That is the huge down side of supermarkets competing for our custom...I agree with you that some of it is disgusting.
Bollocks, fish and chips shops have been round for over a hundred years, and fifty years ago curry and pizza houses were starting to become popular. The poor have always had a crap diet. Over a hundred years ago, the poor were thin in the UK because food was expensive and also people didn't have the knowledge or facilities to cook what we'd consider balanced meals. Veg, if eaten, were boiled to death no 5-a-day or vitamin supplements. There was a pecking order in the family, men got the meat and kids got bread and scrapings. In areas like Hull (and Salford, where my family came from), there were often women running a small business at home by cooking up stews and other foods for their neighbours for money because people couldn't cook. Community kitchens run by government tried to ensure people got at least one nutritious meal a day. They were so worried about the nation's diet at the start of WW2 that they had to run massive public information campaigns about food and cooking, and even then many people relied on British Restaurants for their food. The grans and mothers that you all remember being able to rustle up a hot meal from nothing probably got the knowledge from post-WW2 times when rationing meant they had to learn otherwise there was literally nothing else to eat. Nowadays the poor have far more choice and fill up on cheap, tasty food with very very poor nutritional value.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33275833 https://www.findmypast.co.uk/blog/history/british-restaurants
Yes,O.K,chip shops.How often did you get one of them? 4/5 times a week like some nowadays,no chance,it was a treat.I bet you had to walk round and get them too? Every part of an animals carcass was used by poor families,not thrown in a bin half eaten,streets weren't littered with McDonald's,kebabs and chips for the rats to gorge on.. We ate our food and were grateful it was served up for us...Sorry,but there is absolutely no excuse to send out for junk food nowadays,it's laziness. The poor got by on what they could in my day and poverty levels are exaggerated nowadays.If spending £20 for a family of 4 on 4 burgers is hard done by then I'll take a shot of it.
It's more than tasty, sugar is as addictive as heroin or nicotine. It sets off the same pathways in the brain, it releases dopamine, it's rammed into processed foods to make them more addictive and the body stores all the extra energy as fat. Lots and lots of fat.
I think you have a rather romanticised and rose-tinted view of the life of poor people in "the old days", and no idea of what its like these days.
How old are you? How far back do your experiences go? What do you know of life nowadays that others have no idea of?
None of the above actually. I just happen to have differing opinions to you and don't need to resort to insult to put mine across.
If either of you want to have an actual discussion on social history with some facts/sources, then do let me know. Otherwise I'm not interested in a pissing contest.
Are you familiar of this wacky concept called inflation and how cost of living has risen significantly higher than average income since ‘back in your day’?
I've seen the stats and stuff, but I've never really grasped it fully, as despite there now being lots more 'essentials',like cars, mobiles, internet etc. my kids are better off than I was at their age, and I'm better off than my parents were, who were better off than their parents, and certainly their grandparents. Even people on benefits have mobiles, tv subscription etc.
Real wages in the UK haven’t kept with productivity and growth. Real wages slumped after 2008 and have rose steadily since then but nowhere near enough to keep up with the increased productivity and growth. I read not too long ago the UK had the second worst real wages compared to living costs in Europe after Greece. Yes, people earn more than they did 20, 30 and 40 years ago and consumer goods are more available but that’s largely due to the technological innovations. Everyone has a mobile these days. It’s pretty much accepted as necessary to have one today as much as an indoor toilet. But even though people earn more, the purchasing power of what they earn isn’t as great as it was decades ago. Rent is just one of the things that takes a larger chunk of people’s monthly earnings than it did 30 or 40 years ago. It was pretty common for a household of four to survive on one person’s income years ago. Today that’s really not possible anymore unless that one person earns a lot more than the average real wage. Like you said, even people on benefits have access to smartphones and Netflix, technology so advanced that medieval kings and nobles couldn’t possibly conceive of. However, the wealth discrepancy between a peasant and a king in the 11th century was smaller than the gap between you or I and Jeff Bezos in the 21st century. So despite the increased economic growth and productivity, in real terms of wages, a person on benefits or minimum wage with a smartphone and Netflix is somehow even poorer than a peasant was 1,000 years ago.
That still says EVERYONE is better off. The fact some are even better off than others is irrelevant to your argument about the cost of living. We have things readily available to us now, the richest in the world couldn't afford. I read an article about one of the richest people on the planet that lost their child in the early 1900's for want of a medicine we can get from any chemist. Not to mention travel, which the poor only largely managed if they were off to a brutal war. The lifestyle of someone on benefits today simply doesn't compare to someone in the workhouse, or living in the slums off High St just two generations ago.
I really wasn't trying to draw any kind of comparison between how much a medieval lute player earned and how much money is wasted on deliveroo cyclists taking fatty foods to the hard up masses..
