food beyond the reach of many poorer families?

I’M NOt sure it’s a question of financial poverty that stops poor people getting wholesome food (Letters). Lentils, carrot, onions, spuds, cabbage, various types of bean are all so cheap that you could make a nutritious meal for less than 50p a head. I live on the edge of a tower block estate and I see a succession of pizza delivery scooters arriving all day and night. So, what do the pizzas cost? About £19 for a large one, plus fizzy drink, the last time I looked. Much later, it’s motability scooters that cart around the result — people who are too fat to walk or who have other illnesses which may be diet-related — going to the pub and the bookies. We all have weaknesses, for sure, but this isn’t just about money.

Name and address supplied. SHEENA DEARNESS is mistaken. I eat a balanced diet and cook from scratch. I spend no more than £25 a week on food and that includes a bottle of wine. I’m 80, I play golf three times a week and my BMI is 23. The real problem is no one can cook nowadays, or maybe they don’t have the inclination. When I suggested to my great-niece that she should take some cookery lessons from her grandmother, who is an excellent cook, as are most women of her generation, her response was: ‘I’m not going to waste my expensive education in the kitchen, there’s a KFC on every corner.’

Name supplied, Bournemouth. WHEN the ‘poor’ were genuinely poor, before the war, all the working classes were thin, not fat. I was an unmarried mother of a girl who is still as slim as she was as a child, I bought wholesome food and cooked it myself. She is now a productive member of society. Obese children are victims of their parents, not of the ‘junk’ industry. Jamie Oliver has no experience of this side of society and is just assuming this. Ms Dearness also is out of touch.

MS O. ROBERTS, address supplied.