to £10. That's not necessarily a problem if one is content to freeze their Tagliatelle with Vegetable Ragu and eat it for lunch and dinner every single day for a week. However, when you can go to Iceland and buy a frozen pizza for £1, or even a ready meal for £1.50, eating healthily starts to look like poor value.

Furthermore, if one were to look at the small supermarkets/convenience shops which dominate inner cities, they are almost universally stocked with long shelf life food (i.e. unhealthy). It's not like visiting the out of town Tesco where quality ingredients are available at the lowest possible price. Thus, it's also necessary to consider a car/taxi/paid delivery in order for a person on a low income to actually obtain the ingredients. Again, luxuries which those on subsistence incomes don't generally have, and additional costs which the BBC article doesn't consider. (Presumably because the author has never and will never live on £2/meal.)

While in my own case I don't have a convincing excuse for being a lazy git and eating way too much processed junk food, I think that for those in unfortunate circumstances there's not really much choice.

Eoin

[Jezer]

I don't dispute many of the points you raise about having to buy the various ingredients Eoin, but I do think that people falsely raise the issue of cost as an excuse not to eat more healthily than they do, and much of the junk and convenience food on sale is more expensive.

The point you raise is not so valid if a family is involved and there are many families that gorge on the junk stuff.

Our neighbours have three young children and they have been brought up to eat healthily.

Their ideas of a snack are generally fruit and nuts, and sweets, biscuits etc are consumed in strict moderation. They do not feel hard done by this.

How much does a packet of crisps cost these days?

[dunno what to put here]

I can only speak from growing up in a poor household, but we definitely struggled to buy much food during the week, and it was cheaper to buy crap food than healthy food for us when we did our big weekly shop. We shopped to save money, not to buy the best quality, unfortunately. I nagged my grandma to buy healthier food and things like salmon, but she insisted that it was too expensive - and it was. We ate fruit and veg though, so we didn't eat crap and nothing else.

[Perfect Stranger]

Beside financial issues, there is a distinctive lack of cooking culture in the UK. Even with access to ingredients, few people actually have the cooking skills/inclination to make the most of a budget. Cooking is a survival skill that's especially valuable to the working class and the unemployed, and one that's almost been lost in Britain.