h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Sure, but Oliver attempted to use the same infrastructure just using better quality food. Yes, crappo food is cheaper because it's subsidised and not just by the govt and not just for schools. That's the point. It's cheaper to buy white bread than wholegrain. Coke is cheaper than milk.

I'd say crappo food is cheaper because of lower production costs, rather than government subsidies. The production costs are lower due to poor ingredient selection, exploitative pay rates etc. I mean, really, coke tastes like shit - it's just advertising that tells you it doesn't.

Haha, I have to disagree, I'm more allergic to milk than coke, but that's beside the point.

When you are making something like, frozen chips for instance, you dont need your potatoes to look or even BE particularly nice, so you get less 'wasteage'.

When you make processed meat products you can use reclaimed 'bits', slaughter room slurry and add flavourings rather than real cuts of what would normally be considered 'edible' meat. Less wasteage (and you can still sell the real meat for a premium)

And when you have a cultural situation where people see chips as food and potatoes as hard work, it becomes really worthwhile to manufacture cheap nasty over salted, over fatty, under nutritioned crap and sell and feed it to the unaware masses.

When I grew up, we didnt have a lot of money, but I'd rather get the variety and interest of a sack of potatoes than chips with everything... You're lacking nutrition AND variety.

Teach kids to make chappatis, they love rolling out the dough and they are easy to make (flour and water! Dry fry in a REALLY hot pan! Done!) and will accompany meals, work as wraps... I dont know how well they freeze, but I'll bet they do! There are ways, there are always ways but people are partly under-educated and partly dont care. They close off from truths because they are. Oh, wait, undereducated and scared. Amazing what underlying lack of self-confidence and information can do to a society, isnt it?

Hmmm... putting this next to the other health thing that came out this week, about an epidemic of alcoholism among the middle classes which is going un-noticed because it's being done behind closed doors.

It's bleakly amusing that the sort of rake-thin person who dissapproves of fat people because "they don't have the self-discipline to stay thin like me" might be pickling their liver in private because they don't have the self-discipline to put the cork back in the bottle....

"Drink more beer it's good for you, it's made from the same stuff as bread."

*bad paraphrasing of the beer song*

You make bread from hops?

I think the reference is to wheat...

You make beer from wheat?

I dont make beer mate.

Nuff said.


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Orcus: >You make beer from wheat?<

You can. I believe the end product is called 'wheat beer'

Sorry to interupt the 'wheat/beer' debate: but back to the subject.

Don't forget, food is more acceptable in society and availible. A group of kids out with their mates arent going to say 'Why don't you all come back to mine and i will cook a three course roast!"

They go to,eg, McD's. And then tell their parents they like it.

So in a way it is all about the disipline. Parents saying No. Kids sayin No.

But i guess you can't really give food an age limit.

Why not? No fast food to unnaccompanied under 18s?

It'd never happen, I know. And the reason I say 18 is because a lot of people seem incapable of telling a 14 year old from a 16 year old, whereas a 14 and an 18 year old tend to look reasonably different...

Oh, and did you mean to put a 'fast' into the start of that section, hazzi? i.e. FAST food is more available and acceptable?

I eat fast food sometimes, it's not a crime. What IS a crime (to the body you were given when you became a being) is when you think a proper meal consists entirely of things from boxes and out of tins and recoil in horror at the thought of boiling some water, frying an onion and some mince and chucking some tomatoes and herbs in, putting pasta in the water then serving it all with some cheese on top.

Hard? No. Time-consuming? Not particularly. twenty minutes? Maybe half hour from stuff in cupboards to food on plate and veg cuttings thrown away. It's not like you need to know how to make pastry or any special routines...

Personally I think kids should grow up knowing the basics. how to chop onions, what things you can do with a potato (quiet at the back there ), how to prepare pasta and rice. Teach a kid how to do things like a basic spag bol, a shepherd's pie and things like roasting/grilling meats and you then have a child/teen who can live, quite happily, on the food they are capable of making. They've covered so many processes, even if only bits of the information live on, it helps.

It seems to me like a generation or two have lost the information and I dont think it's too draconian to insist that their children re-learn what they cant teach them because THEY dont know or have forgotten.

Imagine a kid saying 'mum, I dont want beans again, cant we have something fun like broccoli?' - I've said this... I also got really upset at school when a dinner lady told me the pie had real potato on it and it was smash... She was really offended that I went back in and asked for something real and told her that she really ought to know the difference or tell people she doesn't know!

>Orcus: >You make beer from wheat?<

You can. I believe the end product is called 'wheat beer' <<

Well blow me down, you learn something new every day.

Did you also know, that a strategically places means that the post in question is joking and not meant to be taken seriously?

I like wheat beer, and I believe a certain inexpensive pub chain are currently having a bit of a promotion on one.

Too much beer makes you fat though, especially if you dip your chips in it.

I explained to my children the day that they first started questioning why I smoke, that I was doing it entirely for *their* benefit, to protect their right to eat chocolate and drink coke. Once the smokers are done, "bad" food will be next - and "balance" will fall by the wayside.

So I think it's more subtle than "fatties". It's the consumption that will be targetted, rather than the result. So anybody stuffing a sausage roll or a mars bar in their mouth will get the official tut of disapproval - even if they are underweight and only eat salad for the rest of the year. And, on the plus side, those who are nominally overweight but generally healthy, and people who are overweight for medical reasons, will find fewer people looking down their noses at them.

Well, I *would* think that, except that the proliferation of vending machines in schools suggests that the right to eat chocolate and drink coke is safe for now

I'm an extremely talented cook , but when I crawl home at 7.30pm the *last* thing I want to do is throw together a healthy dinner from scratch, even if it does only take 20 minutes. I want to eat *immediately*. (This is probably partly because I don't actually like eating after 6pm, but stay with me). Luckily I have somebody who cooks for me (and has already cooked a wholesome and nutritious dinner from fresh ingredients for the rest of the family), and if he hasn't managed to do this for me (or it's burnt to a cinder waiting for me to get home) I have an emergency pot noodle stash. But I can completely understand why family cooking is in general falling by the wayside. Roll on proper school dinners and the return of the workplace canteen.

I've also noticed that when lunch is provided at seminars, it consists of fat-free sandwiches, salad, and fresh fruit. All of which is lovely, but I need a large slab of gateau to keep me awake through the afternoon session. Only - that's not allowed any more, is it?

It's OK, I bring my own mars bar. And then go and have a smoke

Mystic Mol
(not skinny, not obese, 45 minutes of cardio-vascular exercise 4 days a week, five portions of fresh fruit/veg a day, one unit of alcohol a week, bowlful of sugar-free wholegrain cereal daily - oh, but I have two chocolate biscuits and 10 cigarettes a day, therefore I choose to live unhealthily so I'll just move over here and stand in front of this wall to be shot, shall I?)

Make room at that wall for me Mol

12 pints of a year (on average)
40 small cigars a day
No Veg, bar rice & potatoes
No Fruit, bar orange juice
Diet of scotch pies, steaks, curries, kebabs, sausage suppers, crisps and coke.
41 yrs old, 6'2", 14 stone.

Last BUPA medical - no problems. Within BMI, blood pressure ok, cholesterol ok, blood sugar ok.

According to the health fascists, I have no right to be alive.

When did rice get reclassified as a vegetable?!

Mind you, half a tin of spaghetti hoops is technically a portion of fresh fruit and veg - according to the label, anyway.

I was a bit wound up when I posted last night

Mol

Can I just point out that T***o sell value brown sliced bread at the same price as value white sliced bread.

I don't think 'good' food is necessarily more expensive than 'bad' food. The problem is much more to do with habit & lack of knowledge.

You'd have to compare the ingredients list. Just because bread is called brown doesn't make it healthier. All I can say is that poor people I know i.e. people who experience hardship, not just those with a low income, say that it's really hard to eat well when you're that poor. And these aren't people with bad habits or lack of knowledge. They're people that are well educated about nutrition and food value.

It's very patronising to reduce the problem to a personal one - 'if people only knew better they'd eat better', as if poverty has nothing to do with it. I'm not saying that there isn't also an education and knowledge issue, just that you can't address that on it's own without addressing poverty directly, if you want to improve the eating habits and health of a nation.

It's not REALLY a money issue though. It's really hard to eat well no matter what you earn. Being ABLE to cook to some degree affects your diet no matter what your income or how much time you have.

It IS hard when you're on the breadline, I know this from past experience. But a sack of potatoes is still cheaper, in the long run, than a few bags of freezer chips and you can do more with it. If you get your basics right you can supplement, top up and flavour with what you can afford. Real carbs are more useful and help you feel fuller for longer than salty processed rubbish.

Use meat juices (if you have them) and a spoonful of marmite to richen up a gravy and thicken with flour. (I hate marmite but it works really well in gravy and stews). Hey presto, no need for granules or stock cubes.

And as for bread, it's often not worth the bag it's sold in, and as was said before, wholemeal or brown is often no healthier than white, it's all processed and salted to hell when you buy the cheap stuff. So if you have to eat cruddy bread (sandwiches for lunches etc) then dont worry about whether it's more or less nutritional, it's not. but if you have ok fillings and a decent meal at home (and porridge for breakfast!) you'll do ok.

And oats! I love oats. Porridge, flapjack, crumble topping (half oats half flour gives a really nice texture and can work on savoury as well as sweet. Tuna and sweetcorn crumble's one of my favourites!). Lots of energy, nice and filling, reasonably cheap...

Where there's a will, there's a way. But where there's information and help, there's options.