This evening, as six-thirty approaches and you lay the table for the family meal, ask yourself this. When did we as a nation stop eating tea and start eating dinner?
Tea is a quick meal, and it usually involves toast. Dinner, on the other hand, takes ages. There is, inevitably, the shopping and cooking, but before that there are hours and hours spent just wondering exactly what to cook. Heaven forbid we should cook the same thing twice in one month. We need variety and excitement on our plates. We no longer eat simply to replenish our fuel supply, dinner has to be an event. A mini dinner party for the family every night. Newspapers provide a daily recipe should inspiration be lacking; magazines extol new twists on old favourites. And television is constantly banging on about cooking. The Channel 4 show, Come Dine With Me in which four people throw dinner parties then award each other scores out of 10 in a bid to win £1,000, was first broadcast to a tiny audience in 2005, but it is now watched by 3.5 million every week and is regularly More4's most watched programme. Pressure to cook new and interesting things is all around us.
Of course, quality family time is essential, and how lovely it is to have everyone together around the table sharing a lovingly prepared meal. But what about those couple of nights each week when having dinner together is just too difficult? One of you is late back from work, another one plays squash, and yet another has had a McDonalds on the way home from school and isn’t hungry anyway. Once again, the mildly spiced Moroccan lamb with apricot couscous, which took you an hour and half to make, is wasted.
These are the evenings when everyone just wants tea. So why not a quick plate of beans on toast? Well for a start, it appears you might not have bought any bread for toasting. A spokeswoman from the British Nutrition Foundation said recently that consumption of all bread and white bread in the UK has been declining since the 1940s. However, at this same time the prevalence of overweight and obesity has been increasing. Yes we’re getting fatter, because we’re sitting down to a great big dinner every night when beans of toast would have done.
Obviously, if we haven’t got the toast, we don’t need the beans either. Beans consumption has fallen by more than 20% since 2000. It's such a crisis that, in an attempt to instil the beans habit into young people, food manufacturer Branston has started a "baked beans student loan scheme". If you e-mail them, they will deliver 24 tins to your door every term for the next three years. And you don't have to pay for them until you start work.
But it’s not just young people that are being reminded of the simple and nutritious pleasure of teatime. In August 2008 the MRC Human Nutrition Research wrote and published an article recommending which foods old people should eat to meet their nutritional needs. Toast with pilchards, sardines, beans, cheese, ravioli, tinned spaghetti or well-cooked eggs featured very near the top of the list. Exactly. Something on toast for tea.
Tea is a quick meal, and it usually involves toast. Dinner, on the other hand, takes ages. There is, inevitably, the shopping and cooking, but before that there are hours and hours spent just wondering exactly what to cook. Heaven forbid we should cook the same thing twice in one month. We need variety and excitement on our plates. We no longer eat simply to replenish our fuel supply, dinner has to be an event. A mini dinner party for the family every night. Newspapers provide a daily recipe should inspiration be lacking; magazines extol new twists on old favourites. And television is constantly banging on about cooking. The Channel 4 show, Come Dine With Me in which four people throw dinner parties then award each other scores out of 10 in a bid to win £1,000, was first broadcast to a tiny audience in 2005, but it is now watched by 3.5 million every week and is regularly More4's most watched programme. Pressure to cook new and interesting things is all around us.
Of course, quality family time is essential, and how lovely it is to have everyone together around the table sharing a lovingly prepared meal. But what about those couple of nights each week when having dinner together is just too difficult? One of you is late back from work, another one plays squash, and yet another has had a McDonalds on the way home from school and isn’t hungry anyway. Once again, the mildly spiced Moroccan lamb with apricot couscous, which took you an hour and half to make, is wasted.
These are the evenings when everyone just wants tea. So why not a quick plate of beans on toast? Well for a start, it appears you might not have bought any bread for toasting. A spokeswoman from the British Nutrition Foundation said recently that consumption of all bread and white bread in the UK has been declining since the 1940s. However, at this same time the prevalence of overweight and obesity has been increasing. Yes we’re getting fatter, because we’re sitting down to a great big dinner every night when beans of toast would have done.
Obviously, if we haven’t got the toast, we don’t need the beans either. Beans consumption has fallen by more than 20% since 2000. It's such a crisis that, in an attempt to instil the beans habit into young people, food manufacturer Branston has started a "baked beans student loan scheme". If you e-mail them, they will deliver 24 tins to your door every term for the next three years. And you don't have to pay for them until you start work.
But it’s not just young people that are being reminded of the simple and nutritious pleasure of teatime. In August 2008 the MRC Human Nutrition Research wrote and published an article recommending which foods old people should eat to meet their nutritional needs. Toast with pilchards, sardines, beans, cheese, ravioli, tinned spaghetti or well-cooked eggs featured very near the top of the list. Exactly. Something on toast for tea.
By all means still rustle up a complicated authentic tex-mex banquet on a Monday evening after work if you feel you must, but don’t wait until you’re old to rediscover the delights of sardines on toast or the perfect poached egg. Bring back teatime. Reclaim your evenings.
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Wonderfully entertaining and very clever to pick a subject that is soooo obscure but yet so familiar that it just keeps you reading. You write with such authority that I daren't even question your sources you quote. I wondered why you weren't writing in the first person as is the way with most blogs. But I really really like the way you have handled this. Funny and entertaining but written, as I said, with authority. Excellent style.
ReplyDeleteKeep going....looking forward to the next one. Sally