Scrutable

A Tory MP said that the poor could spend a lot less on food if they learned to cook from basic ingredients, rather than buying ready or part prepared. His particular suggestion that a meal could cost as little in 30p in basic ingredients seems laughable. But what of the proposition as I have phrased it?

Nobel prizewinners Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee have studied the household economics of poor people, and written a famous and readable (and fairly slim) book called Poor Economics. They find that many of the accusations of the poor as being feckless, foolish or stupid are quite wrong. Sure, there are a few drunks. But in general the poor behave quite rationally in relation to the situation they are in - it is just misunderstood.

They even examine the specific point that the poor could save money by doing such things as cooking from basic ingredients, riding bicycles, etc. The reason that many of them don't is that many of the poor are often rather time-poor. They don't have the time to make pizzas from flour, water, tinned tomato, etc.

When someone quotes a very low cost for a meal it's often based on bulk buying and batch cooking. This requires sufficient money to stock up and a big freezer.

My wife works in a school kitchen. The budget per child is 90p. That’s for child portions and cooking in reasonable bulk.

You can live on rice and beans very cheaply for a long time. Cheap and quick. Add some discount vegetables to avoid scurvy.

You can also wear clothes made out of old potato sacks.

Bird on a Fire wrote: Mon May 23, 2022 9:18 pm You can live on rice and beans very cheaply for a long time. Cheap and quick. Add some discount vegetables to avoid scurvy.

You can also wear clothes made out of old potato sacks.

Just out of interest, I crunched (nom nom) some numbers:-

Recommended calorie intake for a man = 2500 calories/day

Cooked white rice = 130 calories/100g

Therefore amount of rice required for a single day's calories = 2500/130 = 1.9kg

Cheapest bag of Costco* uncooked** rice = £2.47 for 1.9kg***

Cost per meal of plain, unflavoured rice with no sauce = 83p/meal

Yum yum!

In other news:-

Symptoms of Vitamin A deficiency include blindness, maternal mortality, poor outcomes of pregnancy and lactation, diminished ability to fight infections, increased risk of respiratory and diarrhoeal infections, decreased growth rates, slow bone development and decreased likelihood of survival from serious illness.

Yearly subsidy of the bars and restaurants in the HoC = £4 million/year

Expenses claimed by MP Lee Anderson in 2021-2022 = £220k/year


*Costco membership and transport assumed to be free
**Cooking assumed to be free.
***rice bought in bulk with the copious amount of savings poor people famously have

I don't remember being healthy/nutritious being part of the specification.

Once i ran out of money at the end of semester, and had to live on some potatoes I planted on a whim, plus what my housemates had left behind (lasagna sheets and pearl barley). I also foraged some mushrooms and chestnuts. (I was only working part time, but didn't get paid till the next month.)

I got shingles. Not sure if related. But I didn't starve to death.

You make a good point, but it should be noted that that 1.9 kg of cooked rice will only take about 700g of uncooked rice, so that could reduce the cost to the target of 30p[/pedant mode]

I just cooked a pan of cabbage, kidney beans, onion, some herbs and spices and some home-grown chili. It'll do four meals. I'd guess a quid per meal (it'll do four).

I eat pretty cheap but reckon I'd budget £5 a day to be comfortable.

Rice is <1€/kg here.

Cooked white rice = 130 calories/100g

Therefore amount of rice required for a single day's calories = 2500/130 = 1.9kg

Adding to what Gfamily has noted, you clicked the wrong item in the list you linked. If you had clicked [Rice, white, long grain, raw] you would have got 365 calories per 100g.

Pishwish wrote: Mon May 23, 2022 10:33 pm

Cooked white rice = 130 calories/100g

Therefore amount of rice required for a single day's calories = 2500/130 = 1.9kg

Adding to what Gfamily has noted, you clicked the wrong item in the list you linked. If you had clicked [Rice, white, long grain, raw] you would have got 365 calories per 100g.

Excellent, I'm glad that the Food Bank crisis has now been suitably resolved.

Just for completeness we may as well look at his original statement.

Speaking to ITV News, he said: "The last cooking session we did, which we publicised - where we had four MPs here - we made I think 180 meals for fifty quid, which is 30p each.

So problem solved.

Everybody just needs to get themselves down to Costco and buy 114kg of raw rice which will let scrummy themselves silly on three bowls of raw rice a day for a solid 2 months.

Not only will they save money on cooking but with all the food-prep time they saved they can follow Rachel Maclean's advice and focus on polishing their CV from when P&O mass-fired them to see if they can bag one of those lucrative "CEO of a privatised utility" gigs you read about or see if Lidl will let them do back-to-back shelf-stacking shifts powered by nothing more than a couple of spoonfuls of bland starchy carbohydrate.

114kg/60 = 1.9 Kg. Ah, I see you still don't understand.

Nobody is saying that people should eat dry rice. You just made an error. You calculated that 1.9kg of rice would meet a man's daily requirement. But that is 1.9 kg of cooked rice. Rice is usually sold dry, and cooking about 700g of dry rice will make about 1.9 kg of cooked rice. 700 g, not 1.9 kg.

Little waster wrote: Mon May 23, 2022 9:57 pm Cheapest bag of Costco* uncooked** rice = £2.47 for 1.9kg***

Cost per meal of plain, unflavoured rice with no sauce = 83p/meal

We can beat that. At Tesco, Grower Harvest Long Grain Rice 1Kg is 45p. According to its nutritional data, it contains 318kcal/205g, so a daily 2500 kcal needs 1.6 kg costing 73p. Still a huge way off the ridiculous 30p, however.

Actually, I've got that wrong. The quote was abot the cost per meal rather than per day. With the usual deviousness of a politician, that makes it possible to have many meals for 30p per meal - you just have to make them small enough. Have an hourly meal and, even if you omit the 8 hours you need of sleep, that's £4.80 per day.

I think they should switch the HoC canteen to providing only meals cooked to a budget of 30p per meal. And make every MP eat there at least 10 meals a week. That's still fewer than half of their weekly meals (assuming they eat 3 a day) so it won't be quite the same, but it should begin to give them a clue what it would be like.

Oh, and that 30p budget should be based on retail prices for normal family sized packages of food, not bulk catering prices/quantities.

And as for the assumption that people on low incomes are all feckless and have hours to waste every day, that drives me up the wall. There are plenty of people using food banks who are working full time, often a lot more than full time, and many of those are also caring for children and/or elderly or disabled family members too. Yes, some people are cash poor and time rich but many many people in this country are very poor in both and well-off MPs who've never had to worry about where their next meal is coming from* can f.ck off with their judgemental attitudes.




*I'm lucky. I too have never had to worry about where my next meal was coming from. Even as a student I was lucky because I was one in the time of grants and my parents, while a very long way off wealthy, could afford to give me a little extra and that plus holiday jobs were enough that, while meals towards the end of term definitely tended to be very basic, I was always able to eat. But I'm very very well aware that it's down to fortunate circumstances, not due to my superior specialness, and I have enough empathy that I can just begin to imagine how difficult it is for a lot of people, but enough self-awareness to know that I don't really have any clue what it's like so have no right whatsoever to judge. It's not the fact that these MPs don't have any experience of being poor that I have a problem with, but that they think themselves in some way superior as a result. And that they have so little regard for those who are, that they don't make the slightest effort to actually learn and understand.

Will we be seeing outbreaks of beri beri from all this rice eating?

You can be healthy on a diet of porridge and cabbage according to a dietitian friend. Mmm scrummy.

Tessa K wrote: Tue May 24, 2022 9:36 am Will we be seeing outbreaks of beri beri from all this rice eating?

You can be healthy on a diet of porridge and cabbage according to a dietitian friend. Mmm scrummy.

Shame that porridge oats are included in the delayed-but-still-planned ban on BOGOF offers on unhealthy foods. No, I don't understand why either.

Included in Category 3


ETA link.

bagpuss wrote: Tue May 24, 2022 9:50 am

Tessa K wrote: Tue May 24, 2022 9:36 am Will we be seeing outbreaks of beri beri from all this rice eating?

You can be healthy on a diet of porridge and cabbage according to a dietitian friend. Mmm scrummy.

Shame that porridge oats are included in the delayed-but-still-planned ban on BOGOF offers on unhealthy foods. No, I don't understand why either.

Included in Category 3


ETA link.

Hmmmm. I think I need to read all this more carefully. I heard someone on the radio complaining about this yesterday. It sounded so unlikely that I checked for myself, and scanned the linked document to see that yes, porridge oats are included. BUT, I think that it may be that they're included in that you have to do the points calculation on them. But now that I've done the calculation (on Quaker Rolled Oats), it's pretty clear that if that's the case - that they are only affected if the points calculation identifies them as unhealthy - then no way are plain porridge oats ever going to be included. A food is classified as "less healthy" if it scores 4 points or more. I make porridge oats -8 (yes, that's a negative in front of the 8).

Sorry for the derail. As you were.

bagpuss wrote: Tue May 24, 2022 9:50 am

Tessa K wrote: Tue May 24, 2022 9:36 am Will we be seeing outbreaks of beri beri from all this rice eating?

You can be healthy on a diet of porridge and cabbage according to a dietitian friend. Mmm scrummy.

Shame that porridge oats are included in the delayed-but-still-planned ban on BOGOF offers on unhealthy foods. No, I don't understand why either.

Included in Category 3


ETA link.

Cakes are included but icing isn't. Bagels are also on the naughty list.

Tessa K wrote: Tue May 24, 2022 10:07 am

bagpuss wrote: Tue May 24, 2022 9:50 am

Tessa K wrote: Will we be seeing outbreaks of beri beri from all this rice eating?

You can be healthy on a diet of porridge and cabbage according to a dietitian friend. Mmm scrummy.

Shame that porridge oats are included in the delayed-but-still-planned ban on BOGOF offers on unhealthy foods. No, I don't understand why either.

Included in Category 3


ETA link.

Cakes are included but icing isn't. Bagels are also on the naughty list.

Influence of Big Icing? I'm assuming that they're thinking that people don't eat a lot of icing. Perhaps they haven't eaten a cupcake recently, where they seem to be approximately 50% icing? That really does seem like an odd exclusion.

As for bagels, I just did the calc on a plain (New York Bagel company) bagel and it also came out negative: -4 or -5 depending on what fibre type it has - nutritional data doesn't specify. So again, while they're technically included, most bagels will probably escape the ban, unless they're highly sweetened or have other unhealthy things added.

bagpuss wrote: Tue May 24, 2022 10:17 am

Tessa K wrote: Tue May 24, 2022 10:07 am

bagpuss wrote: Tue May 24, 2022 9:50 am

Shame that porridge oats are included in the delayed-but-still-planned ban on BOGOF offers on unhealthy foods. No, I don't understand why either.

Included in Category 3


ETA link.

Cakes are included but icing isn't. Bagels are also on the naughty list.

Influence of Big Icing? I'm assuming that they're thinking that people don't eat a lot of icing. Perhaps they haven't eaten a cupcake recently, ...

... which is a cake and therefore included?

shpalman wrote: Tue May 24, 2022 10:20 am

bagpuss wrote: Tue May 24, 2022 10:17 am

Tessa K wrote: Tue May 24, 2022 10:07 am

Cakes are included but icing isn't. Bagels are also on the naughty list.

Influence of Big Icing? I'm assuming that they're thinking that people don't eat a lot of icing. Perhaps they haven't eaten a cupcake recently, ...

... which is a cake and therefore included?

Well yes, a bought cake would be, but bought icing is usually bought to apply to home-made cakes, I would have thought?

Perhaps home-baking is seen as a wholesome activity and is therefore not to be discouraged. But I know that as a child, I certainly raided our cupboards for cake decorations and ate them like sweets.

It does seem that components are being seen as less bad than complete items for some reason. The list of exclusions for puddings can surely only make sense that way?

creams such as whipped cream and flavoured or sweetened creams
syrups
condensed caramel
dessert toppings and sauces
plain, unfilled meringue nests
sponge fingers sold as a component to make a dessert
tinned or canned fruit

Sponge fingers are basically a biscuit - and in fact were always eaten as such when I was a kid - the leftovers after making a trifle just got added to the biscuit tin.

So if you're making a trifle, the jelly and the custard will be included in the ban but not the sponge fingers or whipped cream, (nor the fruit although that seems entirely fair and reasonable).

I honestly cannot fathom the logic.


ETA: Oh, and yes, I've found the bit where it says that if something is included you then have to do the calculation, so it doesn't necessarily mean that everything on the included list will actually be included in the ban.

Within these categories, the restrictions will only apply to prepacked food that is determined to be HFSS or ‘less healthy’ as defined by the nutrient profiling model (NPM) 2004 to 2005. The nutrient profiling technical guidance 2011 provides instructions on how to calculate the NPM score for different products.

shpalman wrote: Tue May 24, 2022 10:20 am

bagpuss wrote: Tue May 24, 2022 10:17 am

Tessa K wrote: Tue May 24, 2022 10:07 am

Cakes are included but icing isn't. Bagels are also on the naughty list.

Influence of Big Icing? I'm assuming that they're thinking that people don't eat a lot of icing. Perhaps they haven't eaten a cupcake recently, ...

... which is a cake and therefore included?

You could lick the icing off and leave the cake.

But the cake is included. If you want to just buy and eat icing and you think that's therefore a healthy choice I don't know what to tell you.

Yes it seems like the components are not included. This would be because if you're making something yourself you know what's going into it, as compared to buying a cake which has a shocking amount of sugar hidden in it. And certain things require the calculator because some breakfast cereals are basically shredded cardboard while others are pure sugar extruded into shapes.

shpalman wrote: Tue May 24, 2022 11:19 am But the cake is included. If you want to just buy and eat icing and you think that's therefore a healthy choice I don't know what to tell you.

Yes it seems like the components are not included. This would be because if you're making something yourself you know what's going into it, as compared to buying a cake which has a shocking amount of sugar hidden in it. And certain things require the calculator because some breakfast cereals are basically shredded cardboard while others are pure sugar extruded into shapes.

Even homemade cakes have a lot of sugar. Just because you know whhat's in something doesn't make it healthy.

You're right that not all breakfast foods are equal. Oats, Shredded Wheat, Bran Flakes and Weetabix are the only healthy ones but even then there are now unhealthy versions. If you need Bran Flakes to help you poo you should really be looking at the rest of your diet.