Food 'n' Class

[mistersloane]

Edit: can we PLEASE do ourselves all a big favour and stop pretending this whole issue is about money and nothing else? Unemployed people today have far more disposable income, in real terms, than did most people who worked 60-hour weeks a few generations ago.

It's not just about money, but there are a whole set of recurrent difficulties and different problems that go with long term generational unemployment that don't happen with 60 hour week workers; being unemployed isn't just about having loads of free time and not working.

 

[Slothrop]

It's not just about money, but there are a whole set of recurrent difficulties and different problems that go with long term generational unemployment that don't happen with 60 hour week workers; being unemployed isn't just about having loads of free time and not working.

Agreed, and those problems are complicated social and cultural and psychological issues and are very serious and real, but not being able to afford to spend a one-off £20 on a book isn't one of them.

 

[john eden]

Thank you mistersloane, as ever (doffs cap).

Mr Tea (why is everyone so formal these days?) - I really think you should watch the programme itself rather than make judgements about the people based on the guardian piece.

I just checked it out and Natasha is bloody great - the whole of the first programme is about her soaking up information like a sponge and transforming her life, developing a passion for food and cooking.

You are right that this has little to do with money, but there is a big fuck off venn diagram of people who happen to have less money intersecting with people who have... I dunno... smaller horizons.

 

[Slothrop]

how old will she be? 25, 26? thatchers child; she's the product of the early national curriculum. "designing" food to get away from actually cooking things. we spent a whol term designing 'special bread' to cook. and we did apple crumble. hardly useful was it?

why teach them to cook when you can teach them how to design it at a fraction of the cost?

Yeah, my girlfriend says she spent a term designing a questionaire to see what people would like in a salad and one lesson making a salad. I didn't even do HE, my school didn't have the facilities.

Didn't the gov't announce that they were actually going to do something sensible about this, though? Like get schools doing actual cookery classes where you learn to cook sausage and mash, spag bol, leek and potato soup sort of stuff?

 

[Mr. Tea]

Thank you mistersloane, as ever (doffs cap).

Mr Tea (why is everyone so formal these days?) - I really think you should watch the programme itself rather than make judgements about the people based on the guardian piece.

I just checked it out and Natasha is bloody great - the whole of the first programme is about her soaking up information like a sponge and transforming her life, developing a passion for food and cooking.

You are right that this has little to do with money, but there is a big fuck off venn diagram of people who happen to have less money intersecting with people who have... I dunno... smaller horizons.

Was it on today? Damn, missed it, it does sound very interesting.

As I said upthread, I'm not saying this woman is a bad mother or anything (or at least, she clearly wants not to be a bad mother, from what it sounds like), just that whatever it is that's stopping her has less to do with a lack of financial resources than with a lack of metal resources. By which I mean self-confidence, even 'gumption' (for want of a better word), rather than intelligence. And cooking might be about 'ideas' when you're Heston Blumenthal, but when you're a single mum on a tight budget feeding a couple of kids it's about learning a few simple recipes and getting used to putting something together for yourself and enjoying the end result.

I suppose I'm pretty much in agreement with what many others in this thread have said - the main thing that irks me though is this 'reflex socialist' tendency to say "Well they're poor, what else do you expect? Case closed", when there's so much more it than that.

Lastly, interesting point about the teaching (or not) of cookery in schools - I learned fuck all about food at school, I picked up a few basics from my mum - and my dad, actually - then got a few more ideas from books and basically taught myself from then on. I certainly wasn't Junior Masterchef when I left home; I think the most important thing I'd picked up was a general interest in cooking and the belief that it's an important skill to be able to feed yourself. I guess that's 'cultural capital', then - and if there are lots of kids who for whatever reason haven't had these opportunities then any attempt to try and get them interested in food at school is only to be applauded.

 

[ripley]

From what I understand of America, fast food over there is *ultra* cheap and is actually the only thing a lot of the poorest people can afford to buy. In some parts half-decent raw ingredients (and I don't mean organic lamb's lettuce, I mean ordinary fruit/veg/meat/fish that hasn't been processed to buggery) is either outside many people's budgets or simply not to be had at all.

Any Americans here got any input on this? I'm going mainly on what I've heard from other people...

One of the main problems is that poor neighborhoods in a lot of places in the US simply don't have grocery stores, especially not with a fresh food section.. not for miles. Nor farmer's markets. There's liquor stores, fast food chains, and corner shops with pre-packaged shit. Not a lot to get excited about. and it's simply too far away to get to decent ingredients for cooking. to far also makes ingredients too costly.
The whole situation is horrible.

there's a reason the Black Panthers started community gardens, although you don't hear about that aspect of their plans as much.

 

[slim jenkins]

Good point about the US, although the UK seems to have a different problem. I know someone who stayed over there and her hosts were shocked when she said 'I'm going out to buy some veg'. Firstly, there were no shops selling vegetables for miles (they didn't live in the country). Secondly, she had the insane notion of walking (!)

Anyway, here that isn't an excuse. The reason seems to be an inability to break through the psychological barrier into a thought process involving a bit of creative imagination re what to do with good basic ingredients. For whatever reason that has become a no-go area for loads of working class people. Buying veg, oil, quick-frying with whatever simply isn't within their scope. Aren't woks so middle-class?

If good easy cooking requires rethinking is it a matter of taste? I used to work with a girl who sneered at yoghurt, never even having tried it. These people are bound by mental limitations as surely as their social situation seems to bind them culturally. There's no excuse not to go to a free classical concert other than ignorance and prejudice born out of self-imposed (?) class limitations.

Whether we like it or not, good cooking is now akin to opera in some senses - "Not for our kind". I lived in a world where that mindset prevails for many years growing up and I know what it's like to be programmed to think that way. Having others (the middle-classes and rich mockney's like Jamie) preach otherwise gets the hackles up. I'd like to see him succeed, but it seems unlikely.

 

[STN]

a lack of financial resources than with a lack of metal resources. .

No, she definitely had enough pans and cutlery. Arf.

I'd completely forgotten about HE at school; we spent an hour drawing a flowchart on how to make Nesquik which strikes me as a touch inadequate now I look back.

 

[Shonx]

I don't think many people really understand just how grinding living on a perpetual budget can be.

I do. There are still choices though, I've generally thought of fast food as a luxury (in terms of money, not quality) and can generally eat much better off making sure I have staple items that I can combine with other ingredients, some sort of carb bass (rice, pasta, potatoes) some fresh fruit and veg and then just shop for offers. If I was eating kebab and chips each night it would cost roughly £28 a week for one evening meal. I can eat well for a week off that.

I do agree that depression is a big demotivator with eating in general though, and I seem to remember high fat foods having an anti-depressant effect for the short term, if not draining energy in the long.

 

[droid]

Anyway, here that isn't an excuse. The reason seems to be an inability to break through the psychological barrier into a thought process involving a bit of creative imagination re what to do with good basic ingredients. For whatever reason that has become a no-go area for loads of working class people. Buying veg, oil, quick-frying with whatever simply isn't within their scope. Aren't woks so middle-class?

If good easy cooking requires rethinking is it a matter of taste? I used to work with a girl who sneered at yoghurt, never even having tried it. These people are bound by mental limitations as surely as their social situation seems to bind them culturally. There's no excuse not to go to a free classical concert other than ignorance and prejudice born out of self-imposed (?) class limitations.

Whether we like it or not, good cooking is now akin to opera in some senses - "Not for our kind". I lived in a world where that mindset prevails for many years growing up and I know what it's like to be programmed to think that way. Having others (the middle-classes and rich mockney's like Jamie) preach otherwise gets the hackles up. I'd like to see him succeed, but it seems unlikely.

You also have to take into account the fact that people's palettes are defined very early in life. if you grow up eating a certain kind of food, you're most likely to continue eating the same kind of food.

When I was growing up I'd have cereal for breakfast, easi-singles or crappy ham on white bread for lunch, maybe a jam sandwich or digestive biscuit for a snack, fish fingers, burgers, Irish Stew/Shepherds pie (with the cheapest cuts of meat) for dinner, oranges with a sprinkle of sugar, or rice pudding for dessert. And tea - loads of tea.

Once every few months we'd go to McDonalds as a 'treat'. and on the occasional Friday my Dad would go the the chipper instead of cooking. I didn't have Chinese food till i was about 15. Didn't go to a 'proper' restaurant until I was about 19 - the idea of eating out or cooking from a recipe was just foreign...

Anyway - point is, that it took me about 10 years to break out of the eating habits that I picked up when I was young, and IMO things haven't changed for working class families that much. Today's bad diets mainly reflect the expanding influence of consumerism and advertising.

 

[vimothy]

metal resources

Hailz!

 

[Mr. Tea]

One thing that's just struck me is that in discussion of "working class families", are we actually just talking about white working class families? I say this because I live in one of the un-whitest places in the country, and it's also pretty 'working class'/poor/run-down, but all along Roman Road there are market stalls and small greengrocers selling good cheap fruit and veg - and they wouldn't still be there if people weren't buying the stuff. And because these stalls and shops are generally run by people from far-flung places you can buy all kinds of stuff that you don't normally see in supermarkets, like plantain and yams and things I don't even know the name of. And you can get al kinds of spices and packets of salt fish and catering-sized bags of rice and there's even a Polish sausage shop!

The point I'm making is, is it reasonable to assume that people who've immigrated to Britain from generally pretty poor parts of the world (be it Jamaica, Nigeria, Bangladesh or wherever) are going to be shopping for food thriftily and cooking for their families because they haven't become accustomed to the (supposed) luxury of convenience like a lot of white people have over the last generation or so? Is it too much to hope than increasing contact with cultures where people know how to put a meal together from virtually nothing will help the indigenous working class rediscover their own culinary heritage?



(sorry, this has turned into an epic rhetorical waffle - but I think it's a valid point)

 

[slim jenkins]

Probably - what's the racial mix in Rotherham? (where the programme's set). The great multi-cultural cross-fertilisation of lifestyles strikes me as a liberal (?) ideal, mostly. These days white working classes in some areas might be more inclined to deliberately avoid foreign food shops. But as you know, they used to have to make food stretch and use cheap ingredients to make nonetheless wholesome (in their way) meals - the kind of food Rick Stein raves over now and rightly mourns the passing of. The problem is the concept of seperate ingredients put together by yourself.

 

[mistersloane]

Yeah - and good point - it'll be interesting to see how varied Rotherham is in later episodes, I think it's much harder outside of (con)urban environments - local supermarkets really cater to what they perceive their local trade to be.

And yeah John you're right about how sweet Natasha is - there's that great bit where she shows Oliver the sweet tray in the fridge and goes 'Shocking, ain't it?' which really made me laugh. I like the way the older lady makes him apologise for calling her an old boiler as well, it's very good TV.

I also wonder how much crossover there is between what kids eat at home and what you eat with your peer group ( Junior Spesh!), y'know, that idea that when you're out with your mates, it's a mixed group, but when you go home, you're in your parents culture. God that's a whole other kettle of fish though but it's a nice idea Mr Tea.

It's rare that I'm interested in telly but this whole one has really upped my respect for Jamie Oliver. He's really thinking about how he can bring about sociological change, it's very inspiring. The fact that he's boiling problems down to ideas of ownership is quite radical.

 

[slim jenkins]

We only ate school dinners when I was a kid. Peer pressure - "Must remember to have enough money to buy a kebab on the way home" - christ.

 

[matt b]

Probably - what's the racial mix in Rotherham? (where the programme's set). The great multi-cultural cross-fertilisation of lifestyles strikes me as a liberal (?) ideal, mostly.

most of the smaller northern towns (rotherham, barnsley, halifax, hudds, oldham etc etc) are geographically split along racial lines- very different to london/ other big cities.

cross pollination isn't happening (at least not with any spped that is visible)

 

[Mr. Tea]

Sure, I appreciate I was being a bit optimistic in my last post - but then a bit of optimism never hurt anyone. And I appreciate too that London is a special case and that things are very different in a lot of other towns. At the same time, though, it wasn't that long ago that curry was either an 'exotic taste of the Orient' or 'filthy Paki food' (depending on where you were coming from culturally/class-wise) but has since become one of Britain's staple foods. So there's no inherent reason to think people can't become a lot more open-minded about food in a relatively short time, historically speaking.

 

[IdleRich]

So there's no inherent reason to think people can't become a lot more open-minded about food in a relatively short time, historically speaking.

I'm not sure that the rise and rise of curry, Chinese food, kebabs etc necessarily represent an open-mindedness towards food as such, just a change in the main diet. I mean it's perfectly possible to love kebabs but still be closed minded towards lots of other food that you don't eat regularly.

 

[swears]

I think kids will eat shite whatever adults try to teach them, my mum generally cooked quite healthy fare at home, but most days in the school cafeteria I'd just have chips and a can of coke. Then tell my mum I'd had grilled chicken and salad or something. So I think we have just got to limit their options.

 

[slim jenkins]

Anything that comes in a carton - fast, in other words. Or the curry phenomenon which, for whatever reason, rose to become a staple amongst these types (it's relatively cheap, quick and you get served by a race we used to rule over - whoopee!).

We were in an Indian restaurant once and a big gang of blokes came in - their behaviour was appaling, not rude to the waiters that we could hear but simply barbaric. I can't imagine it happening anywhere else in Europe. I think there's something rotten in the heart of this country. The same types go abroad and want English food - that's food 'n' class for you.