Whether it is India or the UK, politicians everywhere are the same: brainless with a lot of nonsense talk.
The recent controversy revolves around British Lee Anderson, Conservative MP for Ashfield, who stated recently that meals can be cooked for as little as 30p. Now chef Gareth Mason, 34 has given a worthy and practical retort.
The recent meal controversy of Lee Anderson, MP
It is rather sad that politicians are inconsiderate and insensitive. The net result is that they talk a lot of nonsense.
The recent example of it was when the Conservative party MP from Ashfield, Lee Anderson decided to pour out some nonsensical statements from his mouth.
On Wednesday 18 May 2022, he uttered in the House of Commons that one can cook meals for as little as 30p per day. He said:
“What we do in the food bank, we show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget,’
“We can make a meal for about 30 pence a day. And this is cooking from scratch.”
Gareth Mason (Source: Manchester World)This was ridiculous.
This Tory backbencher went on to say that the Britishers were not able to cook meals from the scratch. He added that they did not know how to budget their foods. Hence they were struggling in life and using food banks to subsist.
Lee went on to justify his insensitive comments by sharing on his social media a video of November 2021.
In this video, a team of chefs had prepared a meal for 170 people in the industrial kitchen using ingredients worth 50 pounds.
Chef Gareth Mason and his retort
Gareth Mason is a chef from Bolton. He is head chef at Absolute Bistros in Westhoughton, Bolton.
Gareth was hurt and upset with Lee’s cheap comments.
He said that Lee had done tone deaf commenting. These statements were an insult for those people who were facing the worst financial crisis of their life due to the coronavirus pandemic and associated lockdown.
In order to prove that Lee was absolutely wrong in making these disgraceful statements, Gareth cooked 7 meals of everyday each costing 30 p.
Seafood stick salad (Source: Manchester World)These 7 meals were crab stick salad, beans on toast, burgers, spaghetti napoli, a jacket potato with beans and fritters made from cheap luncheon meat. The portions of each of them were meagre. Gareth said:
“I’ve come to the conclusion it’s a load of rubbish. These meals I’ve done, as soon as you put any protein or dairy into them, it’s not feasible to do it for 30p.”
He continued:
“If you eat beans on toast for every meal, it might work, but even if you did cheese on toast, the cost of cheese would be more than 30p on its own.”
More on what Gareth said…
Gareth did not stop here. He said:
“And you have the cooking cost on top of the cost of the food.”
“Even if this MP is talking about batch cooking army food, even the smallest amount of spaghetti Bolognese is going to go above 30p.”
Read here, Fixed meal schedule and timings and health!
Thus cooking meals at 30 p is next to impossible. Even if cooked, the meal would be insufficient in amounts and not nutritious.
Spaghetti Napoli (Source: Manchester World)Gareth is in this cooking business for last 19 years. He said that the foods were not balanced and he had to exclude the costly butter in the preparation.
The meal would not provide an adult the recommended 2k calories per day. And some of his prepared meals would be high in salt, sugar or fat all of which would be harmful for the body. He said:
“The cheaper you go, how much rubbish is in the food? It will be full of additives and preservatives and all sorts of junk.”
“It’s not fresh, nutritious food that people need to have a healthy diet.”