MasterChef food critic William Sitwell on tackling loneliness through food
Whether you’ve ever been stuck eating your sandwiches alone at your desk, or found yourself short of company for a Sunday roast, you’ll know that lunching alone isn’t all that fun.
For many elderly people though, this can become a daily state of affairs, if it weren’t for the culinary panache of volunteers and charities like the Royal Voluntary Service (RVS) and its lunch clubs.
The RVS has been running luncheon clubs for around 70 years, and have 80 clubs across the country with roughly 700 volunteers, dishing up 50,000 meals a year, explains MasterChef judge William Sitwell, who’s heading up their new Cooking For A Crowd campaign.
“It’s an amazing thing that they do,” says the food journalist. “It doesn’t just feed the elderly, but it also enables people to socialise. You might be widowed, living alone, and – as I saw at the club – it’s a very jolly occasion.”
The critic visited the Rickmansworth branch, where he was treated to a slab of Shepherd’s pie and “very good bread and butter pudding, with lashings of custard”. He says: “I appreciate the importance both of eating good food, but also the importance of food in terms of socialising and bringing people together.”
And he notes, if the food’s good and it’s tasty, it helps. “Food is a wonderful thing, because it doesn’t just nourish the body,” he adds thoughtfully. “The act of cooking is an act of love, really. There is no better way of giving to friends and family than to cook for them. To cook for someone means a lot more than just to take them out for dinner, because you’ve got to put your heart and soul into it.”
Critic William Sitwell with fellow luncheon club volunteers
Just the sheer act of sitting around a table with other humans can have a huge impact on your mental wellbeing too. “For the lonely and the elderly to come together in a nice warm environment, to be looked after, to be cooked for, to be given good, plain, British nourishing food, and to meet some other people in your community, is a fantastic thing,” says Sitwell. “The lunch club can serve as a focal point to your day, it’s something you can wake up and look forward to.
“It’s about having a conversation with the person who takes you there, and the volunteer who serves you. It’s about the banter that goes on between the kitchen and the ladies and the old guys in the dining room, and it’s about the friendships that are formed.”
For more information on the Royal Voluntary Service and its lunch clubs, visit royalvoluntaryservice.org.uk and follow the hashtag #Cooking4ACrowd.
The Press Association
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