The other morning, having digested the disquieting but not altogether surprising statistic that the UK now eats almost four times as much packaged food as fresh – in 2015, we each of us bought 1,547 calories’ worth of packaged produce per day – I did a little audit on what we consume in our house. Hmm. It started pretty well. These days, I would no more think of buying a ready meal than I would a four-wheel-drive car; I work at home, which means I can use the time other people must spend travelling for making a proper supper. But what counts, exactly, as fresh food? Spaghetti comes in a packet, after all. And aren’t we told that frozen peas are just as nutritious as those straight from a pod? Also, I regard biscuits – and here the smugness smartly fades – as essential. I eat a lot of biscuits. Biscuits are my comfort, my reward, my way of punctuating the day.
Still, it does seem to be the case that we all, me included, need to start eating more fresh food. Packaged foods are (mostly) high in salt and sugar, and they’re making us fat and ill. The question is: how are we supposed to do this? Food manufacturers push their factory-made concoctions on us – low-priced and seductively packaged – for the simple reason that their long shelf lives help boost profits. And, meanwhile, people are tired and broke, and their cooking skills are rusty or perhaps didn’t exist in the first place. Good intentions, in this environment, are about as much use as an egg whisk in a canoe. In my experience, an addiction to packaged foods – neuroscience suggests the word “addiction” might not be out of place here – often creeps up on a person. In my 20s, working the hours from hell, I started buying the odd supermarket curry. Not too many weeks later, supermarket curry – salted with my late night tears – had become pretty much the only thing I ate.
What we need are some basic strategies, though the word “basic” is open to misinterpretation here. Not so long ago, Emily Thornberry gave Andrew Marr the benefit of her thoughts on children and carrots. Uh oh. To sum up, the shadow foreign secretary said she thought schools should teach every child how “to grow a carrot”, the better to help them learn about healthy eating. Leaving aside the fact that Thornberry has a rare ability to make just about any suggestion – any phrase, in fact – sound quite outstandingly patronising, I think she may be missing the point. Carrots are ubiquitous and cheap to buy; knowing how to grow them yourself, however pleasing, isn’t an essential skill in life. No, what children and some adults really need is encouragement in the matter of what precisely to do with carrots, and other things that are fresh and good. Not just how to cook them, but how to see their purchase as a kind of investment. The focus should not be on healthiness and moral superiority, but on easiness, speed and value for money.
In my classes of the future – you’re welcome, Emily – teachers will take one ingredient at a time, and mine it for ideas, breaking it down into portions as they go. How to make a chicken last three nights (advice that will come, incidentally, minus all the guff – “gently lift the skin and insert beneath it a soothing paste of frankincense and myrrh” – that usually accompanies my-perfect-chicken recipes). How to use leftover lamb and beef in little pies using shop-bought pastry. What to do with leftover rice. Three ways each with mince, eggs and cheddar. Sausages will be split open, the meat scooped out, and added to pasta with chilli, lemon zest and broccoli, a portion of meat that would ordinarily have fed three people now – ta-da – suitable for six.
There will be advice on weaselly “sell by” dates, and how best to use your freezer, should you have one. The mystery will be taken out of such things as stock-making, because in the end there is no mystery. It’s a pan, with some water, an onion and a few bones in it, and you’re perfectly free to watch telly while it simmers. Students will get to look inside a pressure cooker, and to consider the implications of owning one (less companionable than a dog, but more useful). Above all, human frailty will be taken for granted. “Sometimes, you will be tired,” the teachers will say. “And fed up and broke. But when you are hungry, you’ll be able to fix it, and quite cheaply.” Everyone will know carrots come in plastic bags from supermarkets, and everyone will be fine with that.
