This really wasn’t what I was going to write. This diary is not intended to be more than just some stream of consciousness, with food and children being the seeds of the thought processes. Mostly it’s just the ravings of a dinosaur. Probably it is today.

I was going to write something about my really hard day, but I didn’t know what. Then, just as I was about to start writing my recipe for Hungarian Steak, an advert came on the TV which completely changed my focus.

I couldn’t find a link to the ad – I think this is the first time it’s been shown and isn’t doing the ‘trending’ yet – although I doubt this will set too many trends. The ad ends with the strap line “Ideal for when it’s Dad’s turn to cook.”

As I said, I couldn’t find the ad, but when I Googled the final line, I managed to get this:

I couldn’t log on to their Facebook site as I am not an employee, but if anyone is a member and wants to (secretly) let me know what they actually said, please do.

So why am I so miffed? Is it the ’slightly sexist’? No, not at all. Most men don’t cook and as far as I can tell, men have been running things for a while now anyway and trying to take us down a peg or two with some fairly obvious attempts at humour, probably isn’t a going to bother us. Is it the bad grammar? Again no, a capital ‘I’ would be good and an apostrophe for the ‘its’ (it is...) but I’m not a grammar pedant.

No, my problem is with the crap they are peddling to our children. I haven’t read the ingredients list on the McCain potato wedges or the Birds Eye crispy chicken advertised, but even if I did, they wouldn’t be putting on the processing details – they won’t be telling you how these things are made. I understand that people with children have it hard, I understand as much as anyone. I also understand that cooking is not most people’s bag and somebody helping out in this field is a good idea – but for an organisation like the Coop to be telling us that this is what we should be feeding our children, is wrong. This is not what we should be feeding our children.

“Oh but Jon.” I hear you cry, “Didn’t you cook fried chicken and chips for your kids not long ago – and you made wedges too, just a couple of days ago.”

Yes I did. How good of you to point this out, but the food I made, I made myself, I knew what was in it and I knew how it was made. By some bizarre fluke I noticed the Coop magazine is also encouraging people to make their own wedges and fish fingers, but for some reason they don’t seem to be advertising this on TV.

There is a question here: Why advertise processed food on TV, yet tell people to make their own in the magazine?

There is a question here...

And, just to point out how crap this is: the Coop half price ‘deals’ aren’t quite what they seem anyway where almost everyone seems to think they only cost a pound anyway.

Processed food: Cheap, easy, crap and a big fat lie.