Can this be true

[Fusedog]

I was at baby gym toady and supermarket bills came up and we were all moaning about how much our shopping is ECt I was especially bemoaning the price of fruit and veg and one of the mums who has 4 children said

well I don't buy any fruit and veg so I wouldn't no I said you mean fresh fruit she said no Fresh or frozen I just have ready meal or oven stuff we have a TV dinner on a Sunday I just buy 6 one for every one*one

I went quite when I can home I told. Dh and he said people do eat like this

Can this really be true no fruit and veg AT all won't you get skervey

I no there are people who eat a lot of oven food chicken nuggets ECt but this can't be true surely especially with children in the home

Well arnt you lucky op your life so life sounds ace!!!

Maybe you should start your own cook book? Maybe you could pop down to the north west and show some mums your cooking skills on a low budget.

P.s butter is a luxury, if your skint too.

Frozen ready meals will include vegetable content (certainly enough to prevent scurvy). It's not a nutritionally ideal diet, but it's unlikely that they are eating no fruit or veg at all just because they aren't eating any fresh fruit and veg.

While it isn't a diet that I would choose, I imagine that scurvy is easily avoided by drinking orange/blackcurrant squash or similar.

A couple I know in their 60's is like this. The husband is trying to lose weight so has a WW microwave dinner and the wife will just have a normal microwave dinner - no cooking from scratch, no fresh vegetables etc. Seems odd to me

rockandroll I know it's disgusting. My local co-op. Apparently the estate is being charged a higher grade or star system I looked like a mad woman knocking on the managers door. It's not fair.

op you made sweeping judgement.

I had a friend who never ate veg or fruit. Because she didn't like it her DCs never got To try it either. Her DH was happy with meat and pototoes so that's what they ate.

I also met a man recently who only eats meat, potatoes and bread. His one concesión in terms of fruit is wine. His GF eats a varied diet.

OP says the woman has the budget, she chooses to spend it on processed shite. Some people just don't care.

Over three million kids live below the bread line - in poverty. Don't just assume they all have a fucking choice whether to have strawberries or a fucking ding meal!

And by meat he means beef. Sorry, my head is in chill out mode today.

Not everyone bought into the 5 a day idea. What surprised me talking about this ages' ago, a lot of people who could afford to spend all year round on fruit, fruit juice and vegetables don't tend to bother, but come Christmas Day they still go for huge volumes of varied veggies and stock up on fruit and nuts.

Don't ready meals have vegetables in them? I thought they were just pre-cooked meals and the bad thing was the tons of preservatives.

The children don't get fed at home, they rely on the school (breakfast club, free school meals) to provide them with nutrition. Some go to school on Monday morning having had little or nothing to eat all weekend. I dread the school holidays on their behalf, it's heartbreaking.

This is so sad, why are those children still under the care of parents who are clearly unable/unwilling to lookafter them?

^^ You'd be amazed how difficult it is to get the children away from their parents and into foster care.

Neglect is one of the biggest issues with vulnerable children.

Fusedog, meat and pasta apparently in various forms. And potatoes/chips

Sorry OP but I had to laugh at the healthy homemade meal where one of the main ingredients is a tin of condensed soup . A tin of condensed soup is just a ready meal in a tin, isn't it?

I have a 10 year old with ASD. He has never eaten fruit. Hates it. It is all wrong from a sensory point of view. He can detect tiny amounts hidden in food. The only thing so far I have got away with is the occasional use of apricot in meat cookery. Fortunately he eats vegetables. Very possible not to like fruit.
Neither of my children, nor my husband, like strawberries. All the more for me ;).

And btw, my dd hates all fruit and veg apart from apples. Short of force feeding her I've run out of ways to encourage her. She won't eat sauces, despises mushrooms and onions and can sense that in a meal from a mile off.

She'd happily live on carbs, chicken and fish.

So even some kids who have plenty of access to fruit and veg just won't touch them.

I was a child who didn't like fruit. As an adult I still don't really like it either as I don't like sweet things. I don't eat a lot of veg either.. I am in excellent health though.. :)

SummerRain - your dd and mine could eat together. It's not easy, picking all the bits of onion out of stuff. And she doesn't do fruit - gagged on strawberries. It's white and brown food all the way.

Ikeaismylocal, if all kids with bad diets were taken off their parents who on earth would look after them????

Yes it can be true, why did you think the supermarkets give as much/more space to ready meals than actual fresh food unless the former gives more sales?

People who "don't eat vegetables" will normally still eat potatoes. There's enough vitamin C in oven chips for example to stave off scurvy. The devastating effect of the Irish Potato famine was partly due to the fact that it is possible to live and raise a family pretty much entirely on potatoes, although it's far from ideal.
A vegetable-free diet only really starts to show its effects when you're about 50, which is when the bowel/colon cancer rates start to rise.

What's the point of driving a few miles to a supermarket where the prices are lower? It means you are using petrol / diesel. Don't those who do this realise that petrol costs money so you adding that cost to the cost of the cheaper goods?

There are far bigger priorities for SS than parents who can't fed or feed their children badly. It is horrific what some children have to put up with.

Yes its a national disgrace that some children don't eat properly, that so many families rely on food banks, and that some parents still have no idea about how to feed themselves properly.

Acinonyx... Dd is the same, the effort she exerts not eating vegetables astounds me frankly. I've watched her isolate and extract every single tiny sliver of diced shallot in her chicken and pasta dish and eat individual grains of risotto rice one by one to avoid any hitchhiking onions

There comes a point where you realise it's a battle of wills you just can't win usually around the time the child vomits on their dinner plate due to gagging on a microscopic piece of vegetable you coerced them to eat

We can have a lovely beige tea party for our girls, they'd be in heaven

I don't agree that it is always a case of fruits and veg being too expensive (although of course it is sometimes the case). You can get a tin of peas for 15p and a bag of frozen broccoli for a pound. Even a baked potato and beans would be better than a ready meal, and costs very little. Why can't we say that some people eat like this out of laziness? Or because they simply don't understand how unhealthy those meals are, or because they just happen to like them, or like the convenience!!! It isn't always about money.

I work with families in their homes, and the area I am in is affluent with pockets of poverty. I have yet to be in a house that doesn't have a big tv, gadgets, fancy mobile phones etc but yet so many cannot afford tesco value peas etc. It can be very hard for some of these families to understand good budgeting or to be motivated to cook, it isn't as simple as saying they have no money. Many weren't ever given healthy foods themselves so have just continues eating the way they were always used to.

It is a big issue, and like the op, it shocks me that people choose to eat like this if they have other options.