I can't believe some of these people are for real!

[Udayana]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0b0y27w/britains-fat-fight-with-hugh-fearnleywhittingstall-series-1-episode-1

Not that I've watched it yet.

[Udayana]

No, it's quite easy to buy affordable food without going over the calorie "limit" you just buy less of it. What is difficult is to buy cheap food that provides a generally healthy diet. Well it's probably just as easy as it was 30 years ago but you probably have to be prepared to do your own cooking.

Basically many of the cheaper processed foods contain a lot of calories but don't actually stop you feeling hungry. The trend since the war has been away from meals you cook at home to processed meals cooked in a factory and heated at home or fast-food/take out/eat in/restaurant chains.

The obese are just fulfilling their duties as good consumer units.

[Rhiannon]

I would be grateful for a link to the programme, please,  rather than my trying to find it. I hope it includes the fact that generations need to be taught to cook  appropriate - and often cheaper - foods in order to provide better quality calories and probably spend less. This used to be done by parents, but seems to have gone by the board a long time ago.

There are loads of reasons for this. Takeaways became years became the norm. Processed foods became convenient for working families already pushed fir time. And cookery in schools was replaced by Food Technology with as much emphasis on marketing as cooking and a completely out of date, carb-heavy ‘food plate’.

I cook from scratch probably 80-90% of the time. Because we don’t eat meat we can afford to eat reasonably well, focussing on pulses and stuff like brown rice. But it is time and energy consuming; the poorest don’t have the money to have their coolers on for slow roasting or braising cheap cuts, for example.

Jack Monroe’s blog and books are fantastic for cooking on a budget of next to nothing - for those that can get hold of them. I hope that Jack will be given a tv series soon.

[Udayana]

And another programme:  "The truth about obesity"  BBC 1 8 pm tonight.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b0y2cz

[ekim]

Bring back the old days..... http://film.britishcouncil.org/health-of-a-nation

[ad_orientem]

Bring back the old days..... http://film.britishcouncil.org/health-of-a-nation

I love those old films.

[Harrowby Hall]

...  that generations need to be taught to cook  appropriate - and often cheaper - foods in order to provide better quality calories ...

There is no such thing as a "better quality calorie". A calorie is a calorie is a calorie.

A calorie is the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree Celsius. When used in terms of nutrition a "calorie" is actually a kilocalorie - 1,000 calories. The body uses calorific food in order to produce the energy required to enable muscles to work and to provide the background energy needed to keep the various physiological systems working. The more work your body and musculature does, the more calories it needs. The body also needs other types of nutrient such as proteins, vitamins and minerals.

Calories are packaged very conveniently in carbohydrates which many of the plants we eat produce in prodigious quantities. Another problem is that many of the foods we like to eat - like chocolate - contain lots and lots and lots of calories. However, if you consume too many calories the body does not excrete the unused calories it stores them for future use - as fat.

Obesity has nothing to with the "quality" of calorie simply the quantity.