To think processed and pre cooked food is way too common in this country?

I grew up with a meat and two veg meals and that is mainly what I have done with my children. You are right it doesn’t have to be complicated and it can be simplified. Our veg is mainly frozen because I have one child that likes and one doesn’t so worry about food waste. May not be the best but better than none. I also do very simple meals jacket potatoes with a filling. It’s like with everything nowadays we have too much choice so often forget the basics.

A Tesco finest mac and cheese with a side of frozen peas is no less nutritious, in fact the peas would probably be more so.
It's just food snobbery and something else to hit stressed out families with.
Sometimes I cook from scratch, sometimes I fancy a ready made fish pie. It's food.

Interestingly though, Greece is really obese. One of the most obese countries in the world, iirc

So again what’s your theory on why it’s also becoming more of an issue in Italy, Greece and Spain?

This is a really privileged and abilist take though isn't it?
You seem to be blaming people for not cooking from scratch or suggesting ready meals shouldn't be as available.
Fact of the matter is some people need ready meals because of their lives.
If they are disabled.. if they are living in poverty and don't have cooking facilities.. if they work ridiculous shift hours and don't have the time or energy to cook from scratch.
I rely on ready meals a lot as a nightshift worker. I do not have access to an oven on my 12 hour shifts. I am eating at unusual times which means I'm cooking for myself alone alot. I do my best to choose healthier options but I do rely on pre cooked food a lot. I'm not going to be able to sit and chop vegetables and roast meat.
You want to change this it's about tackling poverty.. tackling social care issues.. tackling the cost of living and working conditions.
It's not about shaming people or removing a food source which would make their lives harder and more expensive.

Why the scorn for batch-cooking - it saves time and money.

I live alone and like to cook and eat well - if I don't have family or friends visiting I still want to eat something tasty and interesting such as a lamb & prune tagine. I bought yellow-stickered lamb in M&S the other day had one portion of the tagine and put three in the freezer.

Last week I got a large organic chicken reduced from £20 to £12 - it was roasted with various vegetables, portioned and put in the freezer.

The quality of these meals at around £4 per portion far surpasses anything I could buy ready-made and they're without any preservatives, palm oil, fillers, binders etc.

Why take the piss out people eating good home cooked food? Why is that laughable? I don't understand.

Batch cooking saves a lot of time and effort if you have a freezer.

Yes, it is a food culture thing, not an income thing. Or a time thing.

And I don't know why the British are so very touchy and defensive about it. It's annoying, you cannot have a proper discussion about it.

Instead of getting annoyed with other posters, why aren't people annoyed with the horrible food industries pushing junk down our throats by any possible means?

Stressed, overwhelmed people can't make effective decisions, so the supermarkets like to stress and overwhelm us.

I don't disagree; I've never claimed that it was purely an income issue. It is absolutely also about food culture/education/mindset.
I think it's somewhat generational as well; again, I agree that in some times and places people with lower income/less education etc do or did know how to cook cheap nutritious meals from scratch, out of necessity. I’m 50 and I would say that, in the UK, people of my grandparents’ generation were (broadly speaking) the last to fit this category.
If you weren't brought up watching people cook/being taught to, of course you won't know how to make pulses or cheap meat taste good and fill up your household.

I grew up eating these meals regularly because my mum was working and very much a single parent (no regular shared custody). My eating habits have changed as an adult and now I make all my sauces from scratch, batch cook, plan varied meals and carefully choose ingredients.

The biggest difference in my life now is I have the luxury of time and money. I can sit on a Monday evening looking at recipes and meal planning, I can buy whatever ingredients I want and we can afford a house big enough to have a chest freezer with a garden that I grow vegetables in.

If you don’t have time or money, it’s much harder to eat well in the UK.

Greece. Have struggled on the mainland and the islands to buy ready meals when we couldn’t go out in the evenings. Most frozen food is usually spinach or cheese pies, or bougatsa.

I live in Spain and things have really changed here over the last 10 years in terms of processed food and ready meals. 10 years ago pretty much the only ready meals available were frozen/chilled pizzas, tortillas and lasagne/cannelloni. You couldn't even get things like fresh hummus or coleslaw type mayonnaise-heavy salads. There has been an explosion in convenience foods here and I have to say a simultaneous noticeable increase in obesity rates. Still not such a huge range and quantity as the UK and not such high levels of obesity but it's catching up!

I rarely go into supermarkets but when I do I'm shocked at the amount of fizzy drinks, crisps, ready meals, biscuits etc. Just food with very little nutritional value.

I went into a French supermarket and what was on offer was so different. The ready meals were there but more the type you'd find in an artisan market here rather than in Sainsbury's.

Yes and scarily when it started it was sold as convenient and there was little understanding it was unhealthy. And now it’s normal.

Is it Ok to just put the tomatoes and pasta in the pan, or do you have to throw them?

It’s always the same on these food threads - the people banging on about home cooked food and how simple it is, always do a lot of throwing 😂

We probably eat ready meals 3 times a year - M&S curry instead of take away.
We do eat ready made quiche and pizza but not often.

I think it's sad how crap the food is in the UK. The fruit and veg is much less flavourful than in France / Spain. Bread is either shit or really expensive.

Carbs, quality oil, vegetables, cheese all provide decent nutrition.

A bit silly to be suggesting otherwise.

It’s time. At least it is for me. I have 3 kids and work full time, they all have clubs and activities in the week I literally don’t have time to cook from scratch when they’re falling through the door starving at 6pm. Yes I could batch cook on the weekend but I’m normally knackered and have other higher priority household tasks that need doing. Yes I feel guilty for the amount of UPF we eat, I do try but my kids are also fussy buggars. Feels like an uphill battle! But I do agree.

@MrsSkylerWhite i make a nice one out of a tin of toms! Bit of garlic olive oil and simmer for 5 mins to thicken. The store bought ones have lots of salt and sugar so I would also add some some salt and sugar and it’s very tasty but still healthier. Add sweated onions and stock and blend it and you have a nice tomato soup.🥫

Absolutely, yes. Our batch cook will be borscht this weekend. One meal to eat fresh, three meals for the freezer.

Why is reverse snobbery so fashionable here these days?

Yes, people in the UK eat too much processed foods and yes, in most other countries people eat far less.
In some other countries people have better childcare, corner shops with fresh ingredients, multi generational living, more annual.leave, and generally make daily meals a.priority.
I eat far too much processed food although I love cooking. I just have no time.

Yet there are plenty of videos on social media of people cooking and explaining such terms , what to use, what/how to substitute, and why doing xyz a certain way. You can find out how to make about anything from any culture just by typing it into a search engine.

Yes, it is not taught in schools, but it isn’t like the knowledge isn’t accessible if one chooses to look for it.

But pasta is just (normally) white flour and water. It's constantly bandied about as a better option to something ready made. It's not. It's cheap and cheerful, not massively filling and lacking in many nutrients. The nutrients it does have are only there because the flour has been fortified (and does that maybe make it a UPF?). Then the rest of that recipe, a bit of oil, cheese and a tiny portion of veg. It's not nutritionally superior, just because you've slaved over it.
I've seen people stressing on MN about not being able to buy UPF free tinned tomatoes fgs, it's just another form of food obsession.

You aren’t wrong. If you compare our aisles to other countries is genuinely quite shocking. The abundance of seafood, fresh cooked bread and whole foods is eye opening in Spain/portgal/france. The sourdough isn’t ’artisan bread’ for £6 a go there, it’s just bread! We make very different choices in our household and had to learn a lot about nutrition, ultra processed food and home cooking as an adult. But I read all labels on everything we buy now, home cook every night and our choices are informed now, as are many of our friends, so I do see it moving in a better direction.