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

Before you all start yelling at me, I know that there are of course millions of households that eat a healthy diet, cook from scratch all the time, carefully choose ingredients etc etc. But my feeling as a foreigner (have been living in the UK for almost a decade though) is that ultra processed food, pre cooked and ready meals etc are very much normalised here and part of most people every day life. It’s pretty obvious just by looking at the supermaket aisles really.
Curious to know if people are generally trying to stay away from these and make healthier choices or whether it is generally so embedded into our lives that we are not even noticing?
Second disclaimer is that I am not pointing any fingers, infact I often buy these myself but what makes me think about this is that I would have never bought these types of meals when living back in my own country (also less available than here overall)

Yes - and the sad fact is that most people don't have access to good quality tomatoes and herbs. Supermarket tomatoes are mostly mediocre and herb selections often disappointing. And not everyone has a decent grocer's nearby (or the time to shlep round multiple shops for simple ingredients).

Another thing that perhaps influences peoples' food choices - how bloody early it gets cold, dark, wet and miserable over here!

Personally I find I'm far more susceptible to saying 'soddit, let's have a curry, or an M&S stew or tagine' when it's cold and dark at 3pm, wanting nothing more than to snuggy on down in my pj's with a book, then eating something carby and fatty - even better if it's followed up with a hot pudding and cream.

When the weather is better, and the days are longer, I'm more likely to eat a lighter meal, and enjoy the ritual of prepping it.

What you are saying though is exactly what I meant when I said that the UK has an issue with food culture to start with. In Italy (and I am sure in many many other countries all over the world, not just Europe), even the poorest people have some basic food knowledge, in fact I'd say that it's perhaps even more common across lower income classes as they are more accustomed to cook from scratch, can't afford to eat out or have lots of ready meals etc. I come from a very humble family, nobody was educated (I am not talking about uni, not even high school), low income etc but yet eating healthy food, cooking our own meals with the best possible ingredients available to us, eating tons of fruit and veg has always been a staple in our home. Same for many other people in a similar situation I know back home. It is a food culture issue, not an income issue.

It's not Brit bashing to say that many Brit's diets are atrocious, it's a fact. The majority of food in our supermarkets are UPF and we need to wake up to the fact that it's not normal and is literally killing us.

I was at secondary school from 1985 - 1990 and that doesn't sound like our curriculum. It was called 'Home Economics' - it included two terms of cookery and one term of needlework per year, but no 'marketing'. The cookery terms were focused on cooking, with some elements of food hygiene and nutrition. There was a mixture of food you'd class as healthy (e.g. chicken casserole) and not (e.g. flaky pastry, which we did over two weeks to make sausage rolls). I didn't continue it to GCSE level but we had three years of Home Economics in that format.

You can buy fabulous fresh produce in the UK. If you think everything is tasteless, you need to shop elsewhere.

I was just thinking this- there seem to have been a lot lately!

I think it’s rude.

Pasta and garlic bread? Carbs and carbs?

I'm from Spain where my children have amazing school dinners, so different to English school dinners. They have four courses every lunchtime, always including a salad course. They have fish and lentils or other pulses regularly.

And yet childhood obesity has increased massively in Spain, and is now among the highest in Europe.

The high st with its butchers and greengrocers etc is touted as being some kind of paradise before supermarkets. I'm just about old enough to remember it and my Mum hated it, she loves the convenience of the supermarket. The high st was a nightmare of dragging the kids and shopping from shop to shop, nowhere to change the baby, getting pissed wet through in winter, little choice, often not that fresh either. Yes, we've created a monster, but sometimes our specs are a bit too rosey.

Surely in Italy pasta with a few tomatoes would be a first course? Not the main meal. I’d still be hungry after that, there’s no protein there.

I don't think we can lay all the blame at the conglomerates' door. One of the reasons I choose to work part time is so I can spend more time cooking good food because it's important to me but I can guarantee you that if I were working full time I would be serving up a lot of ready meals. Not because I like eating them but it's a simple equation of time available versus need to eat and live.

I'm from Spain where my children have amazing school dinners, so different to English school dinners. They have four courses every lunchtime, always including a salad course. They have fish and lentils or other pulses regularly. They have a fast food day on Fridays which includes pizza or burgers or nuggets and chips but the rest of the time it's very balanced and healthy. I can't imagine how I would have reacted to being served lentils as part of an English school dinner, but it wouldn't have been good. Sometimes my children moan about the food - like most kids they prefer a MaccyD's - but they get on and eat it because they've always had it and are perfectly used to it.

I'm not idealising though. There's a trend the last few years which I see as a kind of in-between stage bridging fresh cooking and fast food dependence, whereby the big supermarket chains have built prepared food counters for daily meals. Different kinds of pasta, paella, fish, curries. All sorts. It's cooked from scratch onsite and all day so it hasn't come vacuum sealed from a factory but it's still not like a home cooked meal where you can control exactly what goes into it. They're incredibly popular. I didn't think they'd take off at first but was surprised to find all my Spanish friends using them very regularly, several times a week sometime. I thought they were still going home and cooking their meals from scratch. Those who don't buy them tend to have their older relatives - mother, aunt, grandmother - nearby who aren't working and often spend the morning preparing the family meal. A grandmother lives opposite me and every day as we're leaving for school she's leaving too to go to the local shops and buy her fresh ingredients for that day's meal. Every single day. But she's retired and has the freedom to do that. I'm pretty sure my grandmother generally did the same.

We have the supermarket meals occasionally and if I were working full time we'd have them a lot more. They're definitely healthier than a Burger King but they are symptomatic of a trend. A trend I believe isn't just driven by advertising and sugar addiction but by the prevalence of two-parents-working famillies, which was much rarer a couple of generations ago.

I think its good to reflect as a nation where we are going wrong. We are letting our children become obese, and leading many of them to a shortened life and/or a life with significant health issues leading to a much poorer quality of life.
If we can't take a bit of true criticism for their sakes that's really pathetic.

I don't think we can lay all the blame at the conglomerates' door. One of the reasons I choose to work part time is so I can spend more time cooking good food because it's important to me but I can guarantee you that if I were working full time I would be serving up a lot of ready meals. Not because I like eating them but it's a simple equation of time available versus need to eat and live.

I'm from Spain where my children have amazing school dinners, so different to English school dinners. They have four courses every lunchtime, always including a salad course. They have fish and lentils or other pulses regularly. They have a fast food day on Fridays which includes pizza or burgers or nuggets and chips but the rest of the time it's very balanced and healthy. I can't imagine how I would have reacted to being served lentils as part of an English school dinner, but it wouldn't have been good. Sometimes my children moan about the food - like most kids they prefer a MaccyD's - but they get on and eat it because they've always had it and are perfectly used to it.

I'm not idealising though. There's a trend the last few years which I see as a kind of in-between stage bridging fresh cooking and fast food dependence, whereby the big supermarket chains have built prepared food counters for daily meals. Different kinds of pasta, paella, fish, curries. All sorts. It's cooked from scratch onsite and all day so it hasn't come vacuum sealed from a factory but it's still not like a home cooked meal where you can control exactly what goes into it. They're incredibly popular. I didn't think they'd take off at first but was surprised to find all my Spanish friends using them very regularly, several times a week sometime. I thought they were still going home and cooking their meals from scratch. Those who don't buy them tend to have their older relatives - mother, aunt, grandmother - nearby who aren't working and often spend the morning preparing the family meal. A grandmother lives opposite me and every day as we're leaving for school she's leaving too to go to the local shops and buy her fresh ingredients for that day's meal. Every single day. But she's retired and has the freedom to do that. I'm pretty sure my grandmother generally did the same.

We have the supermarket meals occasionally and if I were working full time we'd have them a lot more. They're definitely healthier than a Burger King but they are symptomatic of a trend. A trend I believe isn't just driven by advertising and sugar addiction but by the prevalence of two-parents-working famillies, which was much rarer a couple of generations ago.

OP, half French here and I do agree. We eat way too much crap as a family so I’m certainly not on a high horse, but I think there is another factor - quality of produce. Your example of simple pasta with cherry tomatoes probably wouldn’t taste amazing because the tomatoes we get in the UK supermarkets are pretty bland. Produce aisles are stocked with tasteless, out of season foods that have probably been frozen in transit. And a limited variety too. It’s not exactly mouthwatering or inspiring. Go to a produce aisle in France and you’ll see juicy, fat tomatoes, things like endives, cauliflowers the size of your head, foods that are sourced mainly in the same country and are seasonal. If we expect blueberries in January we’re not going to get taste or quality. That’s a cultural thing, nobody outside of chefs really get seasonal stuff, other than knowing that July is the best season for strawberries (because we grow them).

Yes I totally agree, OP.

High street butchers, fishmongers and greengrocers very hard to find. In-store fish and meat counters likewise. This doesn't happen on the Continent. Does it happen in the USA, idk.

Who does this benefit? Profit obsessed supermarket chains. The British consumer, already susceptible to high-fat, high-sugar, easy-fix food, is now having a very hard job to navigate the outrageous price deals, buy reasonable size portions and cook from scratch affordably.

Retail engineering designed to maximise profit and make us reliant on supermarkets. While also destroying communities and high streets.

British people are so gullible, it makes me angry.

If you don’t mind sharing what country you’re from then I’m certain I can think of something negative to say about it. Of course, you won’t take it as an insult…!
The amount of Brit-bashing threads on MN is getting really tedious now.

Pasta with a few tomatoes is just a bowl of carbs with a bit of veg. Not a balanced meal

Bullshit. It absolutely is. Don't forget the "carbs" also contain protein if you are using fresh egg pasta, which most Italians (and me) use. You also have tomatoes, garlic, parsley, salt and pepper, and wine, not forgetting the olive oil too. You can add chillies, or olives. That's several of your thirty different things for the week.

If you want to be more "balanced", I use the same base sauce and throw in some clams. Cheap as chips if you buy the frozen ones.