Everyone nowadays has an opinion on the state of the
nation’s diet. The government are worried that people are getting obese and
that the generation from the 70s & 80s are feeding their kids too much
processed food.
Let me take you back to the 60s when I was a kid and
my mammy had to feed her, dad and four kids on a low income. People talk about
how poor I was back then when they have read my book Handstand in the Dark,
which charts my childhood in the East End of Glasgow, and it was tough- no
denying.
Seven days a week, we ate a full plate of potatoes,
cabbage, carrots and a tiny bit of meat (which was more expensive) and our
puddings were fruit or tinned custard and bananas. We regularly dined on fish,
fried lightly in porridge oats or cheap cuts of liver braised in onions with
big potatoes and pots of tripe with milky sauce or plates of chunky cheap
homemade soup. We ate leeks, mushrooms, turnip and a whole range of whatever
vegetables were in season and didn’t really know any different. Sweets and
eating between meals wasn’t possible as we didn’t have the money for that kind
of luxury.
Back then kids didn’t have food allergies, and I
didn’t know anyone who refused to eat greens!
I have just realised that how we ate is now the diet
of the middle classes, the very diet we moaned about and vowed to change the
minute we were old enough to earn our own money and buy our own food. We ached
for deep fried fish and chips, which was a very expensive treat, usually only
allowed if someone had died and there was no time to cook! It was pure
emergency food NEVER every day consumed convenience food as it is now.
I recently discussed this with the US documentary
maker Morgan Spurlock (he of Supersize Me film) who was really interested to
hear this as he is making another food based documentary. It seems the poverty
diet of the 60s was so healthy and yet we kids couldn’t wait to escape it!
Who here who reached young adult hood in the late
70s immediately started gobbling down Indian take aways and fried crispy
pancakes with their own hard earned wages? Anything to escape the dire
situation of ‘potted heid’ (cheap meat cuts in jelly) and horrible plates of
corned beef and mash! I know I did- and that’s when I started gaining the weight
that I would fight for the rest of my life to lose.
I didn’t know then that cheap cuts of meat braised
with seasonal vegetables was the best diet in the world for me.
It stuns me when I meet people whose kids won’t eat
a vegetable or even try fresh fish- Ashley my daughter has always had a great
varied range of fish and vegetables in her diet and is also amazed when friends
of hers have never eaten asparagus or savoy cabbage!
There has been medical evidence that kids today eat
way too much white pasta as parents know kids love something basically
tasteless and squishy will go down well, yet too much white pasta isn’t good
for the colon and has links to bowel cancer as lack of fibre is something we
all know about. White pasta has no fibre, we can swap it occasionally for
potato skins or brown wholemeal pasta!
Unfortunately the previous generation of men and
women who passed down hearty food recipes, like homemade soup and liver and
onion casseroles are no longer with us or have gave up trying- and we now have
millions of children who have never tasted oatcakes or lentil soup or turnip
mash and broad beans and thats a shame.
I do understand that for the poorer people in our
society that it’s cheaper to buy a big bag of frozen burgers and sausage rolls
from Iceland than to start chopping and peeling turnip or getting a pot of soup
full of split peas and barley on the go, as some of them have never tasted it,
so why should they cook it? Yet it is
actually cheaper to eat vegetables than frozen convenience food, it just takes
a bit of know how.
I wish that the older people in our community’s
could get together with the younger generation at community halls and have
cooking lessons and share the knowledge of people who knew how to cook good
healthy food on a tight budget.
I know it’s a utopian idea but if pensioner Mary
Berry can get the UK baking again with her TV show surely and older person on
TV can get generations of people learning how to use pulses and cheap cuts of
meat? We need to teach kids today that a meal doesn’t come in a box and maybe
bring the heart disease and obese levels down?
I am now back to my old diet of bits of meat, fish,
heaps of vegetables and no sweet treats or eating between meals and am losing weight
and feeling good. Who knew my poverty diet was the one thing that would crack
my overweight issues?
If you have any diet, help and advice or like me
pretending to be a life coach occasionally follow me on Twitter @janeygodley
