Never tried the lentil Shepard's pie, but yes it's all pretty cheap, I buy tinned chickpeas, big packs of frozen veg, lentils , my chickpea vindaloo is next level.
I do buy some processed vegan stuff but I picked up some expensive items like heinz been burgers for 35 p a pack ,farm foods not sure why so cheap but they had a freezer full.
That's where I mistakenly bought vanilla oat milk but tbh getting used to it
My doctor tried to tell me to ease off on milk recently,
Of course it is. There is almost no incentive to learn how to cook for these people. Its a lot of effort compared to ordering takeaway or sticking a couple of things in the oven for 20 minutes.
I genuinely hope you don't find yourself in a place where you're forced to familiarise yourself with how completely the system has failed this segment of society on a fundamental level. I can virtually taste the disgust and vitriol in your malicious use of the phrase "these people". "Those people" have grown up with a legacy of dysfunctional family and a society that does not care for them because of the boundary lines of their community, and your very obvious prejudice is a barrier to helping "these people" see that there's a way to better care for themselves and their kin. There have been successes, but offloading the blame on their willingness to aim for convenience and practicality in a lot of cases in favour of traditional home cooked meals is offensive and counter productive.
Perhaps you should recognise and count your blessings instead of being resentful and hateful towards a segment of British society that contribute as much they can with what little they have. And they do, in a good portion of the people that cross the door of our church.
you don't have to apologise, I agree it is down to laziness but also ignorance - and I don't mean that in a nasty way, a lot of people just haven't had that exposure to "proper" cooking.
Sure they can look at the pariah that is social media, but people of that mindset of wanting to eat fast food/etc... are not likely to use SM to want to watch edifying stuff instead on random idiocy that often appears on SM.
There are the practicalities as well. I know some single mothers that come into the food bank that work 3 jobs, are exhausted in the extreme and can do little more than make the bad choices, because the bad choices are
easier, and that needs to be addressed heads on. A lot of the approaches taken through education involve making home cooking with the kids fun, meal prep and changing habits slowly. These things do not happen overnight - in deprived areas you're talking about generations of families that haven't seen the benefits that someone in, say, Tunbridge Wells, one of the wealthiest places in Britain to the detriment of these neighbourhoods might have seen.
Of course they aren't going to but you then don't get to whinge that you can't afford to eat healthily. And I would suggest that most people know vaguely what is healthy and what isn't. No one thinks that chicken dippers and chips is healthy. No one thinks a takeaway or mcdonalds is healthy.
On all the "how am I so fat and unhealthy" shows they all lie about what they eat and how much of it. "I think we eat quite well, lots of veggies and fruit". No, when we watched you your shopping trolley was 80% fast food, snacks and booze. The fact that you lied to us so completely suggests that perhaps you do know that what you actually eat isn't good for you and you were trying to get away with it.
Chicken Dippers is quick, to the point and keeps the kids happy. Maybe you can ask your minimum wage housekeeper what life is like for him/her? McDonalds/Takeaway is more convenient for someone working minimum wage to make ends meet. I think I'm done with trying to emphasise the need for a little empathy with you. Have fun voting for Greg Clark, or whichever tory scum pops their head up this year.
Cognitive dissonance probably plays a significant part there too. I do feel sorry for them because they probably want to do the right thing deep down but somehow/something stops them.
I mean I don't like having to hike up crap foods to price them out of making those choices, as you know, everything in moderation. Even a food snob like me likes the occasional pizza (albeit I tend to go to our local wood-fired oven place here).
Any leadership has it hard at the moment, help people use foodbanks, or significantly damage the economy by banning or forcing products off the shelves... It's ridiculous as well that a lot of our food from local farms is so expensive, if anything it should be cheaper as it hasn't gone through as many steps... There's something skew-whiff about food supply and distribution in this country. Not quite sure what it is though.
We broke the chain. We ceded ground in the name of convenience. We allowed Tesco, Asda and Morrisons to buy up the local supermarkets to the point that we're overly reliant on their supply chain. Farmers are literally dumping milk down the drain, and corner shops are part of national franchises instead of being home grown community stores that had a connection to their local grocery vendors as well as the odd luxury. This was evident before 2020, but the pandemic and lock down completely broke the system and left people reliant on a system that was woefully underequipped for the purpose. For the record, I was fine because I live on the doorstep of farming and fishing communities, and was able to get my five a day quite easily from a source I trusted. But people in more metropolitan areas? I pity, and I continue to pity because the supply chain is still on its knees and not being helped by the counter productive attitude of the people that our friend Fez likely voted for.
I'm quite proud of the fact that over the last few years, our church group has built lasting connections. Food waste happens less; kids that come in have healthier teeth and reach for fruit instead of the chocolate digestives and the mums have something to look forward to - but none of this happened quickly. None of them knew how to make their own lasagne, or a quiche or a pie, and now a good group of them can proudly say they know how to do more than prep some beans on toast. Perhaps that's the one blessing of 14 years of forced austerity.
