Woman That Grew Up Poor Shares The Harsh Reality Of Why Poorer Families Buy Junk Food
Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has received some heat lately – and not just in the kitchen. Through his #AdEnough campaign Oliver has been lobbying for a sugar tax which would increase the prices for fatty, sugary junk food. Oliver told MPs: “This a tax for good; this is a tax for love; this is designed to protect and give to the most disadvantaged communities,” but others find his statement and campaign hypocritical and harmful.
According to the Sun, Oliver has a Cookies and Cream drink, served in a chocolate cup, which contains 46 teaspoons of sugar, which is six times the daily recommended amount of sugar for a child. This was not the only fact people took issue with. Twitter user Ketty Hopkins wrote a thread, that has since gone viral, which explains exactly why the tax would harm lower-income communities rather than help them.
Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has been on a crusade to tax fatty and sugary junk food, which he said will help disadvantaged communities – but not everyone agrees
Image credits: jamieoliver
The name of his campaign is #AdEnough, which seeks to change the way junk food is advertised to children. Oliver has taken his cause to TV and can be seen in commercials saying, “am asking is it appropriate to advertise food that is high in salt, fat and sugar to children at prime time when obesity is crippling the NHS?”The NHS is the U.K.’s health service, one of Oliver’s claims is that obesity is costing taxpayers, due to related medical issues.
Many found Oliver’s words and campaign to be hypocritical
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And one Twitter user pointed out how, if he succeeded, it would harm the communities he claimed to help
Image credits: sibylpain
Twitter user Ketty Hopkins shared her own experience growing up in a low-income family and explained the harsh reality behind why healthy eating was not always an option. Hopkins addressed the situations that lead people into poverty in the first place using her own life.
Image credits: sibylpain
Image credits: sibylpain
Image credits: sibylpain
And how when you were concerned with keeping your head above water, healthy food was not a realistic option due to lack of income. Hopkins called out people who judged their poor eating choices with simple assumptions such as laziness.
Image credits: sibylpain
Image credits: sibylpain
Image credits: sibylpain
Image credits: sibylpain
Image credits: sibylpain
While Hopkins does not advocate for unhealthy eating, she simply shares that in her case, the result of her unhealthy eating did not significantly affect her health later on.
Image credits: sibylpain
Image credits: sibylpain
She points out that if her father had not been able to afford these sugary, fatty foods they might have had nothing to eat at all – which would be a worst-case scenario.
After sharing her story she pointed out that if the government really wanted to help these people they need to change the system that keeps them at disadvantaged
Image credits: sibylpain
Image credits: sibylpain
Image credits: sibylpain
A foreigner in the U.K shared how she had been shocked at how expensive healthy eating was there compared to her country
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Image credits: sibylpain
Image credits: UrbanNathalia
Others commended her for sharing the eye-opening thread
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Share on FacebookIt should be the other way around. The healthy food should be made cheaper instead of the unhealthy food more expensive. Making any food MORE expensive isn't going to help poor families.
When I was a kid in the 1980s and 1990s, junk food WAS more expensive, I don't even remember eating it that often other than maybe as a special treat on a road trip or something, and even then we usually brought real food with us. At some point in my teens, so late 1990s, I started noticing that junk food was getting cheaper, while real food was more expensive, or maybe they just jacked the prices on real food faster, I don't know. I DO know this, most major junk food/processed food manufacturers are owned by the same companies that happily sell us diabetes and blood pressure meds and the like, so we can "manage" but not cure our health issues...
Load More Replies...One of the problems with Oliver's proposition is that it is punitive (the stick as opposed to the carrot). He is going to make eating harder for the poor, the only people who need help. He should instead create a subsidy for fresh vegetables and fruit, making them affordable.
Yael, I live in Australia and bananas are $3-$5 a kilo which is about 5-6 bananas (depending on size). We go through on average 3 bags of apples a week at $3.50-$5 a bag. Fortunately I am lucky and can afford to buy nutritional foods but I am not ignorant enough to know that is not the case for everyone. A family tray of lasagne is $10 but to buy all the ingredients yourself to feed the same amount of people is double that. Lasagne sheets are $3, mince is $7 and that is not including vegies, lasagne sauce, cheese etc. It ends up being double the amount. Meat pie you can buy a 6 pack for $5-$6 butbto make the same amount it will cost $3 for puff pastry, $7 for mince, $1 worth of flour and butter to make the short crust pastry, and then add things like onion, gravy, garlic etc. 2 tins of soup is $3 but to buy ingredients to make soup is triple the price. For tacos $7 for mince, then add tomatoes $2, lettuce $2-$3, cheese $4, add seasonings and spices, taco shells or wraps etc when you can buy 3 premade home brand pizzas for $9.99. Also if everyone can afford what you said then there would be no need for food banks or other charities to help feed people who can’t afford food, let alone nutritious food.
Load More Replies...Let's not forget when the electricity gets cut off because we can't afford to pay it and have to rely on per-packaged meals and fast food dollar menus. Been there. Done that. :-/
Or when your appliances break and you can't afford to get them fixed or replaced. I went without an oven for almost a decade!
Load More Replies...Being poor is expensive. If the initial outlay for dinner for a work week might be 34$ (making each meal under 7$), but if you only have 20$, you can't buy for the week, so you buy "cheap" food--for the day. Just like bus tokens--if a month's pass is $83--that's about 2$ a trip, but if you're poor, you have to buy individual tokens, or weekly tokens, and you will end up paying far more.
Same for many people who are not able to rent a flat in France, because they don't have a good referee and/or enough money to pay a deposit. They end up living in hotels and, thus, spending much more than they would were they able to rent a place. Of course, not having a permanent address seriously limits their access to the job market, which makes the situation much worse for them. Ridiculous.
Load More Replies...I am trying to learn to cook healthy and the biggest obstacle for me is that I cannot afford to make mistakes and have to throw food out, and I also can't afford to try new things that we may end up hating and having to throw out. What if I don't make couscous right or my family won't eat it? How can I essentially gamble my little bit of money away on an unknown food when there are all the box and frozen dinners that I know how to make and know my family can and will eat? Even buying fruits and vegetables can be risky because I don't know how to pick out the "good" stuff and often bring home mealy apples, rotten avocadoes, etc. Sorry for the rant, this is just a constant source of stress.
Nikki, I don't know where you live but if you can, ask the produce person for advice on how to pick the good stuff! They work with it all day long, and they're happy to share their knowledge. Hugs, and best of luck to you!
Load More Replies...Most pizza bought from in store or takeaway joints is laden with salt and sugar. So yes junk food.
Load More Replies...OT, but I read a really interesting thing a while back in regards to homeless people eating junk food. What homeless people soon learn is that the most important thing is calories, not nutrition because they have to LIVE, and to do that they need calories to burn. So a bag of chips is 'better' for them than an apple that might have all of 80 calories. Really interesting perspective.
Every school, k-12 should offer healthy and nutritious breakfast and lunch. For free, if the family can not afford it. There is enough food and money to make sure no one goes hungry, especially children.
Good thing is that several schools around the world are now giving free meals for the children. The nutrition value is not necessary the best possible in all those free meals but at least it is still better than nothing, especially if the child is from a poor family. I am from Finland and here all schools have had free meals for over 70 years now and the nutrition is also OK with those meals.
Load More Replies...Many people 'make too much' for welfare but not enough to pay all bills comfortably. Just because you lucked out does not mean everyone else does.
Load More Replies...It seems this woman's need for junk food as a child was completely an issue with her mad mother exhausting her dad and not because of poverty. Cooking really doesn't take any more TIME than waiting in the takeaway for someone else to make it. Cost-wise, that probably depends on what you make and what country you were raised in. Here you can get 1.5kg of carrots for $2.50, a tin of tomatoes for $1, loaf of bread $1. There's vege soup and bread for dinner right there, not using all those carrots or a whole loaf, so around $4 for a family meal. I don't know of any takeaways you can get in my country, to feed a family, for less than that. Cooking IS cheaper, but the circumstances people may find themselves in otherwise may well make them feel disinclined/unable to do so, and that is understandable.
I grew up being poor, in Russia of the 1990s. I can say that we couldn't even AFFORD junk food. Pizza? That's something I first had in the 2000s. Even today it's cheaper to buy some groceries and cook a simple meal yourself than to eat out in McDonalds or KFC. I'd say junk food is more of a cultural thing.
I live in Greece. All the healthy stuff here are cheaper than the unhealthy. Legumes, seasonal vegetables, rice pasta, fish (fresh) like sardines and anchovies, seasonal fruit etc all are cheaper than pizza, burgers, sausages, fatty meats and the lot. With the cost of a take away for four you can cook four meals. With the cost of supermarket pizza you can cook at least two meals. With the cost of two MacDonald cheeseburgers you can cook a pot of lentils for 4 or five people. Yet, many people who struggle with money prefer to buy and eat unhealthy stuff. I don't know if there is an explanation to this...
Vegetables and fruit are needlessly expensive--maybe because they are imported? Whereas Greece has an amazing climate...
Load More Replies...What this lady shares on social media is not about being poor at all.... What she describes is parental neglect due to mental health. Talking purely from a financial point of view it is always cheaper to cook yourself food bought in bulk rather than the discount section. When you really are poor you can not afford junk food from the discount section. People who were really poor know that buying in bulk is muuuuuuuch cheaper. Bulk cheap rice, cheap dried crackers, bulk cheap onions and potatoes, flour, sugar, butter, cheap chicken every now and then, cod (or whichever fish is the cheapest in your region) apples, simple salad and where I grew up pork was very cheap too. As a kid I never had salmon, steaks, cereals, exotic fruits. And you know what? Who cares... I do not feel I missed out it is such a shallow thing...
Yes, but buying in bulk can waste the food. There's just my husband and myself and we buy foods we can freeze in bulk, but produce is too expensive and goes bad quickly for just two people. It's a good idea for large families, but if you're poor, bulk stores cost membership fees and those are considered a luxury.
Load More Replies...A few other things to consider that I seldom see mentioned: people living in poverty may not have a refrigerator, in which to store perishables or frozen vegetables. They may not have a stove or an oven - they may be doing well to have a hot plate. They might not have any cookware; pots, pans, spatulas, spoons, knives, mixing bowls, cutting boards - they may have a counter next to a basin in a cheap hotel room, with a couple of plastic plates and plastic forks and knives. It seems in all these food virtue discussions that the minimum of a working kitchen is assumed, and all that's needed is putting healthy food in it instead of junk food. That unconscious assumption reveals the privilege involved. Poor is poorer than that.
On YouTube there is a channel called Epic Mealtime. They make very unhealthy meals, then scoff it all up. It's purely for entertanment. Jamie 'effin' Oliver was a guest on one episode. This was "just before" all this sugar tax business. Conclusion: He's a fecking hypocrite!
It’s not just the UK and her point can be made for many countries. In the US, I grew up poor. Mom had 2-3 jobs at 1 time, dad was in assisted living in another state from a stroke when he was 45. He didn’t recover enough to go back to work, help pay support, etc. If it wasn’t for cheap, throw together food we wouldn’t have eaten. Change needs to happen yes, but unless systems in place to help ppl like us are barely scraping by or not for everyone, how can that trickle down to the poor, elderly or disabled? Taxing food should be the last thing to change not the first. Hope this made sense it did in my head lol
I definitely agree. I can't always cook because of seizures and medical bills along with expensive medications don't allow a lot of money to be spent on healthier foods.
Load More Replies...I love Jamie Oliver to an extent. He has the right thinking, we do need to give our kids better foods but the lady’s post is right even here in the U.S. Healthy food is expensive. While I don’t give my kids junk and we do use a ton of fresh produce in our meals it cost me over $50 a week IN PRODUCE, forget meat or dairy or anything else we need. And honestly if I only spend $50 on produce it still doesn’t last the whole week. And we are a family of 3. There have been many times I’ve had to choose sending my youngest to preschool or buying healthy foods because the cost of those two things are out of control. You wanna make a change? Charge an arm and a leg for junk food and severely lower the cost of healthy food.
Hmm, neither pizza or fried chicken are cheap as also many other types of fast or pre-made food. I think some people get carried away when they consider only organic, made from scratch food packed with vegetables and fruit is healthy. Most of daily ration should come from pasta, rice, potatoes, legumes with meat not necessary for every day and dairy not necessary at all. Green vegetable such as cabbage does not cost a fortune and fruit are not necessary as long as there are some form of vegetable available through the day. This kind of food is not expensive neither time consuming to make. I grown up on this and yes it was bland and cheap and todays kids would not want to eat it - but if you have a choice of what to eat based on taste, than believe me - you are not poor.
I think obviously kids should eat more veg, but it is very easy to say that a pack of tomatoes costs the same as a frozen pizza, but when you have nothing, you need to make sure yours kids are getting calories, and you won't get calories from a pack or tomatoes
I agree with her about fixing those other problems first, like minimum wage and health care. But she’s wrong about food. Cheap food doesn’t have to be junk food. And that junk pizza isn’t as filling or cheap as a bag of lentils or canned vegetables. She never even rebutted why she wouldn’t accept canned vegetables. I cannot tell you how many nights I ate lentils and rice with raisins when I was starting my business after working 12 hour days seven days a week. I had to have had it for breakfast lunch and dinner and drank nothing but tap water with lemon juice. I was fine. Those boxed pizzas and s**t are way more expensive.
supermarket banans are about 10p each. Cheap, filling, nutricious and don't need preparing. Not a whole meal, but a useful snack. Carrots. the same - can be peeled and eaten raw. Root veg is cheap and makes a simple stew. It's more effort to prepare, but once everything is cut up and in the pot, it can be left to itself - older chldren can help. A pack of root veg for £1 and storecupboard ingedients (stock cube, dried herbs, tomato paste) for £1. That's 3 to 4 good portions for £2. Cheaper than 3 burgers.
Load More Replies...Jamie ‘thousand plus people lost their job because I got to big for my boots’ Oliver needs to STFU.
There is also the problem of education, sadly a lot of people just don't know how to cook! I'm from a country where basic ingredients are affordable, but some people never even chopped an onion in their life, so when you work so much and are so mentally tired of scrapping every bit of money you don't have the energy to try new dishes or learn to and you buy pre-made food :/
The lower class wage workers are among the hardest workers in the entire country. I couldn't do two full time jobs back to back in a single day. I don't know how people do it. The US funds defense far far more than other countries. If that was lowered just a bit and the funds reallocated towards giving people food and healthcare, the US would be in a much better place.
This is just another of a long line of things that have recently been suggested/put in place in the UK to kick the down trodden further into the gutter. It doesn't matter our opinion, the internet gives us a voice but in the end no body hardly listens to that voice and the fat cats just keep getting fatter while the poor get poorer. That is the depressing reality of the world today. Greed before lives.
The reverse is the case here in Nigeria, the unhealthy stuff are astronomically more expensive than healthy, agricultural produce. Probably because they are more often than not imported.
Yes, in India too , fruits and vegetables are affordable as it has been our staple diet for centuries along with pulses and cereals . They are definitely cheaper than junk food and poor people in India sometimes don’t even have oil to cook food.
Load More Replies...He's a D!ck.years ago he said single working Mum's were "selfish" because the didn't have the time to cook their healthy meals...Oh,dear we are not all blessed with $$$ or a "House Frau" ,like he has.
I understand Jamie Oliver's intention of promoting a healthier lifestyle, but he's honestly being a douchebag about it.
Whenever i read the healthy meals for under £2 or whatever they are always based on the premise you have a decent cooker, a well stocked pantry and all the cooking implements in the world. When you are actually poor you don't have a good supply of oils, herbs spices and other "basics" to cook with. You may only have a microwave and a few plates. Fix poverty (No middle class tax cuts, re-invest in social housing, uprate the minimum wage etc) rather than punish the poor.
Lets get real - the only things Oliver and his fellow travellers are interested in is their own careers, the amount of exposure they can get in the media and the number of tv and books they can generate. Any topic would be good for them but as food and eating are so emotionally charged its a double whammy for them. I find it truly sickening that government and media listens to such self serving arses but ignores the real life experiences of people such as Cara's, you know the people who actually know what its like to live on a totally restricted budget year after year
This is an extreme case. Cases like this exist but are not the 'norm'. Granted everyone's story is different but often when people refer to the poor they refer to the low income families. Many of these do have a budget for food IF they spend wisely but they choose to buy c**p. Jamie Oliver is an idiot and not in touch with reality with half of what he says and does BUT fruit and veg and 'healthy' stuff has become a lot cheaper than when I was a kid. However, I think families like this that are genuinely poor and suffering do slip through the net because we have far too many families that are actually lazy, choose to have too many kids, can't be bothered to work etc and instead make a lot of noise so they can get benefits and other stuff - these loud mouth lazy waste of space people prevent the help reaching the right people...this is the problem.
Here's an idea, instead of making crappy food more expensive, find a way to make decent food more affordable!!!
yeah, what she is saying makes sense. basically....poor people arent JUST choosing junk food from an equally priced (and equally time invested) range of options. so to just make them more expensive doesnt make "healthier" foods more affordable.
I would love to hear what Jamie Oliver thinks about her response thread. It seems if he had replied, it would have been mentioned....The problem we have in the States is that low income areas tend to be "food deserts" where there is no place to purchase fresh fruits and veggies. All that is available, for miles at times, are convenience stores that only supply processed junk food.
Yeah, well off foodies are amongst the most arrogant, self righteous holier than thou people I have ever met.
Agree 100%! A (sometimes) starving artist here - there were weeks when I could only afford pasta and rice, which are not very healthy but cheap and will fill your stomach quick. Also, very good point about the depression and overall tiredness - when you are trying to make ends meet and always stressed about money and finding work, the last thing you want to do is prepare a meal from scratch. Obesity used to be a sign of the rich - they could afford meat and regular meals. Now it is a sign of the poor - who can only afford cheap unhealthy food. The way to solve this is no taxing unhealthy food - it is solving the housing crisis, raising the minimum wage and making childcare more affordable.
This lady is telling the true reality and thank you for writing this.I have been there and my mum and dad were so poor too trying to bring up 4 of us kids.I recall a lot of the times we had to eat jam sandwiches or dripping on bread,sugar on bread n butter..or starve..the rare times we had meals my mum would try her best to make a good balanced meal with potatoes .pie crust with mince and veg..and we would have fry ups with any leftovers from sunday dinner etc.,jamie oliver is a hypocrite going on about healthy eating when some of his stuff is more laden with sugar and fat!!! he wants to just shut the hell up
And we were all skinny not fat probably because in those days we burnt a lot of energy being outside instead of being on a computer a lot..but i do think it may not be a healthy start but had no choice or either starve
Load More Replies...Maybe social services instead of spending time in useless programs, should focus in teaching poor families, how to make the best of their meagre money, and even saving and even including children in it, from hook and last moment sales in supermarkets, stores, local markets or directly from the producer, how to preserve, dehydrate or freeze, for later on use, to pot produce veggies or weekends gatherings of edible wild seeds, plants, leaves and flowers, how to recycle, from clothes to bottles.
Social Services in Chile in the times of President Jorge Alessandri an followed by Eduardo Frei Montalva, (between nineteen sixties and seventies) did this with very satisfactory results.
Load More Replies...Though I do agree with the reasoning, and not only applicable to Great Britain but certainly also to the US, I do believe that choosing water over soft drinks is good for both health and wallet. IMHO I think advertising for soft drinks should be treated the same way we got rid of tobacco advertisements. I live in a southern European country where fresh fruits and vegetables are available in an absolute abundance all year round, but, surprisingly enough, a lot of children and young adults do not really know how to feed themselves properly. Cola instead of water, fast food instead of lentils or beans. For about a century, the expected life span has been going up, up, up, and now I think it is going to go down, partly due to too low food standards.
My parents did not have money when I grew up (Sweden, 80's). Wish meant fairly healthy food. Candy, processed food etc was too expensive. Cheese was a luxury. We basically grew up on homegrown potato, moose and fish. All sourced by my parents without much of supermarkets in the way. Thing is, that sort of thing may work if you live out in the countryside. If you - like more then half of the worlds population - live in a city, growing your own food and hunting/fiahing is probably not an option. The other thing is that you need to have the energy to get those things. It takes a heck of a lot of time to harvest your own food.
Let's say for a kind of sorta devil advocacy kind of thing that poor people are like the bad cliche portrayed in the worst kind of way.... I knew a dude on the poor side once... he grew his own stuff but... they had a house for starters and that helps a lot. So technically worst case they could grow stuff but having a owned house that ain't going anywhere is a huge start for some people as is. Know a dude who is a real f*****g hero had to move a few times cause money issues or landlord issue don't know was none of my business but I digress so then he lost his last parent and has to look after his younger siblings and pay rent.
Jamie Oliver is against pizza, yet his restaurant chain serves pizza. I guess that's why he's going out of business.
It's crazy! They can stop the advertising without taxing food. It happened with cigarettes, and here in the US they stopped advertising sugary foods when kids' programming is on years ago.
Good for her! Jamie Oliver is not the only person to have promoted this awful idea that punishes poor people by raising prices on the only food they can afford. The idea has been widely discussed on this side of the pond, in the U.S. Get a load of this mind-boggling study on this topic, from the U.S. National Institutes of Health: TAXING JUNK FOOD TO COUNTER OBESITY. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3828689/ Since the NIH is a government agency, the study was paid for with OUR TAX MONEY. Summary of findings: "Small excise taxes are likely to yield substantial revenue but are unlikely to affect obesity rates. High excise taxes are likely to have a direct impact on weight in at-risk populations but are less likely to be politically palatable or sustainable." >:-(
I live in the United States and this is all after the Covid- when everything has gone up except a very slight increase in pay. The government here does assist but people still struggle. You can get a nice frozen pizza for $10, or you can get a package of spaghetti ($1) with sauce ($1), bananas (usually 30 cents each banana- so 4 bananas can be about $1.20) can of biscuits ($1), can of corn/peas/green beans or a frozen bag of broccoli (usually 60 cents up to $1), box of brownie mix ($1.30), eggs ($1-2 carton) and milk ($2/3 per gallon) and that all equals the amount of a frozen pizza and offers more nutritious foods that you could survive on all day but you have to have the energy to prepare everything. I’m talking Walmart prices and in the central of the USA. Other areas are very expensive. Anything premade is going to cost more where I’m at but for exhausted people it’s a lot easier. And if you can only survive on “junk” I’m not going to judge as long as you’re eating
One of the first solutions would be to greatly reduce the cost of the healthier foods. I'm terribly overweight, largely because fruits and vegetables, which I love to eat, are so blasted expensive, I have to make a choice between having 'enough' food, which means rice, beans, pasta...high carbs, which my body doesn't process properly....or not having enough but it's healthy. It's only healthy when it's enough every day, not just a couple weeks' worth! I know what it's like to feed a child on the lowest cost ingredients, too, and had my parents not helped, things would have been really bad for us. Don't anyone go blaming the people who eat the "wrong" foods. Blame this blasted system that makes it so hard to get the right ones!
First of all I would like to say that I consider myself blessed that I can afford to eat "healthy". That being said, I realize that I cannot afford quinoa, organic foods, or fresh produce. I still can afford a healthy diet without much effort. These prices are taken directly off citymarket.com, my local grocery store/fast food sites. Store brand frozen pizza: $2.99 Doritos: $4.29 Store Brand Potato Salad: $3.49 Store brand MultiVitamin (As previously discussed) $8.99 McDonalds Cheeseburger: $1.69 The list goes on, but lets discuss the healthy yet affordable foods that I eat: Eggs: 60 eggs/servings for $7.49 - Throw those eggs in basically free water and each serving, with very minimal effort is $0.12 each. -Throw in a couple cents worth of mayo and a stalk of celery, you've got deviled eggs, still healthy, delicious, and so easily affordable. - Throw in 12 servings of store brand bread, it adds an extra $0.21 per serving. Let's throw in some frozen broccoli, just as healthy
It's the same in the U.S. , buying ingredients to cook just say spaghetti, can cost over $20 for one meal because of the cost of the meat. A frozen or little Caesar's spending the same amount is 2-3 meals. No one should be able to tell anyone what they can eat. Cannibalism not included obviously
There is something realy weird going on when growing a plant, sell it to humans, and have the prep it for eating, is more expensive then: growing many plants, feed them to animals untill it's grown enough, turn the animal into consumption meat, have some fast food place prep, and then still sell it for a profit for less then the former.
F. jO can’t put up valid reasons, the n he needs to shut up. Why not help the poor, make gardens and grow veggies? Better than raising prices! A packet of seeeds is much cheaper, Mr.. O. .....
So unfair that system. IF people manage to be in a place they finally can buy more healthy food; their first incomes has to go to dentalwork and other issues related with only acces to unhealthy food and too little vitamins for a while. It can become a rabbit hole. I don't think it will be a terrible idea to make unhealthy food more expensive; but you can't do that before making sure that food is for some people the only way of survival.
There's also the fact that in many inner cities, people live in "food deserts" where there are no supermarkets and the nearby food stores are 7-11's, QuickieMarts, and other places that carry little or no produce and dairy products, have a limited selection of prepared foods and charge a fortune for it. If you don't have a car (as is the case for many city-dwellers), you're stuck with what's in the neighborhood.
In the US we also have what are known as food deserts, where there are no places nearby to buy fresh foods, so the people in those areas eat canned fruits and vegetables, or whatever has the longest shelf life. But what I really want to mention are people like Oliver, who do no research with the people whose lives they’re trying to affect. He hasnt had any convos with them about what they actually need, or want. This is how you know it’s virtue signaling ,when people proclaim from on high, making decisions for others without consulting them, as if these people were small children who didn’t know better.
I used to like Jamie Oliver until he got too stuck on himself and his own opinions. Also, it's hard to by nutritious foodz when you have no money to buy nutritious foodz. He needs to either sit down and shut up or actually understand the circumstances of the people he's preaching at.
I'm disabled and constantly wonder how I'm going to pay my rent each year when it goes up and my disability doesn't.
I understand Jamie Oliver's intention of promoting a healthier lifestyle, but he's being a grade-A douchebag about it.
I've never understood why taxing the poor even more would make them better off. Taxing what can be had cheaply rather than reducing the cost of healthy options is clearly counter-productive. If you ask somebody with two or three jobs, all at minimum wage, just so that they can pay the rent and bills then food becomes what you can afford. It's also what you can make in the time between getting home from the low-paid admin job and going out to the bar job, which gets you home at midnight. Fortunately, when I was a kid and my Mum was doing this, I was able to cook, as were my siblings. We did cook from scratch and we had jobs to help buy better food. In my case I worked on the market and brought home veg. Jamie Oliver is well-intentioned but simply doesn't understand - yes, he is a middle-class k**b.
Alex, the poor aren't taxed more. Yes, everyone pays a percentage of taxes on the everyday items they buy (in BC we pay 12%) But in terms of annual taxes, you pay based on your annual income. In Canada, some of the people on welfare assistance don't pay taxes at all as they don't make enough to meet the lowest tax bracket requirement.
Load More Replies...Life/circs can mean it's your medication and running water and a roof OR fresh produce. You can work 2 jobs at 30 hours a week to still not make ends meet for rent, health care coverage, utilities, let alone, oh, y'know... FOOD. At all. Of any kind. I was blessed. I grew up poor but we lived rural. W ecould farm, fish, hunt, and only needed stores for flour/salt/etc., almost like "pioneers" in one sense. And we were still poor. Hungry, cold, and living on second-hand and luck sometimes. So.... Yeah. Dare Jamie Oliver to last a *week* like most people live...
Not buying it. I eat junk food all the damn time. ALL THE TIME. If it ain't fried I ain't eating it. I'm 6'3" 148lbs. Note: I work construction 12hrs a day so my calorie intake vs energy output is.....I'm in need of more junk food.
You should learn about statistics, outliers and anecdotal information. Your mind will be blown.
Load More Replies...If the government controls your healthcare, they are justified in controlling everything you do. Progressivism is " I can run your life better than you"
So let's have nameless corporations control everything. That's the ticket! I mean if you can't make profit off of someone's sickness what is the point of all this anyway. People will pay a lot of money not to die.
Load More Replies...Says the t****r who never held a real job for a single day in his life and how many kids with ridiculous names does he have yet? He is a moron who thinks he's god's gift to food... Fight to make healthy food CHEAPER instead, then you'd be doing something meaningful for a change....
This women made some great points. There are a many reasons as to why people make poorer food choices and the 3 top reasons are 1. Time poor, more and more families have 2 parents working, have extra curricular out of school activities for kids etc that they turn to convenience. Wether it is takeaway or pre packaged foods. 2. Money, it is far cheaper to buy unhealthy foods than healthy nutritious foods. For example a box of nuggets and bag of frozen chips costs $5.40aud but if I made them at home with hidden veg and no added salt etc it would cost roughly $12.20aud. I have attempted a few times to make my own spaghetti bolognese sauce from scratch and all the fresh ingredients needed cost me over $15 and that doesn’t include the mince or pasta. To buy 2 jars of pasta sauce it costs me $3.55. and 3. Sugar is addictive and is often compared to being as addictive as cocaine. It’s all to do with the release of dopamine. There are of course more reasons but these are the main ones.
And those prices are assuming you already have the spices and pots and pans!
Load More Replies...Her story is a minority. The problem the nation has is families buying cheap, low quality food and eating loads of it......resulting in malnourished obesity!
I'm going to get soo many downvotes for this lol but as a medical professional, I'm seeing a connection between her current her frame of mind as a result of a traumatic childhood. The whole diet thing aside, I think this woman's early life experiences have impacted her way of thinking as an adult.
Load More Replies...It should be the other way around. The healthy food should be made cheaper instead of the unhealthy food more expensive. Making any food MORE expensive isn't going to help poor families.
When I was a kid in the 1980s and 1990s, junk food WAS more expensive, I don't even remember eating it that often other than maybe as a special treat on a road trip or something, and even then we usually brought real food with us. At some point in my teens, so late 1990s, I started noticing that junk food was getting cheaper, while real food was more expensive, or maybe they just jacked the prices on real food faster, I don't know. I DO know this, most major junk food/processed food manufacturers are owned by the same companies that happily sell us diabetes and blood pressure meds and the like, so we can "manage" but not cure our health issues...
Load More Replies...One of the problems with Oliver's proposition is that it is punitive (the stick as opposed to the carrot). He is going to make eating harder for the poor, the only people who need help. He should instead create a subsidy for fresh vegetables and fruit, making them affordable.
Yael, I live in Australia and bananas are $3-$5 a kilo which is about 5-6 bananas (depending on size). We go through on average 3 bags of apples a week at $3.50-$5 a bag. Fortunately I am lucky and can afford to buy nutritional foods but I am not ignorant enough to know that is not the case for everyone. A family tray of lasagne is $10 but to buy all the ingredients yourself to feed the same amount of people is double that. Lasagne sheets are $3, mince is $7 and that is not including vegies, lasagne sauce, cheese etc. It ends up being double the amount. Meat pie you can buy a 6 pack for $5-$6 butbto make the same amount it will cost $3 for puff pastry, $7 for mince, $1 worth of flour and butter to make the short crust pastry, and then add things like onion, gravy, garlic etc. 2 tins of soup is $3 but to buy ingredients to make soup is triple the price. For tacos $7 for mince, then add tomatoes $2, lettuce $2-$3, cheese $4, add seasonings and spices, taco shells or wraps etc when you can buy 3 premade home brand pizzas for $9.99. Also if everyone can afford what you said then there would be no need for food banks or other charities to help feed people who can’t afford food, let alone nutritious food.
Load More Replies...Let's not forget when the electricity gets cut off because we can't afford to pay it and have to rely on per-packaged meals and fast food dollar menus. Been there. Done that. :-/
Or when your appliances break and you can't afford to get them fixed or replaced. I went without an oven for almost a decade!
Load More Replies...Being poor is expensive. If the initial outlay for dinner for a work week might be 34$ (making each meal under 7$), but if you only have 20$, you can't buy for the week, so you buy "cheap" food--for the day. Just like bus tokens--if a month's pass is $83--that's about 2$ a trip, but if you're poor, you have to buy individual tokens, or weekly tokens, and you will end up paying far more.
Same for many people who are not able to rent a flat in France, because they don't have a good referee and/or enough money to pay a deposit. They end up living in hotels and, thus, spending much more than they would were they able to rent a place. Of course, not having a permanent address seriously limits their access to the job market, which makes the situation much worse for them. Ridiculous.
Load More Replies...I am trying to learn to cook healthy and the biggest obstacle for me is that I cannot afford to make mistakes and have to throw food out, and I also can't afford to try new things that we may end up hating and having to throw out. What if I don't make couscous right or my family won't eat it? How can I essentially gamble my little bit of money away on an unknown food when there are all the box and frozen dinners that I know how to make and know my family can and will eat? Even buying fruits and vegetables can be risky because I don't know how to pick out the "good" stuff and often bring home mealy apples, rotten avocadoes, etc. Sorry for the rant, this is just a constant source of stress.
Nikki, I don't know where you live but if you can, ask the produce person for advice on how to pick the good stuff! They work with it all day long, and they're happy to share their knowledge. Hugs, and best of luck to you!
Load More Replies...Most pizza bought from in store or takeaway joints is laden with salt and sugar. So yes junk food.
Load More Replies...OT, but I read a really interesting thing a while back in regards to homeless people eating junk food. What homeless people soon learn is that the most important thing is calories, not nutrition because they have to LIVE, and to do that they need calories to burn. So a bag of chips is 'better' for them than an apple that might have all of 80 calories. Really interesting perspective.
Every school, k-12 should offer healthy and nutritious breakfast and lunch. For free, if the family can not afford it. There is enough food and money to make sure no one goes hungry, especially children.
Good thing is that several schools around the world are now giving free meals for the children. The nutrition value is not necessary the best possible in all those free meals but at least it is still better than nothing, especially if the child is from a poor family. I am from Finland and here all schools have had free meals for over 70 years now and the nutrition is also OK with those meals.
Load More Replies...Many people 'make too much' for welfare but not enough to pay all bills comfortably. Just because you lucked out does not mean everyone else does.
Load More Replies...It seems this woman's need for junk food as a child was completely an issue with her mad mother exhausting her dad and not because of poverty. Cooking really doesn't take any more TIME than waiting in the takeaway for someone else to make it. Cost-wise, that probably depends on what you make and what country you were raised in. Here you can get 1.5kg of carrots for $2.50, a tin of tomatoes for $1, loaf of bread $1. There's vege soup and bread for dinner right there, not using all those carrots or a whole loaf, so around $4 for a family meal. I don't know of any takeaways you can get in my country, to feed a family, for less than that. Cooking IS cheaper, but the circumstances people may find themselves in otherwise may well make them feel disinclined/unable to do so, and that is understandable.
I grew up being poor, in Russia of the 1990s. I can say that we couldn't even AFFORD junk food. Pizza? That's something I first had in the 2000s. Even today it's cheaper to buy some groceries and cook a simple meal yourself than to eat out in McDonalds or KFC. I'd say junk food is more of a cultural thing.
I live in Greece. All the healthy stuff here are cheaper than the unhealthy. Legumes, seasonal vegetables, rice pasta, fish (fresh) like sardines and anchovies, seasonal fruit etc all are cheaper than pizza, burgers, sausages, fatty meats and the lot. With the cost of a take away for four you can cook four meals. With the cost of supermarket pizza you can cook at least two meals. With the cost of two MacDonald cheeseburgers you can cook a pot of lentils for 4 or five people. Yet, many people who struggle with money prefer to buy and eat unhealthy stuff. I don't know if there is an explanation to this...
Vegetables and fruit are needlessly expensive--maybe because they are imported? Whereas Greece has an amazing climate...
Load More Replies...What this lady shares on social media is not about being poor at all.... What she describes is parental neglect due to mental health. Talking purely from a financial point of view it is always cheaper to cook yourself food bought in bulk rather than the discount section. When you really are poor you can not afford junk food from the discount section. People who were really poor know that buying in bulk is muuuuuuuch cheaper. Bulk cheap rice, cheap dried crackers, bulk cheap onions and potatoes, flour, sugar, butter, cheap chicken every now and then, cod (or whichever fish is the cheapest in your region) apples, simple salad and where I grew up pork was very cheap too. As a kid I never had salmon, steaks, cereals, exotic fruits. And you know what? Who cares... I do not feel I missed out it is such a shallow thing...
Yes, but buying in bulk can waste the food. There's just my husband and myself and we buy foods we can freeze in bulk, but produce is too expensive and goes bad quickly for just two people. It's a good idea for large families, but if you're poor, bulk stores cost membership fees and those are considered a luxury.
Load More Replies...A few other things to consider that I seldom see mentioned: people living in poverty may not have a refrigerator, in which to store perishables or frozen vegetables. They may not have a stove or an oven - they may be doing well to have a hot plate. They might not have any cookware; pots, pans, spatulas, spoons, knives, mixing bowls, cutting boards - they may have a counter next to a basin in a cheap hotel room, with a couple of plastic plates and plastic forks and knives. It seems in all these food virtue discussions that the minimum of a working kitchen is assumed, and all that's needed is putting healthy food in it instead of junk food. That unconscious assumption reveals the privilege involved. Poor is poorer than that.
On YouTube there is a channel called Epic Mealtime. They make very unhealthy meals, then scoff it all up. It's purely for entertanment. Jamie 'effin' Oliver was a guest on one episode. This was "just before" all this sugar tax business. Conclusion: He's a fecking hypocrite!
It’s not just the UK and her point can be made for many countries. In the US, I grew up poor. Mom had 2-3 jobs at 1 time, dad was in assisted living in another state from a stroke when he was 45. He didn’t recover enough to go back to work, help pay support, etc. If it wasn’t for cheap, throw together food we wouldn’t have eaten. Change needs to happen yes, but unless systems in place to help ppl like us are barely scraping by or not for everyone, how can that trickle down to the poor, elderly or disabled? Taxing food should be the last thing to change not the first. Hope this made sense it did in my head lol
I definitely agree. I can't always cook because of seizures and medical bills along with expensive medications don't allow a lot of money to be spent on healthier foods.
Load More Replies...I love Jamie Oliver to an extent. He has the right thinking, we do need to give our kids better foods but the lady’s post is right even here in the U.S. Healthy food is expensive. While I don’t give my kids junk and we do use a ton of fresh produce in our meals it cost me over $50 a week IN PRODUCE, forget meat or dairy or anything else we need. And honestly if I only spend $50 on produce it still doesn’t last the whole week. And we are a family of 3. There have been many times I’ve had to choose sending my youngest to preschool or buying healthy foods because the cost of those two things are out of control. You wanna make a change? Charge an arm and a leg for junk food and severely lower the cost of healthy food.
Hmm, neither pizza or fried chicken are cheap as also many other types of fast or pre-made food. I think some people get carried away when they consider only organic, made from scratch food packed with vegetables and fruit is healthy. Most of daily ration should come from pasta, rice, potatoes, legumes with meat not necessary for every day and dairy not necessary at all. Green vegetable such as cabbage does not cost a fortune and fruit are not necessary as long as there are some form of vegetable available through the day. This kind of food is not expensive neither time consuming to make. I grown up on this and yes it was bland and cheap and todays kids would not want to eat it - but if you have a choice of what to eat based on taste, than believe me - you are not poor.
I think obviously kids should eat more veg, but it is very easy to say that a pack of tomatoes costs the same as a frozen pizza, but when you have nothing, you need to make sure yours kids are getting calories, and you won't get calories from a pack or tomatoes
I agree with her about fixing those other problems first, like minimum wage and health care. But she’s wrong about food. Cheap food doesn’t have to be junk food. And that junk pizza isn’t as filling or cheap as a bag of lentils or canned vegetables. She never even rebutted why she wouldn’t accept canned vegetables. I cannot tell you how many nights I ate lentils and rice with raisins when I was starting my business after working 12 hour days seven days a week. I had to have had it for breakfast lunch and dinner and drank nothing but tap water with lemon juice. I was fine. Those boxed pizzas and s**t are way more expensive.
supermarket banans are about 10p each. Cheap, filling, nutricious and don't need preparing. Not a whole meal, but a useful snack. Carrots. the same - can be peeled and eaten raw. Root veg is cheap and makes a simple stew. It's more effort to prepare, but once everything is cut up and in the pot, it can be left to itself - older chldren can help. A pack of root veg for £1 and storecupboard ingedients (stock cube, dried herbs, tomato paste) for £1. That's 3 to 4 good portions for £2. Cheaper than 3 burgers.
Load More Replies...Jamie ‘thousand plus people lost their job because I got to big for my boots’ Oliver needs to STFU.
There is also the problem of education, sadly a lot of people just don't know how to cook! I'm from a country where basic ingredients are affordable, but some people never even chopped an onion in their life, so when you work so much and are so mentally tired of scrapping every bit of money you don't have the energy to try new dishes or learn to and you buy pre-made food :/
The lower class wage workers are among the hardest workers in the entire country. I couldn't do two full time jobs back to back in a single day. I don't know how people do it. The US funds defense far far more than other countries. If that was lowered just a bit and the funds reallocated towards giving people food and healthcare, the US would be in a much better place.
This is just another of a long line of things that have recently been suggested/put in place in the UK to kick the down trodden further into the gutter. It doesn't matter our opinion, the internet gives us a voice but in the end no body hardly listens to that voice and the fat cats just keep getting fatter while the poor get poorer. That is the depressing reality of the world today. Greed before lives.
The reverse is the case here in Nigeria, the unhealthy stuff are astronomically more expensive than healthy, agricultural produce. Probably because they are more often than not imported.
Yes, in India too , fruits and vegetables are affordable as it has been our staple diet for centuries along with pulses and cereals . They are definitely cheaper than junk food and poor people in India sometimes don’t even have oil to cook food.
Load More Replies...He's a D!ck.years ago he said single working Mum's were "selfish" because the didn't have the time to cook their healthy meals...Oh,dear we are not all blessed with $$$ or a "House Frau" ,like he has.
I understand Jamie Oliver's intention of promoting a healthier lifestyle, but he's honestly being a douchebag about it.
Whenever i read the healthy meals for under £2 or whatever they are always based on the premise you have a decent cooker, a well stocked pantry and all the cooking implements in the world. When you are actually poor you don't have a good supply of oils, herbs spices and other "basics" to cook with. You may only have a microwave and a few plates. Fix poverty (No middle class tax cuts, re-invest in social housing, uprate the minimum wage etc) rather than punish the poor.
Lets get real - the only things Oliver and his fellow travellers are interested in is their own careers, the amount of exposure they can get in the media and the number of tv and books they can generate. Any topic would be good for them but as food and eating are so emotionally charged its a double whammy for them. I find it truly sickening that government and media listens to such self serving arses but ignores the real life experiences of people such as Cara's, you know the people who actually know what its like to live on a totally restricted budget year after year
This is an extreme case. Cases like this exist but are not the 'norm'. Granted everyone's story is different but often when people refer to the poor they refer to the low income families. Many of these do have a budget for food IF they spend wisely but they choose to buy c**p. Jamie Oliver is an idiot and not in touch with reality with half of what he says and does BUT fruit and veg and 'healthy' stuff has become a lot cheaper than when I was a kid. However, I think families like this that are genuinely poor and suffering do slip through the net because we have far too many families that are actually lazy, choose to have too many kids, can't be bothered to work etc and instead make a lot of noise so they can get benefits and other stuff - these loud mouth lazy waste of space people prevent the help reaching the right people...this is the problem.
Here's an idea, instead of making crappy food more expensive, find a way to make decent food more affordable!!!
yeah, what she is saying makes sense. basically....poor people arent JUST choosing junk food from an equally priced (and equally time invested) range of options. so to just make them more expensive doesnt make "healthier" foods more affordable.
I would love to hear what Jamie Oliver thinks about her response thread. It seems if he had replied, it would have been mentioned....The problem we have in the States is that low income areas tend to be "food deserts" where there is no place to purchase fresh fruits and veggies. All that is available, for miles at times, are convenience stores that only supply processed junk food.
Yeah, well off foodies are amongst the most arrogant, self righteous holier than thou people I have ever met.
Agree 100%! A (sometimes) starving artist here - there were weeks when I could only afford pasta and rice, which are not very healthy but cheap and will fill your stomach quick. Also, very good point about the depression and overall tiredness - when you are trying to make ends meet and always stressed about money and finding work, the last thing you want to do is prepare a meal from scratch. Obesity used to be a sign of the rich - they could afford meat and regular meals. Now it is a sign of the poor - who can only afford cheap unhealthy food. The way to solve this is no taxing unhealthy food - it is solving the housing crisis, raising the minimum wage and making childcare more affordable.
This lady is telling the true reality and thank you for writing this.I have been there and my mum and dad were so poor too trying to bring up 4 of us kids.I recall a lot of the times we had to eat jam sandwiches or dripping on bread,sugar on bread n butter..or starve..the rare times we had meals my mum would try her best to make a good balanced meal with potatoes .pie crust with mince and veg..and we would have fry ups with any leftovers from sunday dinner etc.,jamie oliver is a hypocrite going on about healthy eating when some of his stuff is more laden with sugar and fat!!! he wants to just shut the hell up
And we were all skinny not fat probably because in those days we burnt a lot of energy being outside instead of being on a computer a lot..but i do think it may not be a healthy start but had no choice or either starve
Load More Replies...Maybe social services instead of spending time in useless programs, should focus in teaching poor families, how to make the best of their meagre money, and even saving and even including children in it, from hook and last moment sales in supermarkets, stores, local markets or directly from the producer, how to preserve, dehydrate or freeze, for later on use, to pot produce veggies or weekends gatherings of edible wild seeds, plants, leaves and flowers, how to recycle, from clothes to bottles.
Social Services in Chile in the times of President Jorge Alessandri an followed by Eduardo Frei Montalva, (between nineteen sixties and seventies) did this with very satisfactory results.
Load More Replies...Though I do agree with the reasoning, and not only applicable to Great Britain but certainly also to the US, I do believe that choosing water over soft drinks is good for both health and wallet. IMHO I think advertising for soft drinks should be treated the same way we got rid of tobacco advertisements. I live in a southern European country where fresh fruits and vegetables are available in an absolute abundance all year round, but, surprisingly enough, a lot of children and young adults do not really know how to feed themselves properly. Cola instead of water, fast food instead of lentils or beans. For about a century, the expected life span has been going up, up, up, and now I think it is going to go down, partly due to too low food standards.
My parents did not have money when I grew up (Sweden, 80's). Wish meant fairly healthy food. Candy, processed food etc was too expensive. Cheese was a luxury. We basically grew up on homegrown potato, moose and fish. All sourced by my parents without much of supermarkets in the way. Thing is, that sort of thing may work if you live out in the countryside. If you - like more then half of the worlds population - live in a city, growing your own food and hunting/fiahing is probably not an option. The other thing is that you need to have the energy to get those things. It takes a heck of a lot of time to harvest your own food.
Let's say for a kind of sorta devil advocacy kind of thing that poor people are like the bad cliche portrayed in the worst kind of way.... I knew a dude on the poor side once... he grew his own stuff but... they had a house for starters and that helps a lot. So technically worst case they could grow stuff but having a owned house that ain't going anywhere is a huge start for some people as is. Know a dude who is a real f*****g hero had to move a few times cause money issues or landlord issue don't know was none of my business but I digress so then he lost his last parent and has to look after his younger siblings and pay rent.
Jamie Oliver is against pizza, yet his restaurant chain serves pizza. I guess that's why he's going out of business.
It's crazy! They can stop the advertising without taxing food. It happened with cigarettes, and here in the US they stopped advertising sugary foods when kids' programming is on years ago.
Good for her! Jamie Oliver is not the only person to have promoted this awful idea that punishes poor people by raising prices on the only food they can afford. The idea has been widely discussed on this side of the pond, in the U.S. Get a load of this mind-boggling study on this topic, from the U.S. National Institutes of Health: TAXING JUNK FOOD TO COUNTER OBESITY. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3828689/ Since the NIH is a government agency, the study was paid for with OUR TAX MONEY. Summary of findings: "Small excise taxes are likely to yield substantial revenue but are unlikely to affect obesity rates. High excise taxes are likely to have a direct impact on weight in at-risk populations but are less likely to be politically palatable or sustainable." >:-(
I live in the United States and this is all after the Covid- when everything has gone up except a very slight increase in pay. The government here does assist but people still struggle. You can get a nice frozen pizza for $10, or you can get a package of spaghetti ($1) with sauce ($1), bananas (usually 30 cents each banana- so 4 bananas can be about $1.20) can of biscuits ($1), can of corn/peas/green beans or a frozen bag of broccoli (usually 60 cents up to $1), box of brownie mix ($1.30), eggs ($1-2 carton) and milk ($2/3 per gallon) and that all equals the amount of a frozen pizza and offers more nutritious foods that you could survive on all day but you have to have the energy to prepare everything. I’m talking Walmart prices and in the central of the USA. Other areas are very expensive. Anything premade is going to cost more where I’m at but for exhausted people it’s a lot easier. And if you can only survive on “junk” I’m not going to judge as long as you’re eating
One of the first solutions would be to greatly reduce the cost of the healthier foods. I'm terribly overweight, largely because fruits and vegetables, which I love to eat, are so blasted expensive, I have to make a choice between having 'enough' food, which means rice, beans, pasta...high carbs, which my body doesn't process properly....or not having enough but it's healthy. It's only healthy when it's enough every day, not just a couple weeks' worth! I know what it's like to feed a child on the lowest cost ingredients, too, and had my parents not helped, things would have been really bad for us. Don't anyone go blaming the people who eat the "wrong" foods. Blame this blasted system that makes it so hard to get the right ones!
First of all I would like to say that I consider myself blessed that I can afford to eat "healthy". That being said, I realize that I cannot afford quinoa, organic foods, or fresh produce. I still can afford a healthy diet without much effort. These prices are taken directly off citymarket.com, my local grocery store/fast food sites. Store brand frozen pizza: $2.99 Doritos: $4.29 Store Brand Potato Salad: $3.49 Store brand MultiVitamin (As previously discussed) $8.99 McDonalds Cheeseburger: $1.69 The list goes on, but lets discuss the healthy yet affordable foods that I eat: Eggs: 60 eggs/servings for $7.49 - Throw those eggs in basically free water and each serving, with very minimal effort is $0.12 each. -Throw in a couple cents worth of mayo and a stalk of celery, you've got deviled eggs, still healthy, delicious, and so easily affordable. - Throw in 12 servings of store brand bread, it adds an extra $0.21 per serving. Let's throw in some frozen broccoli, just as healthy
It's the same in the U.S. , buying ingredients to cook just say spaghetti, can cost over $20 for one meal because of the cost of the meat. A frozen or little Caesar's spending the same amount is 2-3 meals. No one should be able to tell anyone what they can eat. Cannibalism not included obviously
There is something realy weird going on when growing a plant, sell it to humans, and have the prep it for eating, is more expensive then: growing many plants, feed them to animals untill it's grown enough, turn the animal into consumption meat, have some fast food place prep, and then still sell it for a profit for less then the former.
F. jO can’t put up valid reasons, the n he needs to shut up. Why not help the poor, make gardens and grow veggies? Better than raising prices! A packet of seeeds is much cheaper, Mr.. O. .....
So unfair that system. IF people manage to be in a place they finally can buy more healthy food; their first incomes has to go to dentalwork and other issues related with only acces to unhealthy food and too little vitamins for a while. It can become a rabbit hole. I don't think it will be a terrible idea to make unhealthy food more expensive; but you can't do that before making sure that food is for some people the only way of survival.
There's also the fact that in many inner cities, people live in "food deserts" where there are no supermarkets and the nearby food stores are 7-11's, QuickieMarts, and other places that carry little or no produce and dairy products, have a limited selection of prepared foods and charge a fortune for it. If you don't have a car (as is the case for many city-dwellers), you're stuck with what's in the neighborhood.
In the US we also have what are known as food deserts, where there are no places nearby to buy fresh foods, so the people in those areas eat canned fruits and vegetables, or whatever has the longest shelf life. But what I really want to mention are people like Oliver, who do no research with the people whose lives they’re trying to affect. He hasnt had any convos with them about what they actually need, or want. This is how you know it’s virtue signaling ,when people proclaim from on high, making decisions for others without consulting them, as if these people were small children who didn’t know better.
I used to like Jamie Oliver until he got too stuck on himself and his own opinions. Also, it's hard to by nutritious foodz when you have no money to buy nutritious foodz. He needs to either sit down and shut up or actually understand the circumstances of the people he's preaching at.
I'm disabled and constantly wonder how I'm going to pay my rent each year when it goes up and my disability doesn't.
I understand Jamie Oliver's intention of promoting a healthier lifestyle, but he's being a grade-A douchebag about it.
I've never understood why taxing the poor even more would make them better off. Taxing what can be had cheaply rather than reducing the cost of healthy options is clearly counter-productive. If you ask somebody with two or three jobs, all at minimum wage, just so that they can pay the rent and bills then food becomes what you can afford. It's also what you can make in the time between getting home from the low-paid admin job and going out to the bar job, which gets you home at midnight. Fortunately, when I was a kid and my Mum was doing this, I was able to cook, as were my siblings. We did cook from scratch and we had jobs to help buy better food. In my case I worked on the market and brought home veg. Jamie Oliver is well-intentioned but simply doesn't understand - yes, he is a middle-class k**b.
Alex, the poor aren't taxed more. Yes, everyone pays a percentage of taxes on the everyday items they buy (in BC we pay 12%) But in terms of annual taxes, you pay based on your annual income. In Canada, some of the people on welfare assistance don't pay taxes at all as they don't make enough to meet the lowest tax bracket requirement.
Load More Replies...Life/circs can mean it's your medication and running water and a roof OR fresh produce. You can work 2 jobs at 30 hours a week to still not make ends meet for rent, health care coverage, utilities, let alone, oh, y'know... FOOD. At all. Of any kind. I was blessed. I grew up poor but we lived rural. W ecould farm, fish, hunt, and only needed stores for flour/salt/etc., almost like "pioneers" in one sense. And we were still poor. Hungry, cold, and living on second-hand and luck sometimes. So.... Yeah. Dare Jamie Oliver to last a *week* like most people live...
Not buying it. I eat junk food all the damn time. ALL THE TIME. If it ain't fried I ain't eating it. I'm 6'3" 148lbs. Note: I work construction 12hrs a day so my calorie intake vs energy output is.....I'm in need of more junk food.
You should learn about statistics, outliers and anecdotal information. Your mind will be blown.
Load More Replies...If the government controls your healthcare, they are justified in controlling everything you do. Progressivism is " I can run your life better than you"
So let's have nameless corporations control everything. That's the ticket! I mean if you can't make profit off of someone's sickness what is the point of all this anyway. People will pay a lot of money not to die.
Load More Replies...Says the t****r who never held a real job for a single day in his life and how many kids with ridiculous names does he have yet? He is a moron who thinks he's god's gift to food... Fight to make healthy food CHEAPER instead, then you'd be doing something meaningful for a change....
This women made some great points. There are a many reasons as to why people make poorer food choices and the 3 top reasons are 1. Time poor, more and more families have 2 parents working, have extra curricular out of school activities for kids etc that they turn to convenience. Wether it is takeaway or pre packaged foods. 2. Money, it is far cheaper to buy unhealthy foods than healthy nutritious foods. For example a box of nuggets and bag of frozen chips costs $5.40aud but if I made them at home with hidden veg and no added salt etc it would cost roughly $12.20aud. I have attempted a few times to make my own spaghetti bolognese sauce from scratch and all the fresh ingredients needed cost me over $15 and that doesn’t include the mince or pasta. To buy 2 jars of pasta sauce it costs me $3.55. and 3. Sugar is addictive and is often compared to being as addictive as cocaine. It’s all to do with the release of dopamine. There are of course more reasons but these are the main ones.
And those prices are assuming you already have the spices and pots and pans!
Load More Replies...Her story is a minority. The problem the nation has is families buying cheap, low quality food and eating loads of it......resulting in malnourished obesity!
I'm going to get soo many downvotes for this lol but as a medical professional, I'm seeing a connection between her current her frame of mind as a result of a traumatic childhood. The whole diet thing aside, I think this woman's early life experiences have impacted her way of thinking as an adult.
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