Prue: We’ve had three generations who can’t cook
PRUE Leith has said Britons are failures in the kitchen because we have not learned to cook for ‘three generations’.
The Great British Bake Off judge made scathing comments about the nation’s culinary skills and lamented that families no longer tend to pass down recipes and cooking techniques.
Speaking at the Stratford upon Avon Literary Festival, she said ‘the middle classes’ can ‘eat extremely well’ without cooking, while many poorer families who can’t afford that luxury ‘haven’t learnt to cook’.
She said: ‘If you have got money, you can eat extremely well without being able to cook. You can go to Waitrose shelves and pick up yourself a beautiful salad, trimmed beans, you can even get salmon, with all the really nice ingredients and just shove it in [the oven].
‘But you need money to do that. If you’re poor and you have not learnt to cook, and that’s the problem. You haven’t learnt to cook and your mother hasn’t learnt to cook and your granny hasn’t learnt to cook.’
This, she said, has caused ‘ three generations’ of bad cooks. She said families used to a diet of ‘chips and pizza’ rather than ‘ vegetables and good food’ will go on ‘ perpetuating’ the problem.
The 79-year-old has repeatedly highlighted the impact of the lack of school teaching about cooking and food, and said Government intervention was needed to tackle childhood obesity. ‘The trick is to catch them whilst they are at school,’ she said. ‘My solution is for schools to be brave enough to do what they do in Finland... which is to not allow any food to enter the schools at all. No lunchboxes, no chocolates in the pockets, teachers not giving rewards in the form of toffee or a chocolate bar.’
The presenter said children should be given breakfast at school – ‘yoghurt or a piece of toast’ – and then have no choice at lunchtime but to eat the food provided.
Miss Leith added: ‘They have to sit down and eat in an old fashioned way, knees up, and learn good table manners.
‘And because they haven’t eaten since breakfast, by the time they get to lunch, they are pleasurably hungry. They’re not starving but they’re anticipating lunch, which means they will try something new.’
Miss Leith added: ‘ I’m aware this would also prevent responsible healthy mums who are doing really wonderful lunch boxes from being allowed to feed their children. But that’s a small price to pay.’
The cook, presenter and writer is currently promoting her latest novel, The Lost Son.
‘Recipes not being handed down’