Tag: society

Eating Healthy Costs More and It’s Time To Stop Pretending It Doesn’t.

pexels-photo-116726.jpegIn the past 12 months, I have lost almost 5 stone in weight. It’s been *hard* work, and not because I don’t want to diet, but because it’s difficult to afford the foods I should be eating if I want to maintain a healthy body and lifestyle.

As anyone who has attended a Slimming World or WeightWatchers meeting will tell you, losing weight is easy: it just takes cooking all the meals you eat from scratch; a kitchen; the right equipment; your energy costs covered by a magic money fairy; the money in your pocket to be able to buy a fabulous array of vegetables and fruits, be they fresh or frozen…

It just takes being able to buy a whole chicken and a lettuce!

Losing weight and living a healthy lifestyle isn’t a mystery to most people. Not the very well off, not the middle classes, and not the working classes. Most of us know what we should be eating, and we know what our children should be eating. I don’t know any parents who have sat down and decided they want their child to be fat, unhealthy, and unable to play and run with free movement, whatever perceived class they are from.

I know fat rich people and skinny poor people, but mostly it’s the other way round. Not because of a deliberate choice to eat crap and laze around on a fat arse all day, though. It’s not a ‘lack of willpower‘ that makes those in poverty put on the pounds, something Jamie Oliver tried–if clumsily–to get across this week.

Unfortunately, the entire concept of food and food poverty seems to be based around the idea of a Class System. The wealthy, if we are to believe The Times, are taking heed of the Government’s advice on healthy eating–an approach that will not, apparently, work on the poor. The article actually calls those in poverty an underclass, although it hasn’t directly attributed those exact words to Jamie (read it here). I can’t begin to express just how offensive that is, and how much it hurts to be deemed as less than, as below. It invalidates my humanity, and that’s painful to deal with.

It’s not class that’s the problem, it’s money.

Poor children are twice as likely as rich children to be obese. Two thirds of children living in poverty come from families where one, or both, parents work. I have emails from nurses, from teachers, and even from a solicitor, all sharing their stories of struggling to get food on the table. One nurse actually has a slice of bread before work, and nothing else until she ends her shift, when she has a bowl of porridge. She’s not an underclass, and I’m pretty certain these educated men and women don’t have trouble grasping “middle class logic”. It’s not a class problem, but a financial one. Something I was able to discuss in detail at the Food Foundation‘s Vegetable Summit last year, and also wrote about earlier this year for the Health Foundation.

Back to my own weight loss. Two years ago, eating what I eat now was an impossibility. It’s not that I suddenly have a diet of roast duck and caviar, but I am able to afford to buy a chicken in place of nuggets, and pork shoulder instead of sausages. We still eat our staples and favourites, like sweet potato and butternut squash tagine, curries, and anything with rice, but we’re able to eat better than before, and you know what?

…it costs more…

It costs more to buy. More to cook. More physical energy to prepare. A degree of risk, because trying new food around kids is always a risk, right? I don’t know about your kids, but if I served mine chickpeas on a regular basis, I would be slaughtered–and they wouldn’t have even tried them when they were young. I know this as fact, because I like the bloody things and love cooking with them. A tub of hummus lasts exactly 30 seconds if it’s put close to me. My children thought chickpeas were weird, bland, and disgusting, the same as most other kids. Poverty happens in the pocket, not in the taste buds. Sure, as they’ve grown older, I’ve got them to eat more foods and now we argue over hummus and the valuable cucumber sticks we get to scoop it up with.

We have a richer, more varied, diet thanks, in part, to our struggles with poverty and the breadline. We’ve had to adapt and learn that what was in front of us is all I had to give, and if my kids didn’t eat it, they would go hungry.

Please, understand, when I say ‘they would go hungry’ I don’t mean the old threat, “You eat that, or you go to bed hungry,” – I mean there was nothing else to eat, and we had no access to food unless they ate what was in front of them; the same reality as millions of other children know every single day. Some days the best I could offer was smashed up kidney beans (bean burgers) and some potato wedges made from those last couple of sad looking spuds in the cupboard. If you haven’t been there, you’re lucky. If you have, I’ve cried your tears.

The risk of trying new foods is a very real one, in households where a meal for four people has to cost around £1.50 – £2.00 in its entirety. Wasting money, wasting food, is never an option. So what happens? Normally something like this:

Me: What should I cook for dinner? This is a nice recipe, and I should be able to afford the ingredients…squash is cheap as anything in Lidl, so that’s not an issue. I have rice, and I’m sure I can stretch to a tin of tomatoes…

Me: Although we’ve had tomato based dishes all week. I think I might cry if I have to face another tomato sauce. Even ketchup would be too much, right now.

Me: We could have fajitas, but without the meat…

Me: Oh yeah. I have a daughter who doesn’t like veggie fajitas. I can’t feed her separately today, so…

Me: I could always do rice. Again. I am so bored of rice. And potatoes. My life is rice and potatoes. Where do these people on TV buy their takeaways? A kebab costs seven bloody quid…times that by six…hahaha NOPE. That’s not going to happen. Okay, so no takeaways for us. Twenty quid for a pizza? I’d rather shove wasps up my…

Me: Was that the electric meter beeping? Damn, it was. Okay…no long cooking times, then. Quick, cheap, and easy. God, I’m tired. Okay...I have a fiver–that’s enough for some Iceland pizzas or sausages, a bag of oven chips, and some beans. 20 minutes and we’re done and I can finally sit down for half an hour and still have the lights on in the morning! Yay! Whoop–living the high life!

And so it goes. I can feed a family of four an evening meal for a fortnight at Iceland for £21.55 (as at time of writing). £20 for 14 meals for four people. That’s without additions, like vegetables or fruits; they cost more, and at my most desperate all I could think of is to stop the constant whines of, “Mum, I’m hungryyyy. So I’ve based this on those feelings of helplessness.”

It’s no secret why those in poverty are struggling with obesity. 75 breaded chicken nuggets for £3.00? Middle class logic? How about 4 Scotch Pies for £1.25? Lack of education? 40 value sausages for £2.00 might have more to do with it. People eat this stuff because it’s cheap. Most of the people I’ve spoken to don’t even like the bloody stuff, but it’s the most calories for the least amount of cash–it’s economically sound, if not nutritionally so.

Short cooking times, ease of storage, the knowledge the food will be eaten? It all combines, becoming the only safe route forward. Healthy food simply costs more. A cheap chicken, while only £3.00, takes an hour in the oven. Pulses and beans need soaking and boiling for an hour. Even potatoes are energy-expensive, depending on how they’re being cooked. And this is before we’ve even thought about how the kids are going to react to a courgette and pasta bake!

I have no trouble grasping the Middle Class Concepts of healthy eating. I’ve taught my children to cook, and we’re so lucky in that we have a well functioning kitchen and the things we need to cook our meals. I can cook, and I’m not half bad at it, either. But there are still times, even two years on from my original blog post, that dinner is something from a bag from an Iceland freezer. There are still times when there’s not so much as a solitary pea on my plate, and there are still times when I’ve resorted to eating just a bowl of plain steamed rice, rather than risk putting on weight and eating processed frozen foods.

Each extra item added to a plate costs money. It’s a very simple fact to grasp, regardless of class, that more food on a plate will mean higher costs. So food is removed from the plate, and the food removed cannot be anything that will fill a stomach…so the added vegetables are lost, and a beige plate of oven-baked nuggets and chips reigns supreme for another night. Bellies are filled, and kids will sleep without waking up because they’re hungry.

Food Poverty is not a class problem. It’s a financial one.

Homeless Doesn’t Mean Cardboard Boxes.

Homeless Doesn’t Mean Cardboard Boxes.

I don’t have a lot of material goods.  I don’t own my home.  I’m not rich by even the wildest stretch of the imagination.  Yet I do have something in my life, which right now, is a lifeline to a friend of mine.  I have a two-seater, second hand, 15 year old sofa.  It’s the only seating in my house, except for wooden kitchen chairs.  We used to have a leather three piece suite…clawed and scratched up by a previous tenant’s cats, but serviceable.  It belonged to our old landlord, though.  When he sold the house from under us and evicted us with only four weeks notice, he refused to let us take the suite.  He wanted £200 for it.  It had cost £30 second hand.  So, we had only the kitsch old sofa I’d bought years ago.  It’s small, beaten, weathered and ugly as sin, according to my husband.  I bought it (and a three-seater which unfortunately died) as more of a joke than anything else.  It was in a charity shop window and it was so hideous I felt sorry for it.

Now, that old battered and beaten sofa is my friend’s new home.  I wrote before, about a friend made homeless due to bereavement.  That same friend has once again found himself with nowhere to turn.  Much as poverty is hidden, so is much of this country’s homeless.  My friend, who shall remain nameless, has numerous personal issues.  One of which is another ‘hidden’ and ‘shameful’ blight — depression.  He needs help, which is proving difficult to get.  Suicidal Ideation is present and, when he told his doctor he wanted to die, he was told he had to want to help himself before he could expect help to be given and to go back in two weeks.  Isn’t that lovely?  A homeless man, out of work, no close family, nowhere to turn, suicidal…told to go away and come back in two weeks.

My sofa isn’t the comfiest thing in the world.  It sags and can cripple anyone with a back injury.  But it is under a roof that can keep off the rain and it comes with love and an ear attached to it.  It also comes with a meal a day.  I will need to juggle and get creative, but that one extra mouth needs feeding, so fed it shall be.  Until we can jump through all the hoops of ESA/JSA, and get him some kind of benefits.  Until we can get council help in finding him a place where he shall not need to be able to produce a deposit, as well as one month’s rent and £150 in agency fees.  To be able to be housed, this man — homeless, without money, without savings and without, right now, hope — will need to find about £700.  To some, that sum will seem insignificant.  To those in his situation, it may as well be a million.

His is a world where, when benefits come to him, he shall be living on a pittance.  One so small, that when he gets a bedsit, charged at an extortionate rent, after he has paid utilities and bills, he shall be left with pennies to survive on.  They are pennies he is grateful for.  A small amount, but one he appreciates.  His health and mental state make work an impossibility.  This is his life and will likely stay his life.  It’s not one he would choose, but it is his and it is worth keeping.  Worth fighting for.

This is where friends rally around.  Where we will sit with him as he wades through the minefield of legal gumpf and fills out enough forms to fill a wheelie-bin.  We will be at his side to help him find a small, cramped, cheap bedsit.  We will find him items to cook with, so he can eat.  Right now, he has a duvet and clothes from his life ‘before’ it was all lost.  We shall prop him up whilst he is too weak to stand, and we shall cheer when he takes those first steps into a new future.  We will be there for him for as long as we are needed.

So will my small, insignificant, beaten up, battered, hideous old sofa.  Because this is the world of the hidden homeless, and that sofa will mean he is not vulnerable.  On the street, left to the elements and discarded from society like a worthless old bit of junk no-one wants in their life.  That sofa, as ugly as it is and as uncomfortable as it might be, is his new home.  The sofa is more than an item of furniture.  It is a promise that it will be there, to hold him safe at night and keep him warm and dry.  It means there is a roof, not the sky, above his head.  It means he is not alone.

It means there is hope.

I am a Fantasy Fiction author (too much ‘real’ in my life as it is, thank you) and my books are available on Amazon.  I am Independently Published — my ‘team’ are my friends.  My début novel ” Into The Woods” can be found HERE (UK) and HERE (rest of world).  Links to my Author Page and other books can be found through these links.  The paperback for Book #1 of the Searching For Eden series can be found HERE.  Book #2 shall be available shortly.

Disconnect The Poor In The Internet Age

Disconnect The Poor In The Internet Age

The Internet Is Not A Luxury.  It needs to be said before we go any further.

If you have children, they need it for homework and studies.  They need it to send in assignments and to keep up to date with coursework.  “Libraries!” I hear some of you shouting, “Go to an Internet Cafe!”  All well and good, but for a lot of people, their nearest library is in the centre of their town or city and would mean a two mile walk each way.  Sometimes more.  The walk would have to be done daily after school–because buses are not cheap and feet are free.  This is, of course, after leaving the house at 7:30am, walking the half an hour to school in all weathers and putting in a full day of studying.  Internet Cafes’ charge for the privilege of using the computers.  It is not a viable option for most.

To not have the internet at home, a child from a poor family would have to stay out of the family home for approximately (in our case and based on the distances my daughter walks to school) another three hours.  She would not get home until around 7pm at night…and would have to walk in the dark, through a not-exactly-great area of the city (neither myself or my husband drive; we cannot afford a car…and cannot afford the lessons anyway).  Meg is a straight A student.  She dreams of university life and becoming a doctor.  It is all she has wanted to do since she was four years old.  At just turned sixteen, she keeps a relentless study schedule.  She works from 8.00am through to 9.00pm as it is.  At home, she is safe, [mostly]warm and can eat her dinner as she studies.

The Internet Is Essential.  We are told the way to lift ourselves high and achieve riches untold, is to be well-educated and get a professional career.  Are only the children of the comfortable and the rich allowed to follow this dream?  Are the children of the poor to be raised with the depressing knowledge in their young heads that their lot in life is to serve the children of the rich?  To clean, and sweep and toil and slave, with no hope of realising their aspirations and dreams…because school work now requires an internet connection, to get the best education available.  Each time a struggling family is told their internet is a luxury, they are told their children do not deserve the access to it in the home.  They are told their children should be thankful for their lot, and stay in the ‘place’ they were born.

There are disabled people, housebound and alone for weeks on end.  They do not have the option of walking the two miles (or more) to their library, to be able to sit down and make some contact with relatives living apart from them.  To see pictures of their newest little cousins, or a new grandchild.  They cannot spare the money from their living allowances or benefits to use an internet cafe.  To say to them that the Internet is a luxury they can do without, to save money, is to isolate them and cage them in their loneliness.  The quality of life of the elderly and infirm increases dramatically, if they are taught to use a computer, laptop or even a smart-phone, and can access and utilise the web.  Depression caused by isolated living is lifted, just a little.  Shopping can be done, friends spoken with, people contacted, programmes watched.  The Internet is essential.  That they need to choose between eating, heating, or human contact is appalling, and they should not be expected to make that choice.

Job seekers are told, by the Job Centre, to apply for an initial interview online.  School Admittance Forms? Fill them out online.  Best grocery offers?  Online.  Job searching?  Property rental?  Council Housing Register?  You’ve guessed it–it’s all online.

Is it reasonable, therefore, to look at the poorest sections of our society and tell them to save money–sometimes as little as £6.99 a month–by getting rid of their internet.  Are we, as a society, so judgemental that we believe those in the poorest households must sit in the dark, without a television, without a computer, without communication?  Is that what we have become, now, thanks to the portrayal of poverty in the media?  To take away the web, is to disconnect more than Google.  It is to disconnect ourselves.

If you are affected by any of these issues and would like to chat, or ask for help, please do contact my Facebook page HERE.  I answer all messages that come through to me and will always try to point you in the right direction if you need help/advice.