Lee Anderson’s now suggesting families can batch cook and store ‘172 meals’ to get by

Lee Anderson, the Tory MP for Ashfield in Nottinghamshire dubbed ‘30p Lee’ following controversial comments about food bank users, is continuing to stand by his remarks this week, as he’s now shared a video of a group of people managing to cook “172 meals with 50 quid’s worth of ingredients from the local Aldi” and seemingly suggested struggling families could do the same.

As a reminder, during a debate on the Queen’s Speech back in May last year, Anderson claimed: “I think you’ll see first-hand that there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly, they can’t cook a meal from scratch, they cannot budget.”

He invited MPs to visit a food bank in his constituency where those receiving food parcels have to “register for a budget and cooking course”.

He would then go on to defend his comments on Facebook, writing that he “did not say poor people cannot cook or there is no need for food banks”, but rather that “there is not the need currently being parroted out by the MSM [mainstream media]”.

As if that makes everything alright, Lee!

And then, in January this year, he fanned the flames some more by sharing a picture of Tesco Wheat Biscuits for £2.70 (or 6p each) and claiming people just had to “chuck on 10p worth of milk” for a meal.

Now, in a post to Twitter/X on Saturday reigniting the backlash once more, Anderson has brought up the anecdote of a cooking session in his constituency again.

He wrote: “30p Lee. Just over two years ago a local award-winning chef told me he could feed a family of five for 50 quid a week, which [by the way] is much more than some of these celebrity chefs were quoting.

“I challenged him to do it, so we spend [sic] the afternoon at our local college with our food bank workers, kids from the college and a TV crew.

“Outcome: we batch cooked 172 meals with 50 quid’s worth of ingredients from the local Aldi. This was a social experiment to show that batch cooking meals from scratch was cheaper than eating junk food or takeaway foods.

“Who’d have thought volunteering my own time and money would’ve created such a fuss?”

We don’t think it was that which left people outraged, Lee…

But thankfully, other Twitter users were on hand to explain to Anderson yet again why his comments are out-of-touch – namely because struggling families will probably find it difficult to store 172 meals in their home:

And of course, he’s so confident in his argument that he turned off replies…

Well then.

Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.