General Chat

Yes of course some woman worked years ago but it wasn't the norm when children were very small like it is today. I personally would have hated to have left either of my two before they went to school; they were such happy times, and yes we could have done with the money, but pottering around with my two little people was worth far more than a holiday new carpet, car or anything else you can think of and I wouldn't have missed those early years for all the proverbial tea, the same for OH too. Once the younger started full time school I did work part time during the term. Admittedly things were easier then or so it seemed, and we were contented with what we had, rather like we are now!!
OH is an excellent cook, completely self taught, and enjoys it!! So I've always been lucky in that respect!

JoyLouise,
I started secondary school in 1970 just after the Comprehensive system was introduced.
We STILL had to make our own apron before we could embark on the 1st cookery lesson cooking.
Tea, Toast and Scrambled eggs!

It was a very sexist regime .
Only girls did Domestic Science ( Home Economics) which was split into Sewing and Cooking
The boys did "Technical" which was split into Woodwork and Technical Drawing.
I don't think this system altered until the early 1980's!

My husband never had a single cookery lesson at his school either
Raised in a female household it wasn't expected of him

He was a quick learner... as soon as we were married, I insisted that he took his turn . LOL.

Mr Owl and I enjoy making things from scratch and our repertoire now includes things like arancini, kebab and various forms of pasta including our favourite with brown butter sauce as well as macaroni cheese and spaghetti bolognese. We both work full time so cooking is a joint effort when we both get in.

It would be useful if buffet caterers were forced to label their platters of food!

I don't want to peel open sandwiches to see what's in them!

I can remember doing the same JL! Not making the apron though!! I did DS for O'level ( not clever enough for Latin!!) which I passed rather surprisingly!! Everything was prepared and cooked from scratch, including washing up! no mixers (hand whisk!) and Mrs Beeton to the fore!! I've still got my copy after all these years!
Today's full time mums simply wouldn't have the time or the energy! and to be honest, the inclination and who can blame them!!

More years ago (in the fifties) than I care to remember I had one year of domestic science at school. I recall our teacher saying that a child (of our then age) needed a diet of one third fat, one third protein and one third carbohydrate.

We had to cook from scratch as well as make our own apron at the beginning.

That's a good and very important point about diabetics knowing the carb count Glasgowlass. After all, the NHS is dealing with an ever increasing cost in treating diabetes so you would think that information would be mandatory by now.

Not all women stayed at home to look after the house and children years ago. MIL worked full time all through her life into her fifties. She didn't need the money as they had their own house from the date she married in 1950 and a war pension contribution from her sick mother with a serious heart condition who lived with them, also the rent from a policeman lodger. She had washing, cooking, cleaning and ironing to do for three adults as well as a care for a child and sick mother. My own mother always worked part time and found jobs where she could take me with her till I went to school. My best friend's mother worked in their shop all day and had 2 other children. Most people made their own choices based on their own views and wants, ignored any disapproval from others who made different choices, and worked around any difficulties as they do now.

Yes, attitudes have changed, we all know that don't we and some not for the better, which is why we have these problems. Attitudes need to be changed and quickly if people care about the nation's children's health and futures and the NHS burden and cost of not doing so..

Older school children have been cluttering up the supermarkets at lunch times for years now. I guess these days it's impossible to keep them on school premises at break time as times and attitudes have changed dramatically over the past 50 years, so bear little or no comparison. Judging by my own teenage grandchildren, I don't think many of them would be particularly interested in working out what is or is not good for them!!, but my three are all as thin as reeds, gymnastics, horse riding, football and so on makes sure of that, hence the parental ferrying!!

Our supermarket is inundated at lunchtimes with school children buying sweets, fizzy drinks, crisps etc and they already all have the calories shown on the products which are obviously ignored. We couldn't leave the school grounds at lunchtime unless we went home for lunch so there wasn't the opportunity, even less the money to spare! A good thing for our health though.

Most ready meals already show the calories in them, so you can make informed choices. What they are wanting to do is the same with restaurant/cafe meals, most of which do not give calorie contents.

Many of the large chain restaurants already provide nutritional information.

It's not displayed in the premises but it's listed on their web pages.
EG: Weatherspoons.

McDonalds already have the nutritonal info printed on all of their packaging.
About a year ago they stopped listing the carbohydrate content.

They say they did this because the FSA advised them that it wasn't necessary.

Apparently, the FSA don't think that T1 Diabetics need to know the carb count ?

Working full time and running a home with children is quite a challenge! When my two were small neither I nor my contemporaries would have dreamt of working till the younger was in full time school and then only part time to fit in with half term, holidays etc. In fact we would have been considered bad mothers for leaving young children in the care of strangers, necessary only in wartime as I can verify! Grandparents in those far off days were not automatically ear marked for baby sitting duties while mum worked, far from it!! occasionally maybe but not on a regular basis, nor would it have been wanted!! Therefore those stay at home or part time mums had the time and energy to run the family home efficiently including cooking proper meals, without feeling completely worn out. Nowadays, as my daughter would confirm, working full time, then coming home to washing ironing cooking and cleaning, together with weekends spent doing roughly the same with shopping and perhaps gardening thrown in, is actually exhausting, however much help you get from your other half! Yes children do have a lot of outside activities these days, and they do have to be ferried around , conscientious parents will do this willingly, grannies have been known to! as we all want the best for our children when the opportunity is there. Imo the odd take away can be a godsend!!

I agree with you Shirley.........it will help me too! :-) As Caroline says, if you can read you can learn to cook and with the internet there is more than ever before to help. I learned most from the Mrs Beeton book I bought when I got married and still have, not from my mother or school.

I don't think there is a lack of anything but interest and motivation, as it is easier not to cook! If parents have time to run their children all over the place to out of school activities, they have time to eg do a baked potato with healthy accompaniments or a one dish chicken casserole.

The difference nowadays is that children are allowed to demand what they want and often seem to have different meals to each other and to do that from scratch would be time consuming and more expensive.

Schools have enough to do and shouldn't be taking on parental responsibilities except in 'one off' situations. We are already paying higher salaries to teachers than many civil servants get for them to provide and change nappies, teach to talk, hold a spoon, provide breakfast clubs etc. Where do we draw the line? If parents are shifting their responsibilities to the education system, then maybe some of the child benefit should shift as well to cover the cost.

Displaying calorie counts will help some parents be more vigilant about what their children eat and they can then point to the proof if needs be, but it won't affect those parents who don't care.

It may affect MY choice for me when deciding what to have as I try to be careful what I eat having lost a lot of weight and not wanting to regain it

Kiddies though I don't think will be bothered

If a mum has fed her kids on takeaways and big meals then don't think they will be bothered by the calorie listing

Hiking a sugar tax is not the answer when the substitutes for sweetness are toxic things like aspartame etc

Many families buy cheap white bread which doesn't have a lot of nutrition, they introduce crisps and fast foods to their toddlers at a very young age because they were given the same stuff, and just prefer to smoke, and buy expensive material things instead of fruit and veg. Education is the way forward.

Lizx

Okay then if you can't read you can use technology to read it to you so if you can listen you can cook :-)

RTR, "Schools are not there for teaching life skills that is the job of parenting"
So, tying flies for fishing, though not exactly a 'life skill', is a necessity is it? :-D :-D

Nutrition is a science, not a life skill.

Food technology imparts mathematics, and surely, if your granny was a 'proper chef', it could be an art?
My mum was a cordon bleu cook, she would call it an art - not one that I'm particularly interested in, but I cook every meal from scratch.
Mum, however, wasn't taught nutrition.
I'm not sure if nutrition was taught at my school, during food technology, I actually managed to avoid cookery at school, however, I learnt about nutrition (and had to do cookery) whilst training to be a nanny.

Whilst the girls did food technology at school, the majority of boys did carpentry. Is that a 'life skill'. Was the girls' lesson less 'important' than carpentry?

In reality, if children (through their parents) have lost the 'knack' of making proper meals, they're hardly going to learn good practice at home, are they?

I think Dermott would agree that reading is rapidly becoming a lost art for a big chunk of the under 25s unless you count decoding the gibberish of an sms text as reading. The same is even more true of writing.

Michael Gove's reforms to the GCSE, which will only fully kick in over the next few years, must be causing sheer panic in the teaching profession where "continuous assessment " amd tick box have been the rule. Moving on to actual reading and writing was never on the agenda.

Just a shame that Gove's reforms ( ability to construe a comprehensible sentence, basic knowledge of the subject matter ) could not be extended to the Cabinet, no.10 and media hacks.

If you can read you can cook!

When my OH makes a pizza she starts with the flour and makes her own base. When we are in France she also makes her own pasta.

There was no such thing as cookery lessons when I was at school. They just didn't do that sort of thing but I did learn a lot of practical astronomy and how to tie flies for fishing.

My granny was a proper chef, trained and qualified in Paris. She had an extremely low opinion of English domestic cooking. She taught me to cook - from scratch - and just as usefully how to buy food withut getting ripped off. The skills were fun as a teenager ( my cheese souffles were v popular) but incredibly useful at uni. Granny no.2 was a whizz at baking bread having started with a big black leaded range. She showed me how and one day as the owner of a 6 door Aga was able to make my own bread too. Modern cookers are not up to much for long slow heat.

I cannot really see why anybody with a grain of sense couldn't work out English staples such as meat pie, shephers pie, spag.bpg., chicken tikka and apple pie though. Schools are not there for teaching life skills that is the job of parenting.

Have they thought about how much this will cost? If the restaurants have to spend time working out the calories in everything and probably having menus re-printed they are likely to increase the prices to cover the extra work involved.

It's just another idea that seems to work in theory but only by those who don't have to put the ideas into practice.

Kath. x