Grow, cook, eat - three key lessons for 2024

Jan 1, 2024

Let’s make 2024 a year where we increase the education for everyone, on how to eat healthily, seasonally, locally and keep to a sensible budget.

We need to keep sending this important message out that eating a healthy balanced diet is so important for a long and happy life. This is especially true for families with young children and of course, the elderly always benefit from eating well. Food full of real nutrients, from fresh, well-reared meat and fish, plenty of vegetables and fruit wherever possible, some nuts are a great extra in all our diet.

It’s staggering that even in 2023, there has been a significant increase in the number of children that are still being treated for rickets. This is traditionally an old illness, one that is caused by a lack of vitamin D from not receiving enough sunlight or eating sufficient calcium rich foods.

I was talking to a nurse friend of mine back in the summer. We were putting the world to rights as we always do. She was telling me the story of a young mum weaning her child from milk onto solid foods. This young Mum didn’t know how to cook and didn’t know where to start on how to feed proper food to her infant. Instead, she went to a well-known fast-food chain, bought a burger, took it home, liquidised it and then fed it to her baby. I’m sure this has happened many times over and some of you might think there is nothing wrong with this, but these ultra processed foods are not what our next generation need at the crucial start of their young lives.

A good place to start is in educating our own government on the importance of eating food grown in British soil; fresh, healthy, seasonal produce that is home grown. We are in real trouble with this lack of education on the basic understanding of food and where it comes from and how to cook and eat it. We need to go back to basics and learn how Granny cooked to feed their family.

January and February are hard months for families on a budget. There are still lots of nice root vegetables and cabbage in season this time of year, both of which are cheap to buy and very versatile. In the lead up to Christmas vegetables could be bought for as little as 15p a bag. These veggies can be made into soups, casseroles and also roasted in big trays to eat with everything.

Happy cooking.