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

I use James Morton's (he was on Bake Off) no-knead recipe. It's dead easy, not messy and I make all my own bread. I've got his 'Brilliant Bread' book but you might find the recipe if you Google it.

Did you live here when OG Turkey twizzlers existed?

....

Yep. No argument there. I see plenty of fat kids at my children's school - fortunately not mine - but it's definitely not because of what they're eating there. There are no vending machines, they don't get any choice what they eat at lunch as there's a set menu every day and that's it, and they don't have anywhere nearby to leave the school and go to the shops.

I was quite shocked in Spain this summer, when we took a 1 hour bus journey between 2 little towns, at the number of fast food places along the motorway ( the usual suspects: Burger King, McDonalds etc).

There is a reliance on ready meals and takeaways which has increased massively in the last few years. It’s not helped by people not having been taught to cook and time being tight.

I know a number of middle aged people who know how to cook but don’t bother using time as the reason, but then spend as much time sorting out ready meals and takeaways. There are loads of quick, easy and relatively nutritious meals that can be pulled together if people were a little more organised.

Meal planning made a massive difference to our household, as did batch cooking especially in winter months when we were not out and about on a weekend as much as we would be in lighter and warmer months. But I am of a generation that learnt to cook at home and with grandparents and also learnt to cook at school. Not only did we learn to cook but we also learnt about nutrition. I also view food as part of health. However, we are now moving to the third generation in some households who can’t cook which is extremely sad. At the same time there is so much accessible information out there about nutrition and how to cook. It’s very much a public health issue.

There will be people due to infirmity, disability etc who will struggle to be able to cook and are potentially at the mercy of a ready meals, but the majority of people are not in that position.

Thank you to whoever suggested the pasta and cherry tomatoes. I had forgotten to get what I was going to eat tonight out of the freezer, so used the last of the homegrown cherry tomatoes and ramped things up a bit with some leftover pesto, rocket, herbs, garlic and ground walnuts. All cooked and dished up in less than 15 mins.

There’s a documentary called The Men Who Made Us Fat, I think it was a BBC project. It’s very interesting, looking in depth at the way the food industry in the US and the UK steered people away from more traditional ways of eating - and started the obesity epidemic. In the UK the two key strategies were:

• introduce snacking on sugary, fatty foods to break the routine of three normal meals a day. Remember the finger of fudge? Just enough until it’s time to eat? The snack you can eat without ruining your appetite? They deliberately set out to expand / disrupt the ‘eating window’. And that’s something I really noticed when I moved from the UK to France in 2007. In the UK people pretty much ate wherever they wanted to, and it was seen as acceptable to snack when you wanted (thanks Cadburys and Greggs). In France, even now, adults do not snack. It’s seen as a thing that children do - and only at certain times ie after school goûter. There is no equivalent of Greggs and chocolate is, even now, perceived as something pretty luxurious to be enjoyed at certain times.
• make artificial, highly processed versions of popular restaurant meals available - things that people were interested in eating but didn’t necessarily cook themselves - curries and desserts initially. So a busy mum, who by this time is probably working, (so households are becoming more cash rich, time poor) can give her family ready made curries and Sarah Lee Chocolate Fudge Gateau for dinner rather than slogging away to peel veggies, cook meat, make gravy etc. to make something boring and old-fashioned that’s nothing like as tasty / salty / sugary / exotic as the ready meals.

The Uk came early to all of this, and it’s definitely coming to France. The cultural weaknesses that they have to exploit will be different, but it’s happening already. France is protected because it’s so so proud of it’s food culture, but the cracks are showing.

I love cooking so cook from scratch most days.

Ditto. I can't make bread to save my life.

QVC sells meat pies?! :o

I get told my cooking needs salt, as I don't cook with it, but it's rare that I think a ready meal is too salty.

I have lived in various European countries and still own a home in Europe. Each country has its positives and negatives. My issue is that a lot of posts on mumsnet refer to Europe (one homogeneous entity) usually when pitting it positively against the UK with sometimes little or no objectivity. That is what I find frustrating and ignorant.
My experience of living in Italy is that generally people have less processed food than the Uk. However, as has been noted, in my experience Spain, Greece and Italy (Italy less so) now have their fare share of processed foods and ready meals.

That’s super interesting! Thanks for sharing. Looks roughly as one would expect, I think.

I would love to have a link

I lived in Italy for 6 years and (tbh) I was happy to come back to the UK.

Italy is beautiful and I love going back there, but there are many things that I found difficult: people not paying taxes; horrendous costs of car and house insurance; limited awareness of other cultures etc etc.

BUT - there is no denying that people eat far less rubbish food there (at the moment - it will be interesting to see if that starts to change). Sorry if you don't like that or can't accept it, but generally Italians have far more interest in - and understanding of - food than we do.

A saying that I often heard there was "Spend on the food, save on the doctor". In my experience very few people in this country think about food like that - as a way of staying healthy - it's all about cost and convenience.

So it's not about Britain's 'faults' - it's just interesting to see how different countries do things and what we can maybe learn from them.

One of the reasons I don’t like most convenience foods is the over saltiness or sweetness of the products. Also I just can’t justify the prices anymore.

This is what I said earlier on the thread about language being important.

Most people on this thread are switched on regarding food choices etc yet not clear about UPF compared to processed (cheese, yoghurt, pasta, frozen peas)

There's many posts saying about information being freely available but if someone wishing to improve their diet mistakenly thought it was processed food that needed avoiding, they may not bother at all if they thought that any simple food ingredients need to be avoided.

May I just say one word re. ready meals - SALT.
Got some meat pies from QVC recently - they were so, so salty - like someone had had an accident and dropped a salt cellar into them. But the reviews were all that they were v. good and not a word about excessive salt!
Actually I find all ready meals very salt.
However there are many people in UK who are old, frail, sick, disabled and live alone who are martyrs to the dreaded ready meal as they can't cope with home cooking any more; have all groceries delivered and can just about manage to stagger from the fridge or freeze to microwave with over salted ready meals. So don't know how people like this eat in Italy/Spain - I suppose relatives cook for them.

I agree with you to some extent, we do need to think about it globally. However because we are quite an isolated country most of the things we can do to change it are by changing our policies, laws and culture.

I don’t think you need to call me pathetic over this.

Processed doesn’t mean ultra processed, it just means you can’t grow it as is or you’re putting two or more things together.

Eg butter. It’s just churned milk but the churning is a process.

Much of the north of the UK, particularly west, it's basically rocks with a thin layer of earth and you're lucky if you can grow potatoes.

You're making it sound as though Northern Britain is some barren wasteland! Most of it is good for growing some but not all crops, much like anywhere else. Large parts of Sicily and Calabria are very barren, with frequent droughts, which is why it's traditionally been very poor. That hasn't prevented it developing a very strong food culture, but that's not due to any great wealth of natural resources.

There is a really easy no-knead bread recipe I use on Youtube that means I effortlessly make it two or even three times a week (or just once and freeze the extra). I make them into rolls or pannini type shapes rather than a whole loaf. They are so simple that I haven’t bought bread for weeks.

You can buy wholegrain pasta

I was really surprised to see that pasta isn't fortified, yet white flour always is (by law). I wonder how they get round that?

Edited after Googling to answer my own question. Pasta is apparently made from unbleached flour, so fortification isn't needed. Every day is a school day!

I don’t get your logic at all. If I buy a ready made fish pie I don’t need to dedicate time- ever- to making one. Surely that’s the very definition of convenience?! Time poor= ideally spend zero time on cooking a fish pie

Durum wheat pasta is a complex carb. Its also minimally processed with very few ingredients. Anything with more than one ingredient is processed. Pasta is not unhealthy. Often what people pile on it, is!