A chef has had a go at cooking 30p meals to prove a Tory MP’s claims that many people ‘cannot cook or budget’ as being ‘rubbish’.

Ashfield MP Lee Anderson sparked fury last week when he stated it was possible to cook ‘nutritious meals’ for around 30p a day.

Now, a chef has decided to put Mr Anderson’s claims to test, and unsurprisingly has found them to be ‘a load of rubbish’.

Gareth Mason, 34, set about proving Mr Anderson wrong by challenging himself to cook seven basic meals that would fit within the meagre 30p budget.

The professional chef who has 19-years of experience found that while you could create meals for 30p – they were not nutritionally balanced or big enough sustain an adult.

With the limited budget Gareth made crab stick salad, burgers, spaghetti Napoli, beans on toast, a jacket potato with beans, and a ‘spam fritter’ made from cheap luncheon meat.

‘I’ve come to the conclusion it’s a load of rubbish,’ the head chef at Absolute Bistros in Westhoughton, Lancashire told HullLive.

‘These meals I’ve done, as soon as you put any protein or dairy into them, it’s not feasible to do it for 30p.

‘If you eat beans on toast for every meal, it might work, but even if you did cheese on toast, the cost of cheese would be more than 30p on its own.

‘And you have the cooking cost on top of the cost of the food.’

When his comments sparked outrage Mr Anderson defended himself by saying he was trying to ‘educate people’ to make their lives ‘a little easier’.

Highlighting a cooking course run by a food bank in his Nottingham constituency Mr Anderson said: ‘We show [people] how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget – we can make a meal for about 30p a day and this is cooking from scratch.

‘Look at our food bank, how it works, and 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.’

Gareth said while Mr Anderson’s 30p figure may be achievable using batch cooking methods in a professional kitchen, there aren’t many people who have the space or storage required to make it work.

‘Has this guy ever eaten a 30p meal in his life? I doubt it,’ Gareth asked.

‘He’s contradicted himself by having chefs cook the food in a big kitchen with an industrial oven.

‘Where does he expect the average person to cook all this food and then freeze it all?

Gareth who previously cooked 15 days worth of lunches for a child using just £20 said 30p per meal was far too little create a nutritious meal for an adult.

‘You could just about feed yourself, but it’s not going to be healthy or nutritious or get anywhere near the number of calories an average adult needs to function each day,’ he said.

‘He’s treating people like peasants. Energy prices are going up, people are struggling, the cost of living is on the rise, and what’s their solution? Eat for 30p?

‘The cheaper you go, how much rubbish is in the food?

‘It will be full of additives and preservatives and all sorts of junk. It’s not fresh, nutritious food that people need to have a healthy diet.’

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