[CarylB]

I disagree utterly with your view that 90% of UK benefit claimants smoke, drink, eat crap, and are fat and lazy. I too live in Yorkshire, and I've worked in both the Employment and the Benefits offices with claimants at all levels up to senior managers. I think I've had a more comprehensive view of claimants, but there's no point arguing with you as you've clearly got a fixed opinion based on your own personal experience .. as Sarge posted.

As to the availability of decent food on a low budget .. but if you read my posts you'd have seen that I have said yes, you can eat healthily on a low budget, but that we have a generation of people which includes many who did not learn how to budget or to cook from scratch wheh they were young. I shop in Asda. The great meal deals you refer to are cheap I agree; they also are small portions (portion control is another issue which I have said is a problem), and many of them have the additives which we are saying are not healthy. You can find some that are better, but many I wouldn't buy. (I personally wouldn't buy their or Tesco's cheap chickens given they way they are reared, but that's another issue and I accept that those who are poor cannot afford the same scruples). You can buy cheap mince yes, though the cheaper ones (even if organic) have quite a high proportion of fat .. and the cheap meats that are available bring us back anyway to the point that many people have not learned the art of cooking from scratch.

It's not an excuse imo .. but I put it forward as a reason why some find more difficulty in providing budget meals on a shoestring, particularly at a time when they may be at their lowest ebb psyhcologically. I didn't assume that Sarge meant that the price of food was the only reason why people don't eat healthily. She raised poverty as one issue, and I think she has a point. I have said twice now that I have been on benefits, and was perfectly able to deliver tasty and nutritious meals on a very low budget, but not all those on benefits have my knowledge, experience and skills.

Most of the blame I lay at the door of the food industry and education. For too many years school meals here have been unhealthy, pandered to choice, and allowed children to develop a taste for sugary and high fat foods, and not educated them in terms of nutrition, budgeting and basic food and meal preparation. It takes time to effect change, though I believe it's happening.

Jamie Oliver has taken his ideas on feeding children and adopting a healthy diet to the USA now. In the elementary school he was working in he finally got the flavoured milk taken off the menu .. strawbery and chocolate, both horrifyingly high in sugar. But these were on the menu because the State regulations specified that there should be a choice provided. How many young children will go for plain milk when chocolate is offered? If ther parents were also given that choice it is not surprising that the current children's parents may be themselves wedded to sugar? Fries were defined as a "fruit/veg" portion. Put fries in front of kids as a daily option and most will opt for them. We are not only what we eat, but we are a product of what we are given, and this has been going on for more than a generation now. It starts in early education, and not all people watch the cooking and nutritional education programmes on TV, although those that do and are persuaded are providing pressure on food manufacturers and retailers to start improving the quality of what they produce and offer. The movement to eliminate transfats over here is a good example, and there's an increasingly higher proportion of food offered now without them, with the promise to eradicate them entirely. The big supermarkets have bowed to pressure and complaints and mostly removed sugary sweets from around the checkouts.

But there's still a long way to go. Many small drink packs produced specifically for children are high in sugar, although there are some lines that have no added sugar. Why can't the manufacturers of the sugary drinks remove it? The no added sugar ones aren't generally more expensive. "Sunny Delight" is promoted on TV as great for kids .. but it has added sugar. Manufacturers still keep adding new "flavours" to their range of crisps .. additives; and they and retailers promote lines of bumper bags of individual packets for school lunch boxes. Jamie has had to "introduce" many kids in the schools he's worked in to fruit, which imo has to be down to parenting.

Again, I'm not suggesting my points are excuses .. but they are reasons why we have a massive problem to tackle, and it's only imo by understanding and accepting the reasons we can do something about dealing with them, and changing the way people approach their diet. Dismissing those who do not eat healthily as fat lazy gits won't change anything.

Caryl