One of the most common discussions I hear around healthy eating and lifestyle is that “people can’t afford it”.
As a kid, I lived in a two up two down terrace with my mum. I weekended with my dad and at some point, both of my parents were working two jobs to support themselves and me. While we didn’t have much money, I’ll admit we didn’t live in poverty and I had a very happy childhood.
But while we weren’t wealthy, I never recall bad food, unhealthy food or eating Findus crispy pancakes as a staple meal. We had a roast on a Sunday and then variations on the theme of the meat in the form of different leftover recipes, to include risottos, stroganoffs and curries. Toward the end of the week, we probably had some vegetarian meals and maybe some fish dishes like kedgeree. All delicious, home cooked, no added rubbish, full of nutrition meals. After complaining my belly wasn’t full from school dinners, I converted to packed lunches there, which again, were the usual sandwiches from wholemeal bread, yoghurt, cheese and fruits. Occasionally I’d have a lunchbox size chocolate bar and of course, my granny always spoilt me rotten with Ribena, chocolate spread and biscuits whenever I stayed at her house or she arrived to collect me for some sort of extra-curricular activity.
Later on in life, I found it easy to live on a shoestring as a student, eating mainly vegetarian foods and making sure I located the local fruit and veg markets, good value butchers and made friends with the fishmongers and other market stall holders.
Now I’m extremely privileged not to have to worry too much about the money we spend on food, meaning I can experiment with what we eat to give us variety, maximum nutrition content and of course deliciousness!
It’s my earlier years that make me a little uncomfortable when I hear people say they “can’t afford to eat healthily.”
Is it can’t afford, or is it can’t be bothered…?
If you look in the right places, there is always a cheap and easy meal to be found. Batch cooking with fresh ingredients, cutting down on food waste, making regimental shopping lists and only buying what you need while having the cupboard staples in stock and learning to be able to cook are the keys to eating nutritious and delicious meals.
I was shocked recently to see a video on social media, where a man poo-pooed a woman’s effort at creating a beautiful lunchbox for their child; apparently doling a spoonful of pre-cooked rice, slicing some pre-cooked meat, mashing an avocado and slicing a cucumber is “way too much effort” for a lunchbox. I watched instead as he threw in some sort of plastic derivative “lunchables”, a tube of yoghurt and a can of full sugar cola into his child’s coolbag. I was stunned. Laziness is apparently now an accepted form of parenting.
Now you’re absolutely right, I don’t have children so I don’t know what it’s like to be a parent. But I do have to make my own lunchboxes and my mum managed to make mine (and then taught me how to do it myself…) and to be quite frank, we need to cut the crap and accept that the decisions we make for an “easy life”, are often the same choices that lead us to disease and pathology.
There’s plenty of evidence from various public health boffins about health inequalities affecting the poorest parts of society. But I think unfortunately some of this is not what it seems and is not due to lack of access. I accept that it is difficult in some geographies for people to access affordable fresh food, but these nutritional deserts are not the norm. For most of us, the barrier to eating healthily is simply the barrier we’ve put up ourselves; laziness. Learn how to cook. Walk to the markets. Google the cheap recipes. Stop turning your nose up at cut price, slightly imperfect fruit and veg. Understand that health does take time, but cutting corners now is slowly adding links to the heavy chains you will have to wear in the future – the chains of diabetes, cancers, other avoidable diseases. I say this as someone who has been there and done it on a shoe-string.
I await the barrage of people telling me I’m wrong…we’ll agree to disagree…