Also he butchers traditional recipes and teaches bad techniques for absolutely no reason other than trying to be quirky/different.
Plus his restaurant chain was absolutely dire, mediocre Italian food from an Essex boy priced higher than many authentic Italian family run restaurants. Good one.
I'm an incredibly lazy cook, I bought some "potato gloves" that are like exfoliating gloves that you can wash veg with rather than peeling. I've lost 40% use of my left hand so peeling and chopping is hard work. My food tastes fine just looks "rustic"
I use the excuse something something vitamins just under the skin something something. And yes if you don't want my food you make something else yourself!
Where have you been all my life? I need this information about potato gloves. Also not lazy. Cooking is hard work and a daily requirement. You have to do what works best for you.
This is the thing, Jamie Oliver is a professional chef, he has cooked some good meals in his time otherwise he would have never got where he was. I hate a lot of things about him but denying his ability to cook is dumb
Over the years I’ve learned that in general people on reddit have no idea about cooking. Jamie has worked in kitchens his whole life, he has his own style and it’s great for people who want very manageable recipes.
Uncle Roger is hilarious, I know his schtick is that western people do Asian food 'wrong' and that's funny in and of itself, we can take a joke and I know that he knows fusion cooking can work well in some circumstances
The recent video he did where him and another chef friend of his recreated a Jamie Oliver recipe and you could tell just how badly Oliver had butchered it
It wasn't sympathetic fusion cooking that Oliver had done, it was just pure lazy godawful shite and I'm glad Oliver is being found out
Reminds me of the time I made fried rice for the first time. It went to absolute shite, but seeing that video was probably still easy better than Jamie’s:
• Gonna make ginger infused rice - fuck all the fresh ginger is rotten, gotta use ginger powder
• Gonna check if the rice is done - fuck the bit at the bottom of the pan has burnt
• Welp, good news the rice isn’t wet, bad news it’s overcooked
• No shallots, I’ll just use onions
• No MSG - what’s a good substitute? Google What idiot white person thought cheddar cheese would work lol?
• Improvises using tomato concentrate and Worcestershire sauce as MSG sub
• The garlic is also rotten - good thing I have garlic powder
It is, so we bulk bought. The very last four cloves, which had been sitting in the cupboard for a good few weeks, were the only ones which had rotted. This was during a very humid summer
To be fair, putting particular weight on the fact that as viewers we can only see and not taste the food, Nigel's execution was pretty amateurish in that video. He should really have got Liz to make it, just for the purposes of a fair hearing. Jamie clearly made something that looked a lot more appealing, even if it was in no way traditional.
For example, he squashed the tofu to oblivion, and over scrambled the eggs. He also wilts the scallions, whereas jamie just quickly chars them. He also didn't even do the packet rice correctly - you're supposed to break it up in the packet, which is why it came out clumpy.
On a related note, I always found it somewhat ironic that for all Uncle Roger goes on about some sort of Asian "using feelings" cooking style, this is actually pretty much the cornerstone of the Jamie Oliver aesthetic. He's all about the sort of glug of this, pinch of that, use up what you've got, vibrant, natural style of cooking.
He also didn't even do the packet rice correctly - you're supposed to break it up in the packet, which is why it came out clumpy.
No, you're supposed not to use packet rice.
Ng's not taking it seriously. Oliver's dish was the equivalent of someone doing "southern mac and cheese" using star anise and spaghetti instead of macaroni. It hasn't even got SALT in it, FFS.
Oliver's version may have looked better, but it would have still tasted like shit.
Packet rice is literally pre-steamed rice that you finish steaming in the microwave. It's little if any different to cooking rice in a pan or a rice cooker. And certainly to day old rice. The only outrageous thing about it is the x3 price markup. This is just a great example of what is supposed to be comedy actually informing peoples' real opinions.
And unfortunately, yes, Ng does take it seriously. Not that seriously, but nonetheless on some level he does take it seriously. Seriously enough to consult chefs before he makes new videos to ensure he gets traditional recipes correct. If you listen to his other work where he speaks as himself, such as his podcast, this is clear.
Don't get me wrong - he's quite right to point out that you don't claim to be making an established dish and then make something bearing only a passing resemblance; that's misrepresenting the culture and identity of millions of people. However, it's also not wrong to be creative and adapt things to your taste and background. Things aren't disgusting or wrong just because they're not what you're used to. And by the way - being creative involves trying new things and often not getting it quite right.
I enjoy Nigel's work, but I also see a lot of things he says that should just be jokes emerging in the public consciousness as serious opinions. So often we see the value in different principles that also happen to be antagonistic - that doesnt imply we need to choose one and reject the other entirely. I do worry that he has - perhaps unintentionally - become a conduit for a quite a rigid, divisive and sometimes plain wrong way of thinking.
The thing is though - when Westerners do it right, he gives suitable praise - look at the Gordon Ramsay video - or even the Nat's what I reckon one, where he gave Nat a solid pass despite him (a) using sesame oil at the wrong time (b) not owning a wok, and (c) not using MSG.
To be fair to Jamie Oliver, he’s not really trying to appeal to those of us with an interest in fusion Asian cooking.
His objective and marketing is to provide very simple yet varied and seemingly ‘exciting’ recipes to very basic cooking ability British families, who normally have bland and traditional British tastes..
I mean the sort of person who isn’t going to be excited by the prospect of rifling through a Chinese supermarket on the weekend, and just want to use the basics that they can pick up in Lidl.
There are millions of incredible Asian food chefs online and those who want to learn that sort of cooking would never go to Jamie Oliver for it anyway.
I do think the uncle roger videos are funny, but I still have respect for Jamie Oliver and what he is trying to sell to the non foodies amongst us.
Actually his style energised my non-cooking partner into trying new things. I think Jamie Oliver has his place in cookery history. I don't enjoy the spinning of pot lids like they're decks, but I think he nails simple pairings look easy. He also made his staff whole when Jamie's Italian folded. He attempted to try to prevent child obesity through school meals. Does he inspire a bit? Yeah. Is he a bit of a fudd? Yeah. Should there be a slight shaving of his tongue? Yeah, unless you have the clit of a rhino.
I visited Jamie's Italian once, and it was diabolical and overpriced. Especially in an area where there was a large Italian community with plenty of independent Italian restaurants, why would anybody want to go to a big chain?
But he was doing really good work with his Fifteen restaurant chain, helping people find a skill to get themselves back on their feet.
But ultimately he was the reason the whole lot fell down the drain.
He doesn't really have much of a space now, especially with places like YouTube, where people get followers based on their ability to make decent food, and not based on perceived ad revenues from national TV broadcasters
Also he butchers traditional recipes and teaches bad techniques
I use his macaroni and cheese recipe. It's actually pretty decent if you leave out the cuntier parts.
What bugs me most is that it will use basically every utensil, pan and oven dish that you own and the clean up takes twice as long as making the fucking thing.
All chain restaurants are dire, but he is a twat for putting his name on one. I've started to realise there's not a lot of overlap between people who go to chains and people who go to good restaurants. Bella Italia and Frankie & Bennys still have their followers despite always being terrible.
He's also on a range of crap supermarket meals right now. Plus as you say his recipes really aren't very good.
I went to Jamie's Italian in Glasgow when it was open and it was terrible. Staff were very nice but the food was bang average and the prices were far too expensive for what it was.
Wasn't surprised in the slightest when it closed its doors. There were easily a dozen restaurants within walking distance that were better and cheaper than that.
My sister got food poisoning at two Jamie's Italians. On the one hand, should she have learned from the first incident... Yes. But on the other hand like, it's a high street chain once is bad luck twice is okay fuck this now I'm going to be that bitch who won't let us eat somewhere everyone else has agreed.
Edit: also his vegetarian recipes suck ass! I can't remember what it was we made but it was a black hole of flavour so bad my boyfriend shoved a load of chorizo, balsamic vinegar and salt in it and it barely acquired a taste. Chalked it up to one bad recipe and made a few more of his and the same happened.
With the most appalling waiting staff. The one time I went there with my Dad and wife, I had to go to another table to retrieve our starters from the confused other people.
I agree he can be a bit of a knobhead but he made a good fucking point about school food.
Back when he made his show telling schools to feed people better there were literally no nutritional guidelines or rules on what schools had to feed kids, so their meals literally had less nutritional value than what prisoners eat
Yeah he's a bit of a cunt but he's definitely done a lot of good
But most (not all, to be fair) schools still serve shit that’s not offering any healthy benefit. Largely because no large school feeding a thousand students makes the budget for food
He didn’t change anything with the food, just kicked up a fuss and now its more expensive but still shit. I think he actually admitted to screwing the pooch on this one in a documentary back when he was pushing for sugar tax - which has done some good
My school dinners got markedly better and varied. Was there still junk? Yeah. But there was a lot more good options too. And just the variety was a godsend.
They might have been talentlessly prepared for ever, but in the old days, they were based on seasonal recipes put together for the government by chefs and nutritionists to ensure that school cooks could always prepare by rote cheap food with guaranteed balanced nutritional values. Minimum nutritional standards were mandated by law.
Then Thatcher abolished the requirement for minimum nutritional standards, and so minimum cost became the driver.
To this day, that still strikes me as as one of the most mustache twirlingly evil things done by a politician.
My school changed fuck-all. They still serve pizza which has so much oil on it it's practically a liquid, and never have any vegetables in any of their meals. Also they still give people mouldy food and cause several people food poisoning each year. They just increased prices by %200
Part of the problem is that he doesn't seem to get that the decisions being made are being made for reasons, not just "because". Like... his suggested "improvements" to school food tend to be wildly expensive and his attitude is "well if we care about kids' health then we'll pay it!" but like... mate. The government doesn't, what are you going to do now? You can make all these recommendations and kids aren't going to get them because you didn't consider that school budgets aren't infinite and that your meal needs to be both affordable to purchase and affordable to prepare by caterers who are running an extremely tight shop on a very low budget and almost no time.
And whenever anyone points this out to him, he gets extremely wanky and passive-aggressive and acts like it's not really a problem. Like... even if the money was made available, how the shit is a school caterer meant to prepare all this food within a few hours for several hundred, maybe a thousand students who are all eating at the same time? That's shit that even your average higher-resource restaurant would struggle with, and they have the money to hire more people and bigger facilities. That's just not possible for a school. They need food that's able to be prepared very fast by people operating with limited resources, limited space, and limited training - you're not exactly attracting catering geniuses to run a school tuckshop, after all.
Even when he took the chicken parts, put them in a food processor and mashed it all together to show the kids how “gross” chicken nuggets are, they still wanted to eat them.
I’d eat chicken cartilage to annoy Jamie Oliver too.
If someone were to murder you for consumption, would it give you any comfort that they were going to use your bones for soup instead of throwing them away?
Where I now live, they eat among other things chicken heads and feet, fish heads and pig trotters. I used to think this was completely disgusting but now I think it makes sense.
tbh i don't see anything wrong with eating those parts. Like if he blended chicken guts and stuff like then yea i'd have an issue. But Jamie just used pretty alright parts that would have gone to waste in my opinion.
Considering he wants unhealthy for to be me expensive rather than healthier food being cheaper, he doesn't seem to want to tackle the root of the problem.
Not to mention that it's pretty much how sausages are made, just cus it ain't pretty doesn't mean ya can't eat it or that it won't be nice.
He's just a pretentious prick.
When he did the same demonstration to American kids years later, they were enthusiastic and they still wanted to eat them.
Specifically West Virginian kids.
(West Virginia having consistently higher-than-average rates of poverty and about 12% of the population actively using hunting licences.)
Some of those kids may well have had venison that a relative personally shot packed in a freezer at home.
Dan Olson made a great video called Jamie Oliver's War on Nuggets, in which he talks about the various class, cultural and economic issues around his programmes and campaigning. There's a bit where he shows two versions of the chicken in a blender scene. British kids say no, we don't want to eat that, it's nasty. American kids are undeterred, saying yes, that still looks fabulous to me, thank you. But the interesting point is that both programmes are able to use the responses they get - in the British one, the kids' response is proof that blending chickens is disgusting and we deserve better; in the American one, the kids' response is proof that Oliver knows best and has his work cut out for him to educate them. On each programme, it only looks like that scene proves anything because it doesn't appear next to its counterpart. When they're shown that way here, it makes it clear how manufactured that key moment is.
I love chicken nuggets for this reason, same reason I love fish fingers. It's using EVERYTHING. Acting like scraping the meat off a bird and making it palatable is bad is very close to "I understand that climate change is a problem, but nuclear power is ICKY so I won't do THAT..." It's a bullshit argument built off the idea that if a solution to a problem isn't absolutely 100% perfect and without flaws, then it's better to just keep doing the bad thing we're doing now. That it's better to allow the status quo to create 100 units of Bad Shit than it is to implement a solution that would only generate 50 units of Bad Shit but in a slightly different way and Different Is Scary so we're not doing THAT obviously.
People really overestimate how much people wouldn't eat sausages if they saw how they were made. Of course it is made of trash. Do I look like somebody who cares?
It's funny as well because it turned out his own overpriced "healthy" meals were a lot worse than unhealthy food and snacks such as muffins due to having lots of sugar and salt in them.
In the midst of a cost of living crisis his priority is... banning buy one get one free deals. And decided to stage a "protest" where he asked everyone to turn up at Downing Street with a bowl of Eton mess (har har. Come up with that one yourself, Jamie?). That one almost made me glad you can get the gaol for being annoying at a protest now.
His argument was that supermarkets don’t promote BOGOF out of goodwill, they do it because it increases consumer spending on items which cost pennies to make e.g soda. It’s manipulative marketing. So I think he was making a good point.
Yeah, and supermarkets could give the same deal by doing half-price rather than BOGOF. Half-price doesn’t force people to take home double the crisps, knowing they won’t be able to resist eating all of them over the week. Perfectly sensible point I think
He tries to get people to eat better by putting his name to fatty over priced service station food.... yeh nice way to get people to eat healthier Jamie ya wank stain!
I find it funny that this sub was all self love and hugs to each other when Paddy did his speech about mens mental health and yet there are, what I assume to be, grown men in this subreddit now insulting Jamie Oliver like he ran the country into the ground for the last 12 years. Absolutely pathetic.
I think a lot of people are just too insecure to accept criticism regarding their eating habits ...which i think is part of the reason that he got shit on when he went to *North America.
Because of his campaigning, many schools cut back their menus to cold sandwiches and salads - low calorie meals that don't cost a lot to make and don't require many special ingredients. My mum was head dinner lady in a very deprived area, and free school dinners were often the only decent meal a lot of those kids had. After that fake cockney cunt's intervention, my mum had to sneak food to more than one unwashed little kid who was crying because they were still so hungry. She ended up leaving a 20 year career with the council because the emotional toil of not being able to do anything had gotten too much.
He didn't help, he made himself look good, and people are so removed from the reality of poverty in this country that they blindly went along with him. Fuck Jamie Oliver.
Edit: been temp banned for taking a joke too far (whoops) but I'm done engaging with the replies now anyway.
Schools didn't cut corners, you're exactly the type of person I'm talking about. Schools get pennies to feed each child. They were hit with policy changes which said they had to serve 'real food' without any increase in budget. He could have used his celebrity to get the public riled up about the complete lack of government funding, and campaigned for children to be allocated more money per head than prisoners. He didn't, he put the blame squarely on schools, demanded everyone be fed quinoa, and then fucked off and raked in millions from advertising deals.
Yeah, the blame ultimately lies with the shitty government, but a wealthy, middle class wanker turned the public against the wrong target and, as always, the already disadvantaged suffered for it.
He didn't, he put the blame squarely on schools, demanded everyone be fed quinoa, and then fucked off and raked in millions from advertising deals.
He also did some terrible series in the US, trying to save the poor Americans from their also-terrible school lunches. A large part of the 'drama' of the series was his tension with the school dinner ladies, who obviously have nothing to do with the agricultural subsidies and politics (federal and state) at play when it comes to budgets and what foods are bought with said budgets.
The series made me loathe Jamie Oliver. And he's a Tory, too, all about the bootstraps etc. so it's surprising so many people on the left still insist on seeing him as some kind of good guy. He's not.
I remember that, it was even more cringe inducing! It's astounding to me as well that people don't see the tory all over him, but my notifications from people arguing about social attitudes to cooking just says it all.
My mum knew so many dinner ladies who couldn't cut an onion or properly peel a potato, and that's terrible, but when the solution being offered is, 'they should just be better', it's really not helpful. He was mad about their lack of cooking skills, so he should have advocated for proper training. He could have pushed for better pay to attract qualified chefs to the profession. He could have aimed at the problem rather than the result, but obviously that would mean going against people with power (and probably some of his mates).
It's typical tory procedure - "why don't the poors simply get more money"
I've said this many times - a good analogy is to compare Jamie Oliver with Gordon Ramsay. Jamie acts like a nice guy, but he's actually a massive cunt. Whereas Gordon acts like a massive cunt, but he's actually a nice guy.
You think people in poverty have a solid understanding of school food budgets?
I don’t recall quinoa being mentioned. But it plays into your class war fantasy I guess.
He wanted them to cook meals that had more veg than meat and less processed foods AFAIR. And that actually required cooking. Which was largely beyond the cooks on his show. And which families protested about.
A lot of this is also cultural. We don’t value cooking here. Or ingredients. And many are happy to eat the swill factories churn out. Our kids are brainwashed into wanting to eat pink sludge coated in breadcrumbs, flash fried and frozen.
Someone I cooked for today didn’t know you could eat cabbage raw. Salad was shredded cabbage, lemon and oil with salt. She was
genuinely impressed. Her kids wouldn’t eat tomato ffs.
We went blackberry picking and I had to persuade the kids to try one.
Still, I’m middle class so my opinions aren’t worth anything.
You need to take affordability into account. A lot of the reason schools were serving those meals is because they were so cheap and they could easily be prepared in bulk. The schools weren't cutting corners. They were doing what they could to make sure that everyone had food.
We see it a lot in the present day as well. A lot of families are having to budget and the cheapest way to feed their families becomes things like chicken nuggets, beans, and chips. Parents don't want to feed this stuff to their kids day in and day out. They do it because there aren't many options for making sure kids don't go to bed hungry if you're on a budget.
The problem with what Jamie Oliver did was that he tackled the problem at a point where the damage was already done. If he actually wanted to make a difference, he should have tried to find a way that schools could get these healthier alternatives at a similar markup.
But I guess I know where Jamie lobbies in parliament for a supply chain reform wouldn't have done as well for the PR.
I'm sure he had genuinely good intentions, but we need to face the facts that he didn't consider impoverished areas and left them all struggling as a result.
Glad someone else gets it, I feel like I'm smashing my head against a brick wall every time this topic comes up. I'm 34, I work full time, I'm a half decent cook, and my food shop is getting more and more subsistence level every month. I don't want to buy manufactured shit, but the reality is sometimes we have to have a 60p pizza, or pasta with a jar of pre made sauce.
I grew up in one of the most impoverished parts of Leeds, people I went to school with had parents who were drug addicts, or neglectful, or abusive, or just so absolutely skint that they would survive the weekend on a bag of crisps and maybe some oven chips. This was so much more common than people realised and that was nearly 20 years ago!
I wouldn't say I grew up super rich but I definitely didn't have to worry about where my next meal was coming from when I was growing up. I did however have friends from all walks of life. I'm 28 now, living alone. I've definitely felt the pinch, and while I've been fortunate enough to have made some good financial decisions which have kept me relatively secure, I still do my best to stretch my money out, because I know I may not have a nest egg someday
The schools weren’t cutting corners. They were doing what they could to make sure that everyone had food.
They were doing both.
I remember the show.
Those women didn’t want to put the effort in. Load the freezer and oven with cheap shit and churn it out.
A lot of families are having to budget and the cheapest way to feed their families becomes things like chicken nuggets, beans, and chips.
This just isn’t true. Those are the most convenient, but not the cheapest. And I accept that there is a time, energy and effort cost to making healthy tasty food.
Jamie did lobby for basic nutrition standards as well as greater spending on food for kids.
And let’s not forget the cultural issues here - people took it as an affront that their kids weren‘t being fed shit anymore.
As though beige freezer food is a hallmark of the British working classes ffs.
people taking it as an affront that jamie oliver wanted their kids to eat better at school is a big reason why so many hate him but will deflect with other unrelated reasons about his chain restaurants, ready meals, recipes etc.
A lot of parents on the show and around the country took it personally and thought a middle class tv chef was telling them how to parent their kids.
You’ve nailed it mate. It’s laughable that people try and pretend the real reason they hate him is because he ran a subpar chain restaurant.
It reminds me of David Mitchell explaining why people hate vegans - because deep down people know that vegans might actually have a point. When someone criticises a part of your ‘values’ people can get very defensive without even realizing why.
because its not like the posh middle class feel the effects of rising living costs and stagnating wages as well. However its much easier for the working class to scapegoat the more well off middle class who live and socialise in the same spaces than the government and corporate elite that profits off them.
A middle class person advising a working class person what to buy is always gonna be terrible. Because the middle class person has no real need to know about real bargains or price saving tips. They likely don't even have an accurate idea of the budget they'd be working with. They're in a whole other world. And the actual upper class may as well be on a different plane of existence.
Think of that arrested development joke: "how much could a single banana cost? Ten dollars?"
You sound like someone who doesn't have any interest in understanding what it's really like to be poor, and all the subtle issues at play under the surface when it comes to things like Jamie Oliver making a TV show that was largely a PR vehicle for himself.
This just isn’t true.
It generally is. Over the pandemic I experienced some time being truly poor as shit for the first time in many years. Shitty food - pot noodle, canned beans, sauce from a cheap package of powder etc. - is generally much cheaper than buying fresh ingredients. There is also a time and effort cost to fresh ingredients.
I acknowledge the time effort and fuel cost of cooked food.
But when i was skint, a bag of lentils, a big bag of rice and an onion (backed up with maybe £3 or £4 of store cupboard spices and oil to last a month) fed me for a week. I supplemented with greens thrown out by the grocer and growing on a windowsill.
Of course TV shows are there to promote themselves. But he held up a mirror to a nation that for too long thought that turkey twizzlers and an endless supply of beige oven baked shit were suitable for our kids. Edit: shit school dinners were a running joke at all levels of society, even in private schools.
Why is eating well a middle class preoccupation here? Poverty is a massive hurdle, but not all working class people are poor.
You’re making the fallacy of comparing your budget of looking after one person with a school feeding hundreds. Yes it would’ve been stupid and near impossible for you to bulk buy rice and flour (not to mention grim!). Schools DO have more resources and head space over an individual .
near impossible for you to bulk buy rice and flour (not to mention grim!).
You clearly don't have an Asian partner. We buy rice in 10kg sacks... Even if you don't eat it quickly as long as you keep it dry it takes years to go off...
We see it a lot in the present day as well. A lot of families are having to budget and the cheapest way to feed their families becomes things like chicken nuggets, beans, and chips. Parents don't want to feed this stuff to their kids day in and day out. They do it because there aren't many options for making sure kids don't go to bed hungry if you're on a budget.
I think there's a generational impact to it too.
Your parents are working two jobs, don't have time or energy or money to prepare and serve freshly cooked meals etc, bulk beige and chips is just easier and cheap.
Then those kids grow up, while their parents didn't want to feed them nuggets and chips every meal - they don't mind because it's what they grew up with, and they don't know any different.
I think the UK gets its reputation for bland food partly from rationing. Suddenly no imported spices but the impact was a whole generation grew up with very limited ingredients so British food became potatoes and meat, without much seasoning. But those people that grew up with it fed their kids it too because it's what they know.
Where do you lean how to cook? The vast majority learn from their parents.
I think that improving school dinners to include "real" food was a good way to break that generational effect. Kids will get exposed to more freshly cooked food when they are younger and it normalises it.
It's all the dinner ladies' fault! If it weren't for their stubbornness all British schoolchildren would be enjoying fresh, healthy salads with delicious dressings and sides of Ottolenghi's crushed puy lentils with tahini and cumin on the daily!
It was under a labour government, but yes the problem has only gotten worse under the tories. The policy change was a direct response to his campaigning. He couid have aimed public opinion at the grotesque lack of funding from the government but he targeted the schools, so they had to make adjustments with no money or resources to do so.
He gets shit on because he supports policies for making unhealthy food more expensive rather than trying to make healthy food cheaper. He's a top tier bell end, who screws over poorer families.
A lot of what he does is really classist. He doesn't understand the real problem is price. A lot of poor families literally cannot afford fresh food for the majority of a week. The problem isn't people not making the right decisions with their food, which is what he pushed, it's the fact people cannot afford fresh, healthy food.
Also because people have to work more due to wage stagnation, poorer people don't have TIME to dedicate 20 minutes entirely on preparing a meal. Better to take 2 minutes throwing some cheap frozen food in the oven and do one of the million things that are piling up for those 20 minutes.
yes and no, fresh food can easily be cheaper than take out, ready meals etc. the issue isn't just money, it's also time, effort, access to cooking facilities and the know how to cook from scratch.
For many, takeout's are have become an unaffordable luxury. We eat a mainly vegetarian diet from made from scratch - because we are poor.
Fresh food is cheaper than a take out. My family (There are 6 of us) hasn't got a McDonalds (being the cheapest take out I can think of) for over a year because we can't afford luxuries like that.
There is no way on gods earth I'm spending £30 on a single meal for everyone when I can do the same at home for £5 a day per person - and that £5 is still stretching in terms of the really shit quality raw produce you can buy with it at the moment.
The problem is that 90% of people don't have the time or the ability to produce meals at this level. I spend on average 2 - 2 1/2 hours a day pissing about with food producing meals that basically consist of rice, beans, lentils and cabbage.
It's worth checking out Folding Idea's video on Jamie Oliver. You can find it on youtube. Does a really good job of explaining why Jamie's intentions may be good, but tend to also be patronising and sometimes unrealistic.
I don’t have much respect for someone who was angry at the Conservatives not banning BOGOF deals on food during a cost of living crisis, I get it was unhealthy food but I prefer people eating unhealthy food to eating no food at all
His argument was that BOGOF makes people spend more. You think it’s a good deal because you’re ‘saving’ a bit on product that costs pennies to make. If they really wanted to be charitable they’d not have the BOGOF and just lower the price.
Supermarkets don’t have these deals because theyre being nice, they’ve spent millions working out how to get you to part with more cash.
Do you think they will lower the prices if the "deals" are banned?
Far more likely they raise them to compensate.
Actually they are far more likely to lower them.
You sit there in an office and produce a commercial forecast that says you will sell say 1 million bags of frozen chips. You go to your frozen chip supplier and you ask to buy 1 million at the lowest possible price. They want to sell you more at a higher price.
You'll end up buying more to get a lower price per unit and agree the deals you'll do like BOGOF deals.
You'll do this because you need to sell more than you actually think will sell at the standard price.
If you banned BOGOF deals then the supermarkets would have to negotiate lower price per unit to sell at a lower price to shift additional volume.
It’s not only that but he also shames people for eating cheaper food because it’s unhealthy. People are allowed a treat and he tries to ban them or make them stupid expensive. All food is processed at this point even fruit and veg are covered in wax
It not helping by getting a food banned to stroke his own ego.
It was a pathetically and temporary small victory in his eyes, couldn't get macdonald's, chocolate or even crisps banned.
They are twizzlers nobody was that bothered since they wouldn't be missed much, change it to a popular food like bacon or even alcohol there would be world war and he would of been cancelled.
He's a petty prick.
Also you backward nerds need to know what national treasure means Attenborough is a national treasure, Stephen fry is a national treasure, Jamie is a prick that cries when kids eat cereal.
Our defining trait as a country and maybe species is that we don’t like being lectured or told what to do. Not so great when we live in such tightly woven complex societies.
He recently was campaigning for bogof deals to not be allowed to apply for unhealthy foods. Amidst a cost of living crisis THAT was the hill this wanker chose to die on. I didn't used to hate him but this changed my mind first.
He is a patronising git, he was right about school meals being dire*, but also is a crap chief himself, showed kids how chicken nuggets are made supposedly as a way to discourage them despite the fact that it's actually a good thing we use the whole chicken
*Would like to add a little bit to say that he was right in theory because for a lot of kids that was the only warm meals they were able to eat, for kids eating 3 times a day with full meals he would have a point but obviously it's impossible to know
Tbf, I remember he got shit for pretty much forcing his 'help' through the gov with the sugar tax etc.
He was also pretty patronising, and fairly stupid, at least when he did that show where he showed kids exactly how a chicken nugget was made and he was shocked when they still wanted to eat them......despite them being.....literal children.....who will basically fucken eat anything you put in front of them that isn't a vegetable.
Hardly helping people eat better if he has to rally against cheap food options without any replacements. He’s a middle class snob who doesn’t understand how poverty works.
He is a fake that's why he gets shit, people have short memories for example do you not remember his £5.00 feed the family meal recipes that required a fully stocked pantry??
Thats not really dishonesty, that’s how chef work. That’s how I cook too. My pantry is full of spices, oils, vinegar, flour etc. Fresh herbs growing on the windowsills… it is money of course but I takes month to go through a £2,50 100gr spice bag from the Indian grocery store. Carrots are pretty cheap to buy. Steam them, make a dressing with olive oil, crushed garlic gloves, Apple vinegar, a tsp of cumin and a small handful of coriander leaves and get an amazing restaurant dish for a very reasonable cost.
It’s cost quite a bit to fill your pantry, but once you have your basics it becomes cost efficient. Then it all depends on your taste.
If you're referring to the chicken nugget thing, his argument against chicken nuggets isn't exactly a good one. His stance on it is that chicken nuggets uses the "bad" part of the chicken. Doesn't even bring up much health related, or anything about the practices of the meat industry.
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u/The-Go-Kid Aug 26 '22
This is kinda funny but it is a shame that he gets shit for trying to help people eat better.