I wouldn’t say that processed food, ready meals and even takeaways aren’t relevant to modern life, it’s just that over the past 40 years there are three generations of people who have come out of school and gone through their home life without ever being shown how to cook properly.

Jamie Oliver has repeatedly argued—especially in the mid-2000s through the 2010s, during his school-dinners and food-education campaigns—that Britain’s reliance on convenience food is tied to a loss of basic cooking skills passed down at home. This remark fits that broader public stance: he is not condemning processed or takeaway food as inherently illegitimate, but framing them as dominant because multiple generations were never taught to cook. The quote reflects Oliver’s wider advocacy for practical food education in schools and households, and his critique of structural factors (time pressure, marketing, and weakened domestic instruction) that shape everyday diets.

The statement draws a distinction between convenience foods as occasional, pragmatic tools and convenience foods as a default diet produced by cultural amnesia. Oliver’s emphasis on “three generations” suggests a long-term break in intergenerational knowledge: when cooking is no longer taught, people become dependent on industrially prepared meals, narrowing choice and agency. Implicitly, he treats cooking literacy as a form of empowerment—affecting health, budgeting, and family life—rather than a nostalgic hobby. The quote also reframes blame away from individual consumers toward social conditions that failed to transmit everyday skills.