Escape from poverty

hOW can someone living on an estate in Stockton- on-tees say vegetables are expensive and they can’t afford to feed their families nutritious food (Mail)?

a bag of raw carrots or a packet of frozen peas are cheap and easy to cook. yet some people will buy a bag of chips for £1 and have takeaways instead of cooking pasta.

a poor diet is not about poverty; it is about whether people will make the effort to use their money wisely and work hard to feed their families properly.

We need to give people support rather than letting them think this is their lot and there is no hope. It would be a wonderful idea if volunteers with life skills could go into these housing estates and teach the families basic cooking, budgeting and shopping.

Our parents’ generation inspired their children to escape from poverty, so we need to show these young families it can be done. Mrs SUSAN FELLA, Enfield, Middlesex. It’S absurd to claim people in a so- called poor area such as Stockton- on-tees die should necessarily die earlier than those in nearby, wealthier Billingham.

the examples we were given of Stockton- on-tees residents were a crack cocaine addict and a man who has chosen to eat so much trashy food that he has type 2 diabetes, and whose chain smoking has led to emphysema. None of these habits are cheap, all are unhealthy, and they are the life choices of weak people.

If those who are better off had not exercised and had indulged in trash food, chain smoking and drugs, then they would also be dying young.

you can’t compare weak, addictive people with normal people to illustrate a point.

People with addictive habits inevitably end up living in cheaper and worse areas.

RON STOUT, St Albans, Herts.