AIBU to tire of moral superiority around meals?

I never do frozen food, unless you count having frozen fruit and veges as a back up available. I also have frozen pesto from when I had a glut of basil in my garden. However, yesterday I did have a cheeseburger from McDonald's on the way home from an appointment. It was delicious. haha

In reality, every normal household occasionally gets takeaway and eats frozen food. I think it’s a minority who don’t do that, so I don’t agree with your view.

Going down the organic, cooking from scratch route can take up a lot of a lot of time and effort.
So spare a thought for the parents who are trying to do their best for their kids while juggling other responsibilities. Their thoughts might spill over into conversations at the school gate. And they get judged for being self righteous…

Isn't the whole point about cheap and over processed v fresh? I don't think anyone is suggesting that pizza as a meal is inherently bad.

Anything taken to extreme is unhealthy, if not physically then mentally.

Clean food, clean living, exercise, arranging cupboards.
Our kids live in a world where they can be, and will be more as they turn into adults, judged on every little thing, every mistake can potentially be posted online for eternity.
And whilst it's pressure for them, and we tell them they just have to own the social embarrassment, we also don't want them to be judgemental pricks either.

A lot of people are increasingly aware of the importance of the food we eat, not just UPF, but variety, quality of raw ingredients, quantity, but also how you eat, who you eat with, your relationship with food and how you cook, that food is best with company, taken time over.

Of course modern living doesn't always mean you can do this so aiming to eat as well as you can, when you can is good enough. But that is part of the problem nowadays, trying to be good enough is seen by some as still being a failure. It shouldn't be but it is.

I don't think any of those are bad, but they can be made 'bad' (though even then, occasionally, oh well, who cares?). If I make burgers, it's with a 100% meat patty. I make it myself. The ingredients of the ones in the store are just not on for me. Home-made pizza fine, the bought ones can be very fatty and high in sodium. Nothing wrong with bolognaise, though some of the premade sauces can be very high in sugar. You can also make that sort of thing healthier by using different pastas to the usual refined wheat based ones. Your list sounds good, depending on the source, to me.

I teach and I used to complain to my colleague who oversaw operations including the canteen and catering and her reply was always that they fulfilled the guidelines. Just looked beige to me with some sorry, overcooked veg occasionally and tiny portions.

Not all home made meals take forever

teaching your children real life skills from cooking to the fact that playtime is limited by life is important- it’s true quality time

what children want isn’t always what is best for them

not all frozen food is bad

giving your children good health and realistic attitudes and understanding of life is so very important that if you feel you are being judged ( as opposed to taking offence due to internalised guilt ) it may be worth thinking about this

Interesting comments on these threads and I think definitely judgey but why?

Airfryers are great, I have a big one and I cook great roasts (meat and potatoes cooked at the same time), slow cooked casseroles, pressure cooked pulses. I can cook a whole meal for 4 in one go. Why is eating a burger seen as ‘bad’, it’s literally beef with seasoning, the same as Spag Bol. On a sourdough roll or in between an iceburg lettuce wrap with cheese and tomato - that’s a good meal. Why is pizza ‘bad’? It’s literally a bread base with tomato sauce and cheese on top. Yes if you are buying cheap and over processed but not if you’re making from scratch or buying good quality.

I did Chinese Cashew Chicken yesterday, which is one of the less healthy meals I'd make due to the sauces (I try to use lower sodium options. Other than the rice cooker time, which takes care of itself, it takes 5 minutes to prep ingredients and then 15 to cook. Not hard labour.

Not all home made meals take hrs to cook. Once in a while a freezer/takeaway is okay but not very often

I would be over the moon if my daughter's school had such a thing as honey mustard chicken 😆They do have some pasta dishes and a day with fish but the quality is generally really bad, as I said my daughter has mentioned half frozen food and I've seen with my own eyes that it's all a bit grim and skimpy. The alternatives for when they run out or have a day they can't provide the expected lunches are poor as well. They do have a soup, plus fruit and yogurt available every day so there is a glimmer. @DeafLeppard - I dread to think what the council is considering 'reasonable' in general.

Do men have any responsibility here?

Primary school menus actually have to meet reasonable nutrition guidelines.

@usedtobeaylis DS frequently tells me school dinners are nicer than my meals! In fairness his school meals are delicious and they very much focus on a balanced diet made from scratch. Some parents complain about the lack of burgers/nuggets/chips but they have a jacket potato bar each day for those who hate lasagne/fajitas/honey mustard chicken etc.

Nuggets and fish fingers here mainly. I suppose the good side is that she doesn't like things like burgers and pizzas and hot dogs so we can't go down that route too often. We tried to make our own nuggets but I'm an appalling cook and she just prefers the plain chicken breast in the end so that's not too bad 😆

I found it impossible to find the time to cook from scratch every night when my kids were younger. It sounds dramatic but it totally changed my life when I started to batch cook on a Sunday night. I cooked once a week, portioned it up in the freezer, and then after a couple of months we had a huge variety of meals to choose from every day. Not as good as making it fresh but much cheaper than convenience food. We had chicken and beef chilli’s, bolognese, veggie and meat curries, stews etc etc. Admittedly I had to buy a giant freezer for the garage but it made life so easy.

School menus here are atrocious. The UK really has this idea that 'best value' is always 'cheapest'. Making this rubbish off site and transporting it in where it's served up half frozen. Gross. I remember school dinners quite fondly.

When people say frozen food do they mean frozen veg? Frozen veg is brilliant!

We don’t really do ‘kids food’ like nuggets, chips etc at home but DS will have them at restaurants. Takeaways not very often. I do rely on convenience like new Covent Garden soups, pre marinated chicken breast etc that I shove in the air fryer and microwave some frozen peas.

It’s tricky though. Both of us work FT in demanding jobs. I have a chronic illness and am gluten free because of it and prefer to eat veggie. DS and DH love meat. DS hates saucy food like curry/stews whereas I would use the slow cooker a lot more. Luckily DH eats whatever is available!

Depends really, feel a bit sorry for kids/families who live on UPF’s but that’s their choice I guess. I’m not really that bothered providing it’s not my family/my DD.

Depends really, feel a bit sorry for kids/families who live on UPF’s but that’s their choice I guess. I’m not really that bothered providing it’s not my family/my DD.

I like thighs but tenderloins are the best. Just IMO. :-)

I recently read a thread where almost everybody claimed that that they NEVER made a less than positive comment about the appearance of a celebrity on TV. So they never mentioned if someone had had some work done on their face, or looked older or tired or ill, or was wearing something awful or odd etc. Judging by the other threads on here (there's one at the moment criticizing the women's football team's outfits), Gogglebox and general chit-chat, I don't think people are always honest. And surveys and MN threads aren't always representative!

Aside from dominant persisting divisions in domestic labour/ working (out of the home) hours, men/ dads don't seem to get so emotionally wrapped up in these things.

It's a task to feed the family; they feed them. It gets ticked off the list with varying degress of healthy outcome, but they seem less inclined to ruminate over the big picture and emotional side of food as love than many women do.

Parents in other countries also work; in fact in many of them more than in the UK. An occasional pizza will not kill anyone, but the fact that every restaurant’s “children’s meals” are a bunch of ultra processed crap is an example of how badly we feed the kids here. The school menus are closer to the US than Europe. It’s all pretty disgusting.