Hail To The Chef – Jamie Oliver’s Social Policy

By really short via Wikimedia Commons

Anti-Turkey Twizzler celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has come in for criticism this week after he claimed poor families should spend more on healthy meals and less on big-screen televisions.

His comments, published in the Radio Times, led to a massive backlash against the healthy eating campaigner, with critics claiming he was out-of-touch with the reality of poverty stricken families.

The article quotes Oliver as saying "You might remember that scene in Ministry Of Food, with the mum and the kid eating chips and cheese out of Styrofoam containers, and behind them is a massive TV. It just didn’t weigh up."

“I meet people who say, 'You don’t understand what it’s like.’ I just want to hug them and teleport them to the Sicilian street cleaner who has 25 mussels, 10 cherry tomatoes, and a packet of spaghetti for 60 pence, and knocks out the most amazing pasta. You go to Italy or Spain and they eat well on not much money. We’ve missed out on that in Britain, somehow.”

His detractors might have a point about Oliver being out of touch with the problems facing the modern family, especially when you consider how much he charges for what is essentially beans on toast in his restaurant, but does he have an underlying point?

Amazingly, people in lower paying jobs, single parents and the unemployed are able to afford an iPhone, the latest gaming console and a large flat screen TV, but when it comes to meal time are tucking in to unhealthy processed food and ready-meals.

While this is a generalised statement and is by no means stated as an absolute fact there is undoubtedly some truth in this.

The most obvious thing to criticise here is the UKs consumer culture where we are judged, unfairly, on the brand names we wear, the entertainment system we use and what kind of mobile phone is permanently in our hands.

Is it fair children are destined to a life of highly salted, sugared and processed foods (and the health problems these caused) just so they can have the latest gadget?

This is an entirely modern problem, which makes analysis difficult as there is no historical reference point.

If we were to travel back 50-years poor families would spend most of their much lower income on food, which they would prepare and cook themselves, but back then there were no “must have” accessories or microwave meals.

However, it might even be unfair to blame consumer culture for this behaviour.

Ask anyone who enjoys cooking fresh meals and they will tell you making anything from scratch is cheaper than buying the ready-made alternative.

A 400g Tesco Everyday Value lasagne for example costs £0.95p and, to ensure shelf life, is packed with salts, sugars and saturated fat.  Anyone who knows there way around a kitchen would be able to make a far better tasting and much healthier version for at least the same price and probably less.

This dependency on microwave meals is not replicated on the continent and anyone who has travelled to France or Spain will tell you how different the eating culture is and how much more adventurous European children are in trying different foods.

So is the problem simply about people not knowing how to cook, or could it be plain laziness?

Yes, it is certainly easier to blast a plastic packet in the microwave for three minutes than it is to create a homemade bolognaise sauce, but a basic spag bol can easily be made in under half an hour, which is not exactly going to destroy your evening.

Something like chips is a prime example. A bag of frozen chips cost about £1, which is about the same as a bag of unpeeled potatoes.

However, with just five minutes effort, and the same cooking time, your bag of potatoes can make a much larger number of healthier wedges than you can get out of any freezer aisle bag.

In fact there is a certain irony when people are being so careless with the processed foods they are consuming at a time when the public are spending more and more on gym memberships, fitness DVDs and all the paraphernalia associated with them.

Could the underlying point here be that, unlike our European neighbours, the Brits simply do not know how to cook?

The main problem seems to be the two misconceptions where people think buying and eating fresh is more expensive and time consuming.

Both of these notions are ridiculously inaccurate.

In an almost laughable comparison in the aftermath of Oliver’s comments, people criticised him by saying it was impossible to recreate his recipes for less than a ready-meal.

Oliver’s books, like those of his TV cooking rivals, are not full of everyday recipes, but are to be made on a special occasion or, even more importantly, inspire you to cook.

The Naked Chef in fact made his reputation by showing people you did not need the gastronomic flair of a Michelin starred chef to make lovely food at home.

The question remains however, about how do we convince people to leave the ready-meals on the shelf and head to the fresh food aisles?

Oliver, as well as his peers such as Delia Smith, Rick Stein and the Hairy Bikers to name just a few, have for years demonstrated just how easy it is to cook basic meals without breaking the bank, but apparently there are still far too many who have not got the message, probably because they decided to watch the latest mind-numbing exploits from a reality TV show while munching on an extra value meal.

Unfortunately little can be done to physically change people’s attitudes, but it does make you wonder why people instantly went on the defensive about Oliver’s comments.

Eating fresh is, at worst, not much more pricey than ready-made, but if poor families did forsake the gizmos, gadgets and brands they could minimise their debt problems  and provide a better life for themselves with a minimal amount of effort.

In the same way their parents did, people should strive and save to be able to afford nice things, not buy them first and figure out how to pay for them later.

We could certainly learn a lot from our parents and grandparents generations about how we have let our pursuit of material goods get in the way of basic common sense.

The point raised by Oliver here is poor people are spending more on buying wide screen televisions, PlayStations and smartphones, while at the same time buying more expensive and unhealthier ready-made foods.

This concept is actually insane, when, with what would not be a massive cultural shift, we could improve the health of the nation, relieve the plague of debt on poor families and improve their overall living standards.

Overall Oliver’s comments may have been misplaced or even misinterpreted, but, as with all things like this, there is an underlying truth about how we choose to fund specific parts of our lifestyle and ignore what are the more important things, such as ensuring our children get nutritious food.