It's not that poor people can't cook, it's that if you can't cook you'll spend much more on feeding your family

If Baroness Jenkin had said 'people who cannot cook will inevitably be paying much more for their food' she'd have been spot on.

Further, if she'd said 'people who can't cook will tend to have a much less healthy, processed food-based diet', she'd also have been correct.

Two distinctly related problems that must be having a significant effect on poverty and our obesity epidemic - very serious issues that seem now to have been submerged in the class war bollocks that everyone is now looking out for following the recent Thornberry white van man gaff.

Her comments were stupid and clumsy and I do not support them at face value, but if you can manage to look beyond the stupidity of her choice of words, she does have a point.

I blogged a couple of years back about how I could - and often do - feed three people healthily and well for £53 a week. That's not £53 each, but £53 for all three people for a week. You can find that blog here - with recipes. Give them a try, you'll feel better and be much better off after just one week. I'll be doing some more shortly just if you're interested.

Time marches on and we're now down to just the two of us at home (with kids at University) and we are now 'surviving' on between £40 and £55 a week for the two of us. Last week, for example, the weekly food shopping bill was £41 - and that included £10 on wine. So £31 for all meals for two people for a week and all healthy, fresh stuff - heavy on veggies but including a chicken dinner with the mother-in-law too.

If we were to spend £106 on a week's grocery shopping (two times £53) we would be drinking wine with every meal and having fillet steak at least once if not two or three times. £53 a week is a very generous food allowance (the government figure worked out after housing, council tax, heating etc has been deducted from welfare payments). It is easily liveable and it does not mean eating 'crap food' in any way. So long as you can cook.

In fact, in many ways, £53 a week should be encouraging people to buy fresh vegetables and eating in a healthy way. The missing factor is education - teaching young people of both sexes to cook - teaching them at school so that they can live healthy and economical lives.

Shopping at Aldi or Lidl also helps - you'll save around 25% on a weekly shop and their produce - fresh and canned - is every bit as good as you'll get at the 'major' supermarkets - better than most in my experience.

If you can read you can cook. Most of what I cook is 'single pan' stuff, hearty soups or curries, chillies, pasta, risotto and they take about 20 minutes to prepare and cook - probably less time than it takes to amble down to the take-away shop, queue and wait for your food. 

But not if you can't cook.

Maybe, just maybe we should be teaching our kids to cook at school. Maybe teaching them about healthy eating? Instead of lamenting the obesity problem and the poverty issue while doing nothing about it?

Thanks for reading.