Occasionally there are some really interesting programs on TV, Jamie’s Ministry of Food looks like it’s going to be one of them. I’ve been thinking for a while about what stops people from cooking good, healthy food from scratch and it looks like he has too. In this series Jamie has set off on a mission to get people cooking, Rotherham is his town of choice, he’s attempting to teach a few recipes to people who can’t cook, hoping that they will then pass on this knowledge to their friends and family, setting off a revolutionary change in people’s eating habits. Nice idea, but he quickly finds it’s going to be a lot more difficult than just showing someone how to chop up an onion.

I’m lucky to have had what seems a perfect upbringing in regards to food. We all ate together every night, at the table good home cooked food. Nothing too fancy, pork chops, mash and peas, stew and dumplings, the kind of traditional food which will probably have been taught by my Nanna to my Mum and in turn to me. We did sometimes have things  like turkey drummers and chips, but still the time was taken, and value placed on making and sharing a meal. In this program you see a young, single mother feeding her five year old daughter take-away cheesey chips and donner kebab on the floor out of a polystyrene box. She has a huge oven and no idea how to use it. Another person thinks that half an hour is too long to spend preparing a meal. Someone else eats ten packets of crisps for their tea and doesn’t know what simmering means.

What I like about this program is that without being overtly political it is making it obvious and bringing attention to the fact that this is not a choice these people have made. You can imagine people sat at home, ‘look at her, she’s got enough money to buy cigarettes and beer, why doesn’t she make an effort, go out and buy some proper food?’ When the girl who seems to be getting the most out of it, loving being able to make her daughter a proper meal breaks down, said she’s not cooked anything that week, she’s had to pawn all her jewellery to pay bills and can’t afford to be spending money getting the bus to the supermarket to buy food you can start to understand the stress some people are under.

There was an article in the Guardian about this today, in it Elizabeth Dowler, professor of food and social policy at Warwick University says, “If you live for more than six months on the minimum wage or on benefits you cannot afford to buy the food you need for health. It is still to do with class, but it’s complex to unpick. Food is the flexible area that you can cut back on when you are on a low income. Unlike council tax or utility bills, no one fines you if you don’t spend on food and no one takes your children away, so that’s what you cut, and you have a fag because it takes the hunger away.” It is cheaper to get the calories you need to survive from junk food. 100 calories from broccoli costs 51p, 100 calories from chips costs 2p.

Politicians don’t like to talk about class, behaviour is seen as a choice. Believing that people would actually choose to live like this is ridiculous. To make a choice you have to have options. Where you are born, and who to, the area you live in, what school you go to are all massive determinants of your life chances and ultimately your life expectancy. People in different areas get different levels of health care, different levels of education from the minute they are born. This is not a choice, you are born into it. It might be possible to do things for yourself later in life, but it takes a lot of support and self confidence and some people just don’t have it.

It’s going to be really interesting to see how this program progresses, it appears he’s going to try and address a lot of issues. I’m not sure it’s right that a celebrity chef should be the one responsible for improving the country’s health, but I really hope his plan has some effect and brings attention to the problems people face.