Your Family's Health And The Price Of Your Shopping

Shops are there to provide us with convenience, but very often there are two problems associated with convenience food -and that is both its nutritional value, and its price.

Very often it is the quick convenience food such as ready made snacks, microwaveable food and tins which cost far more than the individual ingredients themselves because, of course, you are paying for the recipe and combination of those ingredients. What you are also paying for are the ingredients which you wouldn't have included had you made it yourself, such as preservatives, emulsifiers colouring, flavouring, anti-oxidants and so forth. All those little numbers and chemical names which you wouldn't even consider including in your home made recipe. Why wouldn't we include them? Well, to start with they wouldn't be necessary because the food is being eaten straight away, and you wouldn't like feeding your children on a handful of laboratory chemicals you know nothing about. And yet, everyday this is exactly what we do. Our families are eating the chemicals we put on the table, simply because we can't be bothered to cook meals for ourselves, and we fall into the trap of buying convenience food.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with it every now and again -we all have busy lives and there is a place for it, but with anything it's good in moderation. It's the excess of these chemicals which causes children to lack concentration, become overweight, addicted to certain types of food and develop allergies, conditions and problems at school. Not to mention the extra cost which is adds to our grocery bill.

Once you begin to realise the problem, it's easy to look dreamily into a future where you cook elaborate meals fit for a Sunday dinner table every single day, but in truth this is highly unlikely to happen. However, this is taking the whole matter to the polar opposite extreme, and it's easy to think that food comes in two types -convenience food you can open, shove in the microwave for a few minutes and it's ready, or elaborate home cooked meals that take an hour or two in the oven, plus all that fiddly preparation which will inevitably result in a cut finger, piles of vegetable shavings and a mountain of pots to wash afterwards.

There is a happy medium, and it's quite a large spectrum between these two extremes. There are plenty of very quick meals available which cost a fraction compared to the convenient alternatives, and all it takes is a little research first. Most home cookery books seem packed with complex recipes that need piles of ingredients that every good cook is supposed to have in their kitchen but which we have never even heard of before, so forget them. Use the internet -there are heaps of recipes there for the taking. Find a cook book for students, or beginners -often these recipes are simple, nutritious, and both cheap and easy to make. Student cook books are invariably great, because they assume that you're on a budget, need good food, and can't be bothered to mess around with it too much.

Why not get the family involved in looking for, and choosing these recipes? A team can be far more efficient than one, and it will give your children a good standing to prepare them for the future.

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