Lessons for a healthy life
THE other day a chum and I returned to our old school, threedecades plus since we met there as 11-year-olds.
The building still provides education for women but now also hosts a bistro where we settled in for coffee and a catch-up.
“This was where we had our cookery lessons,” remarked my friend, and she was right. We were sitting where, as pupils, we’d been taught something called ‘domestic science’ but which largely consisted of baking cakes – inedible in my case.
There was no ‘science’ involved. No information on nutrition or how food can affect health or weight or mood. No lessons on budgeting or cooking from scratch.
Just recipes to be followed and (again in my case) the results invariably thrown away.
Fast forward several decades and I don’t recall it being much better when my own kids had ‘food tech’ in senior school. We still laugh at the curry the boy made, a concoction so toxic it had to be double bagged to protect the binmen.
Yet understanding food, how to use it to make decent meals and its link with obesity and poor health is fundamental to our well-being – never more so than in these Covid days.
Founder of the Leon restaurant chain, Henry Dimbleby, has recently unveiled The National Food Strategy – a report commissioned by the Government on the nation’s food habits.
His recommendations include higher taxes on salt and sugar and the prescribing of fruit and veg by GPs.
So far, so well intentioned.
We all know about
re ducing salt and sugar. We’ve all heard of five a day and the benefits of eating broccoli over crisps, but knowing about something doesn’t always mean you engage with it.
There are myriad reasons why people choose fast or junk food over a home-made spag bol or reach for a muffin rather than a mango.
Lack of time, for a start. You might be holding down a job, sorting kids, supporting an elderly relative. The band width in your head may just not be wide enough to worry about cooking tea.
Lack of cash. There is a risk in forking out for ingredients you can’t be sure the kids will eat and unhealthy food can often be cheaper than healthier alternatives. For those on very low incomes, affording even the most basic cooking equipment can be dauntingly expensive.
Lack of nearby shops. Who wants to trail back and forth on the bus to get fresh stuff every day?
Lack of education. This is the big one. Too many people simply don’t know how to cook. They’ve not been taught either in lessons or by their parents who themselves won’t have been taught.
How mad is it that our kids go to school to learn to read and write but not how to adequately feed themselves for the rest of their lives? If they did, all those other barriers would be more easily overcome.
Of course some sections of the food industry need tighter regulation. Of course we need to find ways to make healthy food affordable for all. And, whatever your income, the fact remains items which used to be classed as once-in-a-while ‘treats’ are now commonplace in our diets.
But as a nation we need to get back to basics and teach our kids how to cook.
Carry on as we are and it’s a recipe for disaster.