Are two hot meals a day better?

[Coldmealsadness]

Two foreign ladies (from different countries) in a month complained to me that British people are depressing because they eat cold lunches. They both like a hot lunch and a hot dinner.

So some boring questions.
Are hot meals better?
I feel that two hot meals a day would be nice but I often don't have time. I'd always be cooking! I do like a hot meal in the evening. I have seen some mothers on here complain that their children aren't getting hot meals at nurseries so obviously it's really important to some people!

Are British people famous for cold food?

Do you eat two hot meals a day?

@CurlewKate , it just does. Have you ever had a quiche (or a cooked pie...), and heated one half but not the other?

I like dal but I think cold dal sounds shit. Some leftovers from dinner are OK cold though.

@Coldmealsadness "I like dal but I think cold dal sounds shit. Some leftovers from dinner are OK cold though."

You make my point. It's entirely down to preference. That's how she liked it.

Hot meals make me sleepy so cold lunch, hot dinner for me.

I really do not understand the obsession with the temperature of food that comes up again and again on MN.

Some days I might have anywhere between 0-3 hot meals. I genuinely don’t see what difference the temperature makes. If I heat up a croissant for breakfast, why would this affect whether I have soup or a sandwich for lunch?

@StragglyTinsel , I'm probably not the best person to answer, but if I have had a cooked breakfast, I'm ok with a salady lunch, but it's probably more to do with the nutrients in the meal.
I don't eat soup but eat reheated stews for lunch. It would not be very nice to eat it straight from the fridge.

Is the warm croissant tastier than a cold one?

Cooked breakfast would be something like scrambled egg on toast.

But why does the temperature something is served at matter?

And what does the temperature of your breakfast have to do with the temperature of your lunch or dinner?

It’s all just food. And the quality of a diet is not determined by the proportion of hot to cold meals.

I like hot food on cold days, its comforting.

On hot days i like cold food more, but id eat a light hot meal

@StragglyTinsel , two things.

If I have had the cooked breakfast, I'll have had a fair bit of protein and fat, so will be happy with mainly leaves for lunch.

Some things are not very nice to eat cold.

I have no idea why, for example, a warm mince pie tastes nicer than a cold one, but somehow it does. Maybe it's taste, maybe it's mouth-feel.

That’s not really the question though. Yea some things taste better warm. Others are better cold.

And sometimes hot food is more appealing than cold food.

But why do people have some kind of quota in their heads about numbers of hot meals per day? You see it regularly, ‘well they had a hot lunch at school, so that means I need to give them a cold dinner’ or the entire premise of this thread.

Who cares if all your meals were hot or cold or whatever mixture of meal temperatures you might have had that day? What if you add in a hot snack? Is that going to upset some balance of the universe thing?

I just don’t get it at all. It comes up pretty regularly in MN.

I guess it's the same reason some people like hot drinks. Hot tea and coffee, if you drink it, is nicer in winter than a frappe or iced tea or tea/coffee that's gone cold.
The temperature does matter to most people.

I love salads for lunch, especially in spring summer. I’m not sure what’s depressing about that.

@StragglyTinsel , as I pp, I'm not the best person to ask. I usually know what I want to eat, and I'll eat that. As long as it's roughly the right temperature that's ok. e.g. cold salad, cold ice-cream or yoghurt, hot pizza, hot curry etc.

Today it is cold so had a salad followed by a hot dish.

One thing I am fussy about is the 'density' of the food. A huge bowl of rice/pasta with veg doesn't cut it, but a bowl of lettuce with a boiled egg or followed by a small lump of something dense (e,g, bar of snickers) would.

I struggle a bit with carbs (bread, rice, pasta, pastry, biscuits, crisps etc). Just don't see the point of them.

Depends what you mean by 'better' and what kind of hot meals and cold meals you're comparing tbh. Healthwise (and satisfaction-wise probably, especially if it's winter ), if your cold lunch is usually a meal deal, or the equivalent but at home, then a nutritious and filling hot, home-cooked meal would be better. If your cold meal is a nice salad with lots of tasty ingredients and vegetables then no, I don't think the temperature of it makes any difference.

I take a home-made lunch to work. I definitely prefer it when it's soup, or leftovers I heat up, but a salad bowl is just as good, especially in summer. A sandwich on good bread is good too, but not every day.

So now not only have we got the pressure to plan, shop for and cook tea we’re supposed to do the same with lunch now because hot food is always automatically better? Sod that.

The temperature matters in terms of whether you want to eat it now/in general.

But why is there some mental quota about proportion of hot to cold meals per day?

What difference does it make (beyond just preference at the time) if I have a cheese sandwich or a cheese toastie for lunch? One is hot. But having a ‘hot meal’ rather than a ‘cold meal’ doesn’t make it inherently ‘better’ as a dietary choice.

I must say unless the food is hot, or has a hot element - it doesn't feel like a complete meal.
I eat usually one big salad a day in the summer, but there is always something warm to go with it or incorporated into it...

I think it's because I grew up in Bangladesh and we only really do hot food... unless its dessert or snacks. even breakfast is hot.

I only like mince pies if they've been heated up.

I forget that things like a cheese toastie or eggs are hot meals. My children had scrambled eggs today. I guess when I think of a hot meal I think of dinner food and you can pack more nutrition into the "main" hot meal.

@PuppyMonkey "So now not only have we got the pressure to plan, shop for and cook tea we’re supposed to do the same with lunch now because hot food is always automatically better? Sod that"

This. Soooo much this. Hey, let's pile more work and/or guilt on mothers* because cold food is sooo much less nutritious, sustaining and satisfying than hot.
*should be parents, of course, but we all know who will take all this crap on board.

For lunch I often make my children a plate with fruit, nuts, salad, olives, cheese (cottage, Swiss or cheddar), boiled egg, maybe some ham, or chicken, or some rye bread or breadsticks etc. Then yogurt and berries. They love it and I don’t feel a hot meal would be any more nutritious.

I think a lot of people would not consider a toastie to be a 'hot meal', a hot meal traditionally would meat, potatoes and two veg.

Back in the days of the dinosaurs that is what school dinners were comprised of.

@PilatesForAll

where do you find the time?

If people are talking about meat and two veg, they should say that. Because ‘hot meal’ clearly includes a whole range of things that many people eat at lunchtime - soup, toastie, baked potato, etc. They are all meals (can be pretty substantial and nutritious depending on what’s in them) and they’re all served hot.

You are definitely talking about days of the dinosaurs for school dinners being meat and two veg. I’m old and my primary school offered toasties, macaroni cheese and such like at lunchtime.

It doesn’t take long to scramble some eggs. Making a salad or sandwich is as much or more of a faff.