We are all totally aware that good nutritional food doesn’t need to cost any more than rubbish food.  In fact it cost less.  However, the notion that it does (cost more) seems to doggedly persist. Here is a rebuttal but don’t take it as the gospel, even though the gospel tells some real furphies as well. Take what you like, ditch the rest as they say at AA.

Good tasty food was always the domain of the poor who had to make do with what grew in the wild, or in the case of farmers, managed to grow on small plots of land. So, in Italy it was pasta with garlic and herbs, for the lucky few some salted grated cheese on top.  In France it was much the same but there were the added bits of chicken or sometimes wild boar. To give taste, it was always the herbs that gave the helping hand, more so than the actual ingredients. In Greece, with olives and more, olives, fish and more fish, but always garnished with herbs and fragrant oils. The poor knew how to add flavour no matter in what country they resided in with the help of herbs.

In England, I don’t know but I suspect, the eating might well have been more punishment, although bread pudding is a dish I still remember with some joy. In Holland, raw salted herrings with mashed spuds with preserved cabbage (zuurkool) kept many alive. The Scandinavians got their vitamin intake during those long and dark sombre winters from berries found in the wild by bearded men clothed in reindeer skins (while watching The Seventh Seal. ‘Det sjunde inseglet’ directed by Ingmar Bergman with that forbidden (ing) character Max Von Sydow, playing chess).

I am amazed that despite all the cookery books and the TV Master-chefs shows and all the attention on food that more and more people seem to be overfed but undernourished. Perhaps it is ‘because’ of that attention on food. The poor ate out of hunger, a necessity to stay alive. Perhaps we eat in order to eat, a past-time or like a hobby. Has anyone noticed that we now eat and drink while in motion, walking the streets we are chewing away, driving a car we are chewing, shopping we are chewing. In the trains and busses we are chewing. Jaws going up and down everywhere now.

Do we need to get poor again? How can people claim it cost more to eat healthy food than unhealthy food?  How much the cost of pasta with garlic and a sprinkling of grated parmesan?  Or, chicken thighs with carrots and spuds, or Lebanese bread with sliced olives, tomatoes and some anchovies in the oven?  How much does it cost for some chuck steak stewed with potatoes, carrots, onions, capsicum with the help of a bit of turmeric, chilli, aniseed, a couple of cloves, cinnamon? You can cook those meals for a lot less than a night out at MacDonald’s or KFC’s and are tastier.

The main thing, it seems, might be to go back to when we ate out of hunger, not because of boredom or for lack of something to do. Or so it seems to me.