Politics of Food (1)

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Here's how The Independent reported the story of Baroness Jenkin and her rather naive comments about people going hungry because they don't know how to cook.

The whole furore seems completely barmy if you ask me, not least because Jamie Oliver said something very similar a little while back and nobody batted an eyelid.

Maybe it's all down to politics and nothing to do with food.


Baroness Jenkin: Tory peer claims poor people go hungry because they 'don’t know how to cook'

Baroness Jenkin — a PR consultant — has attempted to clarify the remarks


By ANDREW GRIFFIN - The Independent

A Conservative peer has sparked a torrent of criticism after claiming that poor people use food banks because they don’t know how to cook, in the wake of news that the number of people unable to afford their own food is soaring.

Baroness Jenkin of Kennington made the remarks while launching a major report that showed that 4 million people are going hungry in Britain.

While launching the report, Baroness Jenkin said: “We have lost our cooking skills. Poor people don't know how to cook.

“I had a large bowl of porridge today, which cost 4p,” Mail Online reported Baroness Jenkin as saying. “A large bowl of sugary cereals will cost you 25p.”

Baroness Jenkin was a member of the inquiry that produced the report, Feeding Britain, which found that many families are so desperate to avoid being evicted because they can’t pay rent, or having their gas and electric cut off, that they are forced to go hungry. “They go without food and therefore see food banks as reintroducing that buffer in their finances which many have lost,” the report’s authors warn. The report called for the government to set up a new network to co-ordinate the work of food banks and other charities.

Jenkin later sought to clarify her remarks, saying that a lack of cookery skills was only part of the problem.

"What I meant was as a society we have lost our ability to cook,” she told BBC Radio 4’s World At One. “That seems no longer to be handed down in the way that it was by previous generations.
Volunteers assemble a selection of tinned food for a client at a food bank depot in Brixton, south London"I am well aware that I made a mistake in saying it and apologise to anybody who's been offended by it.

"The point is valid. If people today had the cooking skills that previous generations had, none of us would be eating so much pre-prepared food."

Jenkin has been actively involved in causes around hunger and poverty, joining in with the 'Live Below the Line' campaign to live on £1 a day in 2011.



Britain's Eating Habits (5 October 2014)


Jamie Oliver has been hitting the headlines recently - not so much for his undoubted cookery skills, but for his comments to the BBC's Radio Times magazine about the country's love affair with big, flat-screen TVs and the eating habits of poorer families in Britain. 

"The fascinating thing for me is that seven times out of 10, the poorest families in this country choose the most expensive way to hydrate and feed their families. The ready meals, the convenience foods. Some of the most inspirational food in the world comes from areas where people are financially challenged."

"The flavour comes from a cheap cut of meat, or something that's slow-cooked, or an amazing texture's been made out of leftover stale bread. You go to Italy or Spain and they eat well on not much money. We've missed out on that in Britain, somehow."

Warming to his theme Jamie continued:

"You might remember that scene in (his series) Ministry Of Food, with the mum and the kid eating chips and cheese out of Styrofoam containers, and behind them is a massive fucking TV. It just didn't weigh up."

Now I can't really understand what all the fuss and outrage was about - because anyone who has followed Jamie Oliver's career knows that he's a thoroughly decent human being - and he was simply commenting on a situation which, to him, didn't add up or make much sense.  

Being able to cook is a great life skill which everyone should learn and Jamie Oliver's latest      TV series is aimed at cooking good food - even when people are working to a low budget.

Like everything else in life that probably requires a change of habit and old ways of doing things - and possibly even some hard work - but there's no doubt it will be worth it in the end.

As another TV chef - Keith Floyd - was fond of saying with this old Chinese proverb: 

'Give a man a fish and he eats for a day; teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime'.      

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