simonineaston wrote: ↑22 Sep 2022, 11:40am
The share of home-cooked food in the diet of UK households declined from the 1980s. This was contemporaneous with a decline in the market price of ingredients for home cooking relative to ready-to-eat foods.
That's just a hint at how complex the whole subject is... what influence was there on our habits, of say advertising, of the assertion that pops up everywhere, that we are all "pressed for time", or indeed of the ubiquitous and v. popular phenomenon of the celeb. or tv, chef. Day by day, we see dishes paraded in front of us, photographed lovingly and with great skill, all the while given a running commentary telling us how
easy it is to cook, how
acheivable they really are, and then fast foward to the trip to the supermarket, where the stark reality of buying the ingredients of all the super-fine dishes we've spent the last few days gazing at, sinks in (if we can remember the long list of ingredients
at all, that is...!).
Is it any wonder that faced with the challange of reproducing those paragons of the culinary arts, we capitulate and buy the ready meal, with all its reduced risk of failure and the promise of a great, finished, successful dish, just 20 minutes reheating time away... ?
The power of the industry, its colossal r&d budgets, its determination to sell us exactly what it wants us to buy, the huge and powerful advertising campaigns and their unceasing and very effective lobbying of our law makers cannot be underestimated. We are, more or less, slaves to their desires and are often powerless to resist. Its not popular to characterise us as weak, gullible and malliable, but that, dear reader, is mostly how it is. You need a wealth of income, time, education and determination to resist...
Throughout the 80s-noughties, when both me and the ladywife worked, we ate home-cooked meals that one or both of us prepared each morning and evening from basic ingredients. Occasionally we might use a sauce-in-a-jar to add to the veg (later meat & veg) but mostly even the sauces were "home made". Cooking was regarded as normal, even if we sometimes became elaborate enough to make it something of a hobby. In fact, making it a hobby was part of the motivation for doing it, on top of the "eat well" thing.
The lunchtime meal was generally sandwiches made by ourselves, along with fruit and sometimes a home made cake (luxury). Even the bread was generally home-made albeit in a bread maker machine.
None of this was onerous - although we didn't have children living with us or any others to cater to besides ourselves. In fact, it was a pleasurable pursuit, the cooking. But then we didn't go out drinking, eating and razzing; or watch more than an hour of tele a couple of times a week before bed.
In short, even when working our often demanding jobs (8-6 rather than 9-5 on many days) we found time to cook. It was a matter of choice, not "time-pressure". We chose not to be couch potatoes or madly socialising drunkards, cinema-goers or any of the other things supposedly essential and taking up whole evenings.
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Many regarded this as "being snobbish". In some ways it was, as we indulged in shaking our heads and rolling our eyes at folk around us slowly turning into harassed blobs full of junk fud and unable to run at all, let alone for a bus. (They all had a car each). We blamed our mammies and the proper upbringing they gave us, see?
But that was us, then. Many have genuine time pressures (excess working hours/days, children etc.) that severely restrict the time it takes to cook things from scratch. But some have plenty of opportunity yet prefer the pleasures of processed food, of various qualities from nutritious-enough to junk, eaten whilst gawping at the idiotbox for hours at a time. Many become semi-addicted to stuff full of salt, sugar and other ingredients for which a craving can develop.
Cugel, just finishing Welsh lamb hot-pot with root veg, steamed broccoli & garden peas with Pembroke new tatties.
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”.
John Maynard Keynes