The Return Of Turkey Twizzlers Proves That The Shame Of Being A Freezer Mum Continues, 15 Years On…

I know the internet doesn’t love Jamie Oliver, but spare for a moment, a thought for the man who has become an internationally famous multi-millionaire and yet, to his dying day, will be intrinsically linked to Turkey Twizzlers.

Anyway, if you’re on social media today, you’ll have seen people discussing the much PR-ed return of the Turkey Twizzler, which were dropped from school meals in 2005 following Oliver’s series, Jamie’s Dinners, about the nutritional values of school lunches in the UK.

The tweets revolve around two themes: Firstly, some kind of joke or comment about Jamie Oliver. Secondly, a bizarrely boastful, ‘Is it just me, but I’ve never even HAD/HEARD of a Turkey Twizzler?’ Basically, read snobbery.

The Twizzlers have changed – makers Bernard Matthews say they’re healthier. The old ones had 34% meat and 137 calories. The new ones have 70% meat and 87 calories. They also now come in two flavours – original tangy tomato and delicious chilli cheese.

I’ve also changed since 2005 in that I’ve become a mum and so have realised how differently I look at the debates that swirled around 15 years ago when Oliver’s show aired.

I definitely wouldn’t say I was a ‘FFS WHY IS SHE DOING THIS TO HER CHILDREN HOW CAN THEY GIVE THEM A TURKEY TWIZZLER HEAVENS ABOVE IT IS POISON!’ type. But I would say that, like most people watching the show, it was easy to become convinced with the argument that went something along the lines of, ‘It’s just as easy, quick AND cheap to cook this [insert healthier made-from-scratch recipe] as it is to make turkey twizzlers and chips, so why wouldn’t you?’

This is pre-Twitter-shaped wokeness and constant hot-taking lest we forget.

Out went chicken dinosaurs (no word on their rebrand yet, guys) and in came creamy coconut fish and Mexican bean wraps in schools. Studies later found(in 2010) that the changes had been beneficial to children’s test results and attendances.

What Jamie was doing when it came to school meals was mostly on a national scale – it was about a system and purchasing and a government taking their eye off the ball when it came to school nutrition, while also having an eye on childhood obesity, without matching the two things up.

But Jamie also travelled home with some pupils, aiming to change things at home.

15 years on and I can only estimate how hard I would punch someone who tried to turn up at my flat with a load of cameras to go through my freezer and instruct me how to boil some water and ‘hide’ some ‘secret veggies’ inside the dinner of my child they’d met that very day. I imagine the lamping would be accompanied by me screaming, 'Yes of course they're eating it, you're a professional chef, have used a whole bottle of delicious olive oil and there's a camera shoved in their face.'

Not that I ever thought much about it before I had a child, but I guess unexpectedly, I’ve become heavily reliant on the freezer when it comes to feeding my son. And no, I’m not talking defrosting seven-secret-vegetable pasta sauces in tiny pots. Many, many of those (and various other recipes I’d batch-cooked after seeing them on Instagram) got thrown all over the floor before I gave up the space for potato waffles. Lovely, reliable potato waffles never end up thrown on the floor. I just presumed, stupidly, it was simple as it was presented on TV shows. 'Switch out sweetcorn for sweets, they taste just as good and the kiddies will NEVER KNOW!' Ok, sure Jan.

It can happen to any of us. Even if it starts so well with weaning: pureed broccoli and separately steamed carrots lovingly served, then almost as lovingly wiped up off of every surface. But there’s only so many times you can wipe up after a baby that’s woken repeatedly in the night, presumably hungry from throwing the beautifully presented meal (on one of those bamboo animal plates ofc) across the room before holding up your hands and saying, ‘FINE! Can you stick some chicken nuggets and a jar of pesto onto that online shop please?’

We’ve yet to hear what Jamie Oliver thinks of the return of the Turkey Twizzler and especially marketing director David Leigh’s assertion that they could go back into school meals: ‘Obviously we'd like the product to go into schools,’ he said. ‘But for the minute, we've focused on going into what I guess you'd call mass market retail.’

But it’s depressing, given the repeated notion of our speedy advancement, that turkey twizzlers made me realise that in 2020 we’ve really not moved on when it comes to arguments around parent-shaming and food.

Just last month the debate about food poverty, kids meals and what is and isn’t affordable when it comes to nutrition became a hot topic of debate again when the government, on the brink of a now-confirmed recession, launched its campaign for people to lose weight.

Annunziata Rees-Mogg became amongst the worst of these when she responded to journalist Hollie Borland’s tweet, ‘Until fruit and veg costs less than a bag of supermarket chips, you can’t expect struggling households to have healthier diets’ by saying: ‘Tesco 1kg potatoes = 83p, 950g own brand chips = £1.35’.

She then added: ‘The oft repeated but inaccurate belief that low quality/unhealthy food is always cheaper than raw ingredients is part of the problem. It’s why learning to buy/budget for food is important alongside learning to cook.’

Yet as enraged as I am by those comments and ready to fight with righteous anger any food-shaming as much as any liberal Twitter warrior, I have to admit to also being a bit embarrassed about my own cooking. To admit that I don’t manage to put instagrammable portions of frittata or spinach and carrot muffins on the table. Or that I can’t join in conversations of one-up-mumship that go something like, ‘Johnny just LOVE broccolli, honestly, LOVES it!’ ‘Flora genuinely ASKS for cauliflower! Last week I found her in the cupboards munching… a raw turnip!’ I am here if anyone wants to discuss how a child can possess the dexterity to pull out every single pea from a plate of pasta though, if anyone needs that.

If anything, while our opinions outwardly have become non-judgemental of others, secretly, the Instagram posts and aspirational scenes we take inwards do make it easier than ever to harshly judge ourselves. In a world where children's food has become the next big business (look at Joe Wicks and other bloggers), it's more likely than ever these days, that you can be left feeling bad for serving up a (non-bamboo) plate of fish fingers and potato smilies.

As ever, it’s COMPLICATED. There are intersections of money, time, culture, taste and a million other things when it comes to feeding children. It’s not about one thing. And that one thing definitely isn’t Turkey Twizzlers. I would've hoped that's a lesson we might be more open to 15 years on at least? But judging by the social media debates that have raged recently, maybe not…

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