It’s curious how the BBC treats some stories. Take the one which suggests that lives in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland could be saved IF people adopted a more “English diet”. Cue disgruntled Scottish Professor to inform is how superior Scottish diet was and that it was only because of the economic disadvantage in Scotland that prevented “working class” people enjoying a better diet. Later on, I tuned into the Nolan Show on BBC NI, and he was running the idea that it is because of our unemployment and “social deprivation” that caused diets to be poor. There was a suggestion that “the poor” needed perhaps special locations where they could buy cheaper food and fruit – maybe the Government should open supermarkets for those on Welfare? Amazing Statist stuff – and all served up without any dissent.
ENGLISH BREAKFAST?
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I get fed up of hearing that the poor can only afford poor food. I can buy 4 pints of milk for £1.38, packs of lentils under £1.00 and 6 eggs for 79p. Poor areas seem full of pizza and fried chicken takeaways – now I am not sure what they charge for them but I guess I could make a lentil and carrot soup and banana custard for less. Filling and healthy and ingredients bought from the supermarket. But the BBC would hate to make a difficult interview for someone whose ideas they agree with.
The evidence in front of my eyes every week in my local grocery stores tells me the choices are cultural more than socio-economic. The people with money still eat crap. Middle class people who can afford to eat in chain restaurants regularly also eat crap.
It’s definitely not cheaper to eat the pizza or fried animal parts from the local vendors, but it sure is more convenient.
Robert brown; Just prepared and cooked and eaten; Two salmon fillets[£2] in foil, olive oil, black pepper, wine vinegar, lemon juice, 5 chopped mushrooms, 6 baby toms, leek, [£1est] cooked 180 fan oven, 30 mins, with broccoli [50p] green beans [30p] tin of mushroom soup[65p] half of which i used as a starter with some leek and mushrooms, delicious. £4.45 the lot. The scots are pissed up, fat loving heathens who take England for a ride, they only turned into an effective fighting force under English officers and control, fact. Oh, and the meal was washed down with a delightful, cheeky little Entree der mer, 2005, £12.59, cheerio.
Whoops !
And I don’t mean the reduced to clear fridge either.
Damn, I bet you get much better quality salmon than I do in NYC as well.
My site,
Sounds nice, but can you please name the English officers commanding the Scots at Bannockburn ? I know its a long time ago, but never too late to re-write history !
I don’t know about the UK, but the USDA says there’s “not an iota of evidence” that poor people eat less healthily than everyone else. I guess they don’t spend much time in my poor neighborhood filled with Dominicans who brought their culture of rice, beans, pork, and lard with them when they migrated here decades ago, or in the diabetes-laden blocks of East Harlem. Of course, a cynic might suggest that the USDA and other government busy-bodies want to increase food stamp funding instead, thus increasing their own relevance and control over people’s lives.
When Nanny Bloomberg tried last year to ban the poor from buying sugary soft drinks with food stamps, the Left screamed bloody murder that this would instead force the poor to use their own meagre funds to buy 2-litre bottles of Coke. Or, they’d just buy more sugary cookies and cakes instead.
As someone in the grocery business, DV, you will know how these things work much better than I, but one objection to this scheme of creating a special “Benefits Only” supermarkets would be that these would “stigmatize” poor by setting them outside of normal society (see my first link). Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Yet another example of what happens when emotions rule over reason.
I spend less on food for my family since I learned to cook from scratch than I did when I was a singleton living off oven ready meals and packaged sarnies.
BBC News Channel doing a feature now on whether or not the “English diet” will help people live healthier lives. The impenetrable regional accents voicing their opinions made me realize what the BBC’s real objection is: any suggestion that something “English” is better for those with BBC-approved national identities.
David V,
The best diet is an “Ulster Fry ” , three times a day, washed down with Irn Bru.
Agreed. And battered Mars bars as an aperitif. 😀
Still pimping that filthy national beverage of yours, Grant, I see. You DO know it’s made from waste Stella Artois mixed with Tizer ?
Does anybody think that if this research had revealed that the English enjoyed a diet inferior to Wales or Scotland Or N.I. we’d have angry Anglos on the Beeb to defend our diet ? I think not. Wall-to-wall Triumphant Taffery more like it.
Buggy,
How come you know the secret recipe ?
Where do you think my family fortune comes from ? Stella is dirt cheap dans la Mammout ‘cross the briny not above 50 miles from where I sit. Tizer, too (pronounced “Tee-zair” in the Land Of Frog FYI).
One shop a week in the mini-van and a strenuous afternoon mixing the hell-brew, err, Nectar Of The Gods, in an old bathtub out the back of the cow shed et voilá ! A whole weeks supply of sugary groo to be dumped upon the country of whins and heather, where the lonely cry of the whaup is barely drowned out by the mutterings of The Old Broon The Fool Of Kirkaldy and the angry bark of the Salmond.
“♫ Your lack of health is the fount of all my wealth ! ♫ ” Ker-ching !
Buggy,
I’ll try that recipe and get back to you. First I need to find a cowshed !
Robert Brown; Yeah, ok, when are you having stents fitted to open up your clogged arteries then, if you are a Scot, then without the Act of Union you would be charging machine guns with claymores and pikes och aye? And getting the useless French to add to your casualties. Bannockburn my arse, you were lucky Ed 1 was dead, otherwise you’d be crow chow. Scotland the brave my arse. Go and join the Euro like the dicks you are.
My site,
Well no-one can accuse you of generalising !
What a charming fellow.
Roland,
It is just the Welsh sense of humour !!!!
Blimey. Still, it’s nice to have a reminder of the Telegraph comments page during the recent Rugby World Cup.
Buggy,
Nice one !!!
The misnomer 5-A Day has alot to answer for.
The BBC and the indigestion that is the NHS, champion this simple solution.
It is no more pragmatic than saying 5-Not a Day.
Razor blades, glass, strychnine, rat droppings and sunny delight.
Mc.Donalds burger hospitals pass the 5 test with slivers of unidentifiable vegetables because, yes you’ve guess it, there are 5 different colours on show.
Hardly healthy eating, but it ticks the right box.
Speaking of which, before the great unwashed get measured for their coffins, may I remind those giving stage to those who wish to share munificent food tips :
We have done OK without you in the past.
We will do OK without you in the future.
And we can well do without preposterous assumptions regarding social depravation thank you very much !
You WILL eat what we tell you to eat, YOU WILL NOT eat anything else – zat is verboten.
You will do everything we tell you to, think what we tell you to, THERE WILL BE NO DISSENT, IT WILL NOT BE TOLERATED.
And whilst you are at it, activate the Green Propaganda button that has been implanted in your brain. That is an order. That is all.
So what about the ‘poor areas’ of England then? This is typical BBC crap. Go into Tesco and you can buy veg and fruit dead cheap.
What next, the poor can’t afford top notch Cocaine?
At the BBC’s new Salford HQ a branch of Booth’s has opened.
For those who don’t know, Booth’s is a posh sort of supermarket, with only a few branches, all in the north. I’d put it a bit upmarket of Waitrose.
The Salford docks branch is the only one not in some nice country town or well-heeled suburb. Ilkley, Wilmslow, Knutsford, Settle and Kendal are more its usual stamping grounds. There’s not one other branch in the whole of Manchester.
But Booth’s obviously know that a new colony of 2000 affluent and underworked BBC staff are just the type of people they need to target.
I doubt the store will see any Salfordians at all on most days. They’ll be at Lidl and Teso while the public sector fat cats of the BBC choose their fine foods at Booth’s.
The BBC’s views on most things are irrlevant as they don’t live in the same world as the people they are paid to serve.
We don’t have Booth’s here in Kent, but I’ve been into the one in Keswick. ‘Twas like a palace ! I don’t like to think of them currying the favour of Beeboids who should instead be stuck with vast branches of Greggs and suchlike purveyors of industrial cholesterol.
The most healthy food in the UK is also usually the cheapest. The problem is that many people do not know what it is or how to cook it, and are probably too lazy to learn anyway.
Is cookery compulsory in British schools ? Somehow I doubt it.
As I understand it, whatever the modern eqivalent of Domestic Science in schools is called these days, it only requires the students to excell in three areas.
1) Can you use a mobile telephone ?
2) Can you read a mail shot from your local take-away ?
3) Can you put 1) and 2) together and experience nourishment ?
Oh its far worse than that. They preach healthy eating but, in order to get the kids involved, they only teach them how to make cakes, buns and chocolate.
In Cookery GCSE, or what ever its called now – something like Food Technology – they make kids do a 12 week project based around baking a cake or making a pasta main course.
As the actual cookery only takes one lesson the other lessons are all about planning. analysing, strategising, presenting and explaining the process – all done via computer documents of various sorts.
The kids hate the contrived, pseudo academic rigmarole. No wonder they hate cooking when they leave school.
Phil,
I don’t believe you. That is too surreal to be true. Please tell me it isn’t true ?
When I did my Food tech GCSE in the late nineties there wasn’t a great deal of cooking. The main project was to design a product and do a long winded project comprising advertising, packaging etc etc. I got a D grade and left without being able to cook anything apart from a victoria sponge.
I got bitten by the cooking bug when I became a house husband and got a bit of time to play around, I absolutely love it now and wish I’d been inspired earlier to maybe do it as a career.
If you gave me someone willing for a day they would leave being able to make basic meals and feed there families healthily for a pittance, it really isn’t hard.
Clearly we need to nationalise the drugs industry, so there is a minimum price of cocaine enforced.
Let me also add that the carrier bag whacking surcharge that was forced on the poor and vulnerable in Wales last month….these eco Nazis have a lot to answer for!
Of course all these poor and unemployed people in Scotland and NI have enjoyed completely healthy and balanced diets right up until May 2010. Then suddenly fruit and veg vanished from the stores and markets and instant obesity and heart disease spread all over the non-English towns and cities.
Llew,
It’s the Tory cuts what done it.
Lets be clear, this research is funded by the British Heart Foundation, which is a Pressure Group whose mission is
“to play a leading role in the fight against disease of the heart and circulation, so that it is no longer a major cause of disability and premature death”
No provision for informed choices by free individuals. We are going to do it to you, its for your own good. Example:
Tobacco
“The Coalition Government announced that the ban on tobacco displays in shops and supermarkets will be going ahead. We were really pleased with this news and this outcome couldn’t have been achieved without the hard work of our campaigers writing to their MPs and raising awareness in their local newspapers. Thank you”
Westminster election 2010
Thank you to everyone who took part in our election campaign, you all helped to send an amazing 933 emails to Parliamentary candidates
And so it goes on, subverting the democratatic process by pressuring lazy MPs with “Are you in favour of saving lives?” Well-funded single issue fanatics, no debate around informed choice and our freedoms to choose our own way of living – and dying.
Its for your own good. The slogan of all facists, including health-facists.
I read somewhere that the greatest health improvement occurred during the rationing period post WW2 when people could not buy sweets and sugar.
What they won’t tell uou is that the price of oats went through the roof under Labour.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/sep/16/lifeandhealth.foodanddrink
It gets even worse, oats production is down by 18% this year, those wicked Tories. But wait these are American oats!
http://www.procurementleaders.com/news/latestnews/4103-oat-stocks-fuel-food-price/
Noooo ! Ma porage ! I live on the stuff for brekker all-year round. >:o
Does the lack of the sacred grain mean the fine specimen of kilted manhood on the box to be transformed into someone resembling, well, ME ? 🙁
“IS to be transformed…….”
I’m really on form tonight. Must be my lack of wholesome oats-ey goodness making me a bit fick, bruv , innit ?
Buggy,
The best cure for your problem is to try some Irn Bru on your porridge oats. Also puts hairs on your chest !
My chest is super-hairy already, thank you. Proof of my massive virility. I could put a mink to shame. In both departments.
As noted above, since I actually own and manufacture Irn-Bru there’s no way on God’s Green Earth the stuff is going anywhere near my mouth. I know what’s in it, ‘cos I put it there.
Parents of Scotland : Fill your little brats with Irn-Bru ! Enough of it makes them climb walls !
Buggy,
I think you are being misled by the colour !
Will BBC-NUJ invite the ‘poor’ into the BBC canteen?
Only if Nigella or Jamie have a suitable dressing to drizzle on them before a light sautee…could please Shriver and Porritt at one and the same time too!
Sorry…bit harsh…if Linda Mc Cartney has produced the equivalent tofu/soya alternative…then that might be more tasteful, if less tasty!
Blimey, cj, I don’t think even the most ardent and ravening cannibal would but blanch at the thought of tucking into a whole Nigella all to himself. She could sustain whole villages in New Guinea single-handed (as it were) !
I’m a bit Scottish and recall my Mother making a fry up and then dipping some bread in the fat and then munching away on it. A piece on dooking is what she called it. She continued to enjoy this right up until her first heart attack.
Pete,
She was lucky, she could have been Ukrainian. One of their delicacies is “Salo” which is pure cold pig fat eaten neat or with neat vodka. Our Scottish cuisine is quite refined in comparison .
Grant,
Lest we forget the great northern english delicacy – “Lardio”
Blood pudding, uncooked of course, with not too much blood just plenty of the nearest animal fat to hand.
Washed down with a few pints of Timothy Taylors Landlord, it makes the perfect jesture over your TV Licence reminder when the “second appearance” manifests itself.
john,
Sounds nice to me !