I can't take her anymore. I have had enough. She's so spectacularly missing the point all the time and her followers seem to fawn over this nonsense.
3p beans do not cost 3p. 50p hotdogs do not cost 50p. Someone somewhere is paying the true cost and it's usually poor people, but often poor people in other countries. Farming practices are shocking (and not just in animal agriculture, though they are overall the worst culprits). Modern day slavery is rife on farms around the world. It's not hard to understand that two things can be true at the same time.
Truth one: Food is too cheap. The actual cost of producing quality food without exploiting humans or animals is much higher than most of us are prepared to pay.
Truth two: Even in affluent countries like the UK, people are too poor to afford even basic food.
The solution is NOT demanding that a huge supermarket chain which can only exist because of our capitalist exploitative system brings back its smart price range.
Jackie pretends that caring for animals and other humans in our food chain is a privilege. I call bullshit on that. Poverty doesn't make you less compassionate or empathetic. You being a total and utter twunt makes you so.
An acquaintance of mine was arguing the exact same thing recently about fast fashion, and her right to buy 3€ T-shirts. I had to walk away. There is so much human suffering so that we in the affluent parts of the West can enjoy cheap
tit.
I found this old article:
Jack Monroe began blogging on cooking meals for pennies when her weekly food budget was under a tenner. Here she tells Richard Godwin about turning her life around with dirt-cheap chilli
www.standard.co.uk
Which is very very funny because it opens with
There isn’t much furniture in Jack Monroe’s flat in Southend-on-Sea. How times have changed.
But also, this telling bit:
Jamie Oliver just can’t match that. She points out that in his recent book, Save With Jamie, all of his recipes call for Uncle Ben’s rice. “That’s not really a money-saver, is it? If you really cared about saving money you’d pay 40p a kilo for long-grain rice. I’ve been approached countless times by various brands like that. I wouldn’t rule it out — I do need to earn money. But I couldn’t endorse anything that wasn’t the best possible value.”
Except that it's not about value, it's purely about price. She will never, ever go, "This cheese is 30p more but has more flavour so you can use less of it." She'll go, "30p??? Where are you getting 30p from, Tory?!"
I don't think I've ever eaten Uncle Ben's rice, but it has its place. If you don't know how to cook rice and you're worried about ruining ingredients, it's a starting point. If you have a little more money but a lot less time, convenience food can help. Plus, using those ingredients at first is a good way of gradually becoming confident in the kitchen and more capable of cooking for yourself. There are always nuances. She never sees them.
