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

My dad eats a lot of ready meals. He lives alone and often can't be bothered to cook. I can see the point, one of his favourite meals is liver and bacon with mash on the side.

He can buy one from the supermarket or he can get a couple of pans out and cook but it involves more washing up and use of fuel.

When he visits me he claims he 'get's spoiled', what he means is that I cook for him.

He was very much brought up with inners of meat and two veg. I'm trying to get him to eat more of a variety of foods, but it is hard. A pasta with a few tomatoes would be his idea of hell.

if you only have £20 to feed 4 people for 3
days, it doesn’t matter how long a £3 bottle of olive oil lasts, you can’t afford it. You can buy a huge bag of chicken nuggets and a huge bag of oven chips for £3 each and have enough food for a meal every day. It’s long been established that poverty is expensive, so people just want to be able to feed their kids.

I think it’s a combination of of time and education. I have friends with children who simply don’t know how to cook. If they’re making pasta, it’s a jar of dolmio sauce. Regular dinner is something frozen that’s chucked in the airfryer. I think because I was raised by a Mother who always cooked from scratch (she was a chef) and taught me to cook its second nature to me. But it’s not that easy for a lot of people…

I agree, I have family who live in Spain and ready meals were not used very much and it was a much smaller section of the supermarket. Most people cooked from scratch but the lifestyle and values were very different as well.

Children need proteins, fiber and carbohydrates when young. It’s not hard to do at all

I make mine with passata (just tomatoes & citric acid) oregano, garlic, basil & pepper. Takes 15 mins. I used to use tinned tomatoes but my DH can’t have the pips because of a medical condition and I got fed up with sieving them. Taught to me by my Italian MIL.

You're not wrong, but for most people I know, it's not the case. I have a takeaway once a month, and I haven't bought a ready meal for nearly 10 years 😀
I did most of the cooking for my kids when they were growing up (I was a single parent for thelr teenage years) and simply couldn't afford ready meals, and didn't want them anyway

I’m 50 and we had occasional, one-off cooking lessons at school but it certainly wasn’t part of scheduled lessons.

School meals consisted of two very rubbery slices of bread filled with barely enough to be visible tuna and half a slice of cucumber followed by chocolate toothpaste cake. Looking back I’m horrified at our 80s school meals. It was a fucking disgrace.

I believe traditional home economics classes should be brought back and include not only cooking but a number of other life skills. Maths classes should include teaching about mortgages, interest rates, taxes etc. The stuff pretty much every student will need to know at some point as opposed to some of the irrelevant projects we did that maybe became useful to one or two members of the class at best. Usually people moan that this is the stuff parents should be teaching but for whatever reason in many cases they’re not and we can’t keep turning out increasingly ill-equipped for life adults, unable to cook basic meals or perform other household tasks with a reasonable amount of confidence or competence.

To be honest, I have seen some of the 'healthy' and especially 'hygienic' things people cook at home and I shall take ready meals any day, thank you. And of course you are right, we must not forget that healthy and wonderful meat, vegetables, pulses and everything else people cook at home are grown on a different, pure and pesticide-and anything-free planet, whilst awful ready meals are produced from deep-fried scrapings of whatever, and they are full of hormones and pesticides, unlike the home-made wonders.

Totally agree - capitalism on the part of the seller and entitlement on the part of us. Somehow we think we are entitled to eat meat, fish, cheese whenever we feel like it. Or good bread. And because we feel entitled to it, capitalism provides - I remember a loaf of white at 24 pence in the early 1990s. And at the same time - Borodinsky bread from Selfridges, from the Village Bakery by Andrew Whitley. And yes, there is no difference between Tesco vegetable section and Le Grand Epicerie's this summer, I could not believe it.

A tomato sauce using canned/tinned tomatoes, dried herbs, something green and a few mushrooms is easy peasy and does not take hours. Carbonara slightly more skill, creamy esque pasta using Philadelphia or equiv less skill. The latter means you need to use up soft cheese for your sarnies, no probs. There are also numerous pasta sauce options using fresh or jarred ingredients. Fresh tomatoes tossed through with a bit of veg, quick and simple

Something else I have noticed is that basic food is not cheaper in the rest of Europe. Vegetables, pasta, pulses, etc is as if not more expensive than in the UK. The difference is that many Europeans are happy to pay more for eating well, whereas in the Uk more people budget when doing their food shop and end up choosing cheaper ingredients and low quality meat. I acknowledge the cost of living crisis and food poverty affect many people in the UK. However I also believe that eating cheaply is also a choice for others who could afford to eat better.

Tonight we had beef stew made with joint of beef £6 on yellow stickers, onions, carrots, swede and parsnips all of which are very cheap - stock cubes and some cooking sherry - served with a jacket potato each
Made a huge meal for 3 adults and 3 single serve portions for the freezer
Under a tenner for 6 generous helpings - I couldn’t buy ready meals for that!

So do you still eat well or are there just not the things available to? Fruit and veg are quite rubbish here tbf, people just aren’t used to cooking basic healthy things and there are so many processed ready meals and takeaways available. I remember when all the French exchange students were here when I was at school and they were going mad buying all the chocolates in the shops because they weren’t used to having that much of it (that was a long time ago) What evening meals have you had in the last week?

Yes which is understandable. But many posters state that ready meals are used as people are too busy to cook and that would be far more likely when you work full time and carrying a couple of kids to evening activities

I think it's more likely we're on the - second (?) generation of people who didn't learn to cook at home. Because by that stage, most people had two working parents so even if they could cook, they weren't necessarily demonstrating cooking skills to their children. With the best will in the world, even if you had great cooking lessons at school, doing one dish at most once a week during school terms isn't going to give you a comprehensive range of cooking skills, or stay in your mind in the way it would if you were watching/helping a parent cook several times a week.

It’s also important to remember that a lot of people who eat mostly staple foods due to poverty- usually cereals like rice, corn, sorghum, quinoa, wheat - do often get vitamin and mineral deficiencies. They’re not living some Arcadian lifestyle while we get fat.

Vitamin A deficiency (makes kids go blind), and anaemia are common in parts of sub Saharan Africa. Vitamin A deficiency affects 21,000 in 100,000 (1 in 5) in some parts of Africa.

South Asia has high rates of protein energy malnutrition.

Iodine deficiency which if it gets bad enough leads to brain damage affects billions globally yearly…

Get an Oddbox. £20 for a massive box of 9 types of fruit and veg that will last ages (the large is enormous and they always give more by weight than described - I check).

I also don’t understand why people are saying we’re on the ‘third generation’ of people who didn’t learn to cook at school. I’m 30 and we had food tech until year 9 and learnt all through primary and up until then. I was at a bog standard comp too..

@HotPotLovepasta with oil, cheese and less than a single portion of vegetables (botanical fruit even) is not particularly healthy at all. Especially if the pasta is white and not whole meal (so the good stuff has all been stripped out). You’re basically eating starch, saturated fat and half a portion of vegetables.

I'm not feeding a family of 4. I'm feeding me.

I don't think it's rude or Brit bashing, I think it's sadly true and for a number of reasons really. My partner and I went shopping this afternoon, got two bags of groceries, mainly fresh meats,fish, fruit & veg and a box of cat food came to £88 with a Tesco clubcard - £116 without the card! So I often stand at the till watching parents load up the conveyor belts with ultra processed freezer food, dairy lea lunchables, chocolate breakfast cereal, crisps, sweets, biscuits, cakes, ice cream - they pile the belt high with it because I guess it's cheaper to feed the kids chemical crap than buy fresh produce! Two bags of meats and veggies etc shouldn't be £116 or £88!

Pasta contains both protein and fibre (more so with wholemeal) along with a range of micro nutrients. Cooking anything will reduce the vitamin content including nuking a ready meal.

Over half (56%) of ready meals are high in salt, 47% high in saturated fat and 71% low in fibre. See action on salt May 25 report. So unless chosen very carefully, they may be quick but seldom healthy.

It would be expensive feeding a family of 4 on the better ready meals each day surely

It can if that is how you choose to do it. But a tasty and nutritious sauce can be made very quickly!

CFS can save a family a fortune but not enough people have the skills and knowledge to do it! The skills that used to be passed down in the kitchen from generation to generation have largely been lost. I'm lucky to have grown up in a multigenerational household where cooking was part of growning up. Me and my brother (professional chef) loved cooking with my gran and our parents.
We cooked from ingredients, soup was made fresh, never out of a tin or packet (and a great way to use up leftovers or veg). We baked cakes, made chutney out of garden produce like marrow and tomatoes, apples were stewed and frozen, oraged blackberries made into jam.
Knowing how to utilise cheaper cuts of meat and how to turn basic foodstuff into a meal out of leftovers is a real skill which seems to be very undervalued.
I look around my local area and can't believe how many fast food outlets there are now....and the food is so expensive (and in the majority of cases) nutritionally poor.
My dc cook, they enjoy it. Student dd can't believe how much some of her peers spend on buying food rather than taking lunch from home.

The culture is different here and unfortunately a lot follows American culture. I have friends who don't work and should cook a proper meal but instead choose to purchase ready meals to put in the microwave, it's pure laziness.