TWO stories have been giving me food for thought this week (excuse the pun; it’s as cheap as the meat in a Findus ready meal).

First up: the horsemeat saga. I’ve nothing against horses or even horsemeat; the French love it and they linger higher up the gastronomic ladder than we Brits.

However, I am against not knowing what I am eating. Fraud comes in many guises, and the horsemeat scandal is a new one to most of us.

We probably thought it was safe to eat beef, what after the horror of Mad Cows and Englishmen who fed burgers to their kids to ‘prove’ British beef was safe and the 176 deaths in the UK from CJD.

We’ve slowly had our trust in the food chain restored. The talk now is about “traceability” and knowing exactly which animal from which farm is going into our cottage pies.

Unless, of course it’s an unwanted nag from Romania.

The dilemma arising from this shocking story is that unless we buy our meat from the local butcher, do we really know its origins?

Leading brands have been rightly named and shamed by the scandal: Tesco, Findus, Aldi, Burger King.

The fact they didn’t know their products contained horsemeat is a matter of grave concern. What other less palatable and possibly more harmful ingredients might be going into processed food?

We are right to be scaremongering and right to be scared; BSE has given us just cause for that.

Now to the second story. John Vincent and Henry Dimbleby, of London-based restaurant chain Leon, announced packed lunches should be banned and kids forced to take school dinners.

This is based on the assumption that school dinners are better. Well, for sure if the pack-up contains a sausage roll, crisps and a KitKat, but not if it contains more nutritious items.

The appeal is rather poor timing; school dinners are now under the microscope to see if they too have been duped by the great “I can’t believe it’s not beef” fraud.

The last foodie to encourage us to switch to school dinners was Jamie Oliver.

What’s tragic is that lying behind all of this – from eating ready meals packed with horsemeat and goodness knows what to “forcing” children to have school meals – is a collective shunning of home cooking.

Can’t Cook, Won’t Cook is not just the name of a TV show, it could pass as our national motto.

If the latest food scare teaches us anything, it’s that we need to take more responsibility for what we put in our mouths and those of our children. Jamie Oliver had another show. It was called Jamie’s Ministry of Food, where he taught one person to cook a dish on the condition they “passed it on”.

It echoed efforts during the war when housewives were taught to cook simple and nutritious fare from the ration.

We need such instruction now. Since adults are doing such a poor job in the kitchen, schools need to do more to show children how to cook – then they can go home and “pass it on” to their parents.

The duo at Leon think this too, and tomorrow are launching a nationwide cookery campaign for children called Cook 5 (check it out in The Times and at cook5.co.uk).

The aim is to encourage kids to be able to cook five things by the age of 16.

Surveys show 60 per cent of young adults under 25 are leaving home without the ability to cook five simple dishes.

The campaign is interactive – children can take part by registering on the website from tomorrow; there will be 15 recipes for them to try, and they can upload the results. The recipes are priced per portion, starting from 54p, making them less expensive than ready meals.

Let’s hope it has an impact and we get back to basics rather than back to Basics.