Naked Chef Tackles Fat

CaroGirl

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I was watching Jamie Oliver on the Food Network last night. His latest project is to go to the statistically most obese town in Britain (Rotherham) and try to get them to start cooking healthy meals at home instead of relying on greasy, fat-laden take away. The plan: teach 8 people 10 recipes and have them teach those recipes to their friends, who then promise to teach those recipes to their friends, and so on.

The thing that amazed me: there was a young woman who has a couple of kids (oldest looked about 5 or 6) and they'd NEVER eaten a home-cooked meal in their lives. They eat nothing but packaged food and take-out. I was floored!!! I didn't think it was possible to have never prepared a single meal for your own kids. And, yes, the kids were both overweight.
 

Pagey's_Girl

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Knowing some of the poeple I know, I believe it. I remember at one job, I bought in yellow cupcakes I'd made from scratch (I have an old Hershey cookbook with recipes from the 1930's. Fascinating stuff.) Nobody could believe it was even possible to make a yellow cake anything from scratch. Duh, how do you think they did it before mixes, peeps?

That's actually my biggest pet peeve with a lot of recipes these days - the call for prepackaged this and premade that and this mix and that one - I can understand the need for convenience, but really, it's not THAT hard to cook from scratch. If I can do it, anyone can.
 

aadams73

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I believe it too. Scary stuff. What really bothers me is that prepackaged and "junk" foods are comparatively cheaper than healthy foods by quite a large margin.

I'm a good cook and when I cook it's always from scratch with fresh ingredients. And it's not THAT difficult, but it is more expensive. For a while I got bogged down in convenience foods, but once I switched back my energy levels surged. I needed less sleep and I became able to do more for longer periods of time.

Anyway, good on Jamie. That's an admirable project and I hope he succeeds and other people follow suit and try eating healthier.
 

CaroGirl

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I believe it too. Scary stuff. What really bothers me is that prepackaged and "junk" foods are comparatively cheaper than healthy foods by quite a large margin.
That was the objection most people on the show had to cooking from scratch: expense. It looks to be a poor-ish, working-class, sort of place. The second excuse was time.

I'm bummed that pre-packaged food is cheaper but I do think it's entirely possible to cook from scratch with fresh, local, in season ingredients and have it work out to not much more. People just don't know how to do it.

IMO, Jamie Oliver rocks.
 

Pagey's_Girl

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It's not that much more, really, if you watch for your sales. Just takes some planning. And making use of your freezer helps, too. I have several dinners worth of salmon in the freezer right now, because it was on sale at Stop & Shop (and I love salmon.) I actually don't like a lot of the prepackaged fishsticks and whatnot because they use way too much breading. You can't even taste the fish.

*Wishes Stop & Shop would get - was it barramunda? - in again.*

ETA - I just got one of his books. He's cool. :)
 

CaroGirl

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It's not that much more, really, if you watch for your sales. Just takes some planning. And making use of your freezer helps, too. I have several dinners worth of salmon in the freezer right now, because it was on sale at Stop & Shop (and I love salmon.) I actually don't like a lot of the prepackaged fishsticks and whatnot because they use way too much breading. You can't even taste the fish.

*Wishes Stop & Shop would get - was it barramunda? - in again.*

ETA - I just got one of his books. He's cool. :)
Wait a minute...there's fish in there?!!

;)

I'll have to check out Jamie's books the next time I'm at the bookshop. I loves to cook and his approach is one I really agree with.
 

Sweetleaf

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That's frightening!

My kids wouldn't even know what a Happy Meal is. We NEVER get McD's, Burger King, Wendy's, pizza or anything like that. We do occasionally get fish and chips, but it's pretty rare.

I make everything. We don't even buy biscuits; I bake them.
The kids love helping me bake, but I am somewhat dubious as to how much healthier they are when home cooked.

I stopped making chocolate chip cookies when I worked out each one had 10 grams of fat. Freaked me out.
 

Pagey's_Girl

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....The kids love helping me bake, but I am somewhat dubious as to how much healthier they are when home cooked.

That reminded me of my infamous cheesecake recipe. (This was awhile ago.) I got a yen for cheesecake and decided to whip up one out of a cooking magazine. Well, the first problem was that it called for a graham cracker or chocolate cookie crust. So I ransack the cabinets.

No Oreos. No graham crackers.

Bugger.

Now what? I considered making chocolate cookies for the crust, but didn't have powdered baking chocolate. And this was in my pre-car days, so running to the store was out of the question.

Back to the magazine and - hello? What's this? Raspberry tarts - with the recipe for the tart shells. Bingo! I quickly made up the tart shells, which were butter cookie shells and called for about three sticks of butter. I baked them out in long strips, let them cool, ran them through the food processor to make crumbs for the crust. Meanwhile, I'd decided to modify the vanilla cheesecake into a vanilla-chocolate-marble cheesecake - there was solid baking chocolate on hand, at least. Mind you, this cheesecake called for four packages of full-fat cream cheese for starters. (Should I have been disturbed hat there were four packages of the full-fat variety in the fridge in the first place?) In hindsight, I'm pretty sure it came out to about 1,000 caloies per slice....

Long story short, that was one divine cheesecake. But I'm pretty sure it would also be lethal under certain circumstances.
 

Grrarrgh

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This is a completely different topic than the title led me to believe.
 

Button

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I actually don't like a lot of the prepackaged fishsticks and whatnot because they use way too much breading. You can't even taste the fish.
:)

You ever see that commercial with the little girl? She goes up to her mom with a box of fishsticks.

"Minced?!?! You feed me minced? Have you ever caught a minced fish?"
 

Matera the Mad

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The reason prepackaged junk is cheaper than real food is that there is no food in it -- it's all sugar, salt, white do-do and plastic grease. :tongue

I fscking COOK! I get down on food, I get my hands into it, I show it respect.