AIBU and very stupid to say this isn't junk /convenience food?

[dottytablecloth]

Right am really exposing myself for a potential flaming here but anyway...

Am making a sausage casserole today with the following ingredients:

Butcher sausages
2 peppers
Tomatoes
Mushrooms
Onions
Tin chopped tomatoes
Fusilli pasta

And now for the bit a JAR of Lloyd Grossman tomato sauce

It's a made up recipe a la dotty so please forgive me if that's not what a sausage casserole is supposed to be like!

Anyway SIL was her earlier and says she wouldn't feed that to her 3 year old as it's junk food.

I'm mortified

I thought it was quite nutritious.

I've a very fussy 20 month old who loves sausages.

AIBU and deluded to serve this up and think it's not junk food?

Your SIL sounds like a bitch.

Sausage casserole is wholesome home cooked food.

Some people are wound wayyyyy too tight over what their kids eat

It's not junk food.
Okay, the pasta sauce probably has a fair bit of sugar in it, but to offset it, it has a LOT of tomatoes in it and tomatoes are extremely good for you. You have protein, vitamin C with the peppers and tomatoes and some carbs, plus tomatoes have lycopene.

Show your SIL this:
healthyeating.sfgate.com/health-benefits-eating-cooked-tomato-products-4444.html

I would have done one tin if chopped tomatoes and one carton of passat with garlic and onion already in it. Then a few pinches of dried mixed herbs. And not used the LG sauce. I do like LG sauces as a back up though the smoked bacon sauce is Seleucids with just a hint of chilli.

Sausage casserole in our house is sausages browned off and kept whole. Onions garlic, red lentils, tin of mixed beans or just cannelini beans, carrots, sometimes peppers and mushrooms. Then a more gravy like sauce. A stock cube or stock pot with water, some Worcestershire sauce, about half a carton of passata just to make the sauce thicker. Served with mash, peas and green beans.

Sauce from a jar would have lots if salt and sugar in it. Generally speakibg, don't know about LG in particular.

To use jars all the time wouldn't be good. But now and again is ok.

Tinned tomatoes contain only tomatoes. I draw the processed line at anything with added sugar and salt.

That's not to say I don't occasionally feed my boys processed junk like baked beans (though I do get the low salt / sugar versions), or breaded fish fillets. I just don't pretend to myself that it's anything other than a convenience meal.

There used to be a distinct separation between homemade from scratch and processed ready meals. But today that line has blurred and it's more of a continuum than two different boxes...

And processed doesn't equal junk/ bad/ unhealthy, and unprocessed doesn't equal healthy.

Also if we're getting down to it, what is 'processed'? Chopping is a process, heating is a process, mixing ingredients together is a process, adding spices is a process... And thats called home cooking!

When people say processed do they mean 'processed in a factory' or 'processed in a weird unnatural / untraditional way'? It's a tricky word...

Sassyb0703 nice dig at kids with allergies, my son has a nut allergy, he gets seriously ill, it's not a food intolerance or because we are precious about food, it's just some foods could trigger an anaphylactic shock.
Please have the common sense to separate unnecessary food snobbery and what a real food allergy is.

I agree with hairy, my ds is also allergic to nuts, it's not being fussy, he'll end up in hospital if he eats them!

Passata with Garlic and onion...
www.sainsburys.co.uk/shop/gb/groceries/canned-tinned-packaged-tomatoes/sainsburys-passata-with-onion---garlic-500g
...and citric acid and salt. 2.5g in the entire carton. OK, no added sugar, but there's an ounce of sugar in the entire carton.

It's hard to get excited about the LG sauce, really. There are sauces I've picked up and put back on the shelf - like the JO ones which are extremely salty and ones which really are sugary and full of thickeners or even maltodextrin, but I can't really get my knickers in a twist about the sauces which are a little closer to home made in composition and ingredients.

RJ YOU listen carefully, I'll even type it slowly for you. Adding a little bit of sugar and a little bit of salt to a dish does not make it junk food.

There is, in total 4.8 g of sugars per 100g, tinned tomatoes are usually at about 3.5g per 100g and that's before they have been processed further to make them into a sauce & tomato puree has 14.4g per 100g, so safe to say it's a tiny amount of added sugar.

I never denied there was 4.8g of sugars per 100g, what I am disputing is the way you are trying to make out it's 6 BIG teaspoons of added sugar. The vast majority of the sugars is TOMATO - quite an essential ingredient in TOMATO pasta sauce. Goodness.

Hic Yes, sugar is the 4th ingredient on the list and the ingredients after sugar are oil, salt, lemon juice and pepper. It's not processed crap. It's tomato pasta sauce, made from tomatoes, tomato puree, garlic, basil, sugar, oil, salt, lemon juice and black pepper. That is all. It is 4.8g per 100g the vast majority of it coming from tomatoes!

I've read all the replies but have to confess I'm feeling a bit confused now with the discussion over grams of sugar in tomatoes!

I do give my ds baked beans maybe once a week but I feel worried that they are being described here as processed junk.

I honestly feel like I haven't got a clue about how to feed him healthily. It seems like all the things he likes are really bad for him

Fruit, too much sugar
Bread, shouldn't be eating wholemeal
Pasta, processed crap
Beans, processed crap
Sausage and pasta 'casserole', too much sugar and processed crap

My list could go on.

I'd love to know what other people feed their children!

I'm working on "feed DS whatever I have the time, money, energy to cook" diet.

Seriously, the world has gone through loads of food "fads". I have diet issues due to health problems - but DS eats healthily, runs about like a kid should, and trousers fall off at the waist.

Now, if only that would work for me.

People will pick apart anything anyone posts regarding food. Information and advice also seems to change on a fairly regular basis.

Do the best with what you have. That's all anyone can do. Stick to fresh where you can. Cut corners when you need to. Fish fingers chips and beans on a Friday when your all shattered and just got back from swimming won't hurt anyone.

We all have busy weeks where it all goes to hell. We all have better weeks where we can roll out banquets fit for a king.

As long as it's not poor quality processed crap followed by stodgy puddings on a daily basis your probably ok

dotty it sounds as if your DC eat perfectly well! Don't worry. Most people could usually, theoretically, improve their diets but then again, there's reality. It's very easy to pick holes and suggest improvements on the internet, but most of us can't live up to that the WHOLE time...

Ps I have noted your sausage pasta casserole recipe for future use, it sounds delicious

Sometimes you can get the impression from MN that everyone else is feeding their kids nothing but lentils. All you need to do is look around at other family's shopping trolleys or picnic lunches to realise that there's a reason that shops stock jarred stuff and food shaped like dinosaurs.

Baked beans are not crap. Beans are a very nutritious healthy food, low fat, protein and carbs as well as being a vegetable. Yes there's a bit of sugar and salt in, but in balance, it is an efficient nutritious food.

Good quality fish fingers are also decent food. Just check the label for the fish content and quality.

Pasta, fine. Bread, fine. Fruit, fine.

Unless there's a special issue, you'll be healthy on moderate portions of a broad mix of foods.

Being ridiculously uptight is not healthy.

Dotty, if your sausage pasta bake is typical, then you're doing OK.

Just felt the need to stir the pot a bit by adding this (I don't know which LG tomato sauce OP is using, so this is the tomato and basil one)

INGREDIENTS
Tomatoes (60%), Tomato Purée, Garlic, Basil (2.6%), Sunflower Oil, Sugar, Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Sea Salt, Concentrated Lemon Juice, Black Pepper.

Now you can see from that, the extra sugar is not only below the basil (at 2.6%) but below sunflower oil too. So not very much, really.

NUTRITION INFORMATION
TYPICAL VALUES PER 100G
Energy (kJ) 256kJ Energy (kcal) 61kcal
Protein 1.5g
Carbohydrate 5.8g - of which sugars 4.8g
Fat 3.4g

So the vast majority of the sugar in the jar is going to come from the tomatoes and tomato purée, and in fact might be lower overall than if you used homegrown sun-ripened ripe tomatoes. And if you're wondering how all those extra ingredients add up to 40% - they don't. Most of it is likely to be water, which doesn't have to be listed as an ingredient. :)

Op I wouldn't worry about the occasional jar or baked bean!

I know ive spent too much time on here when I start worrying about the sugar in fruit, the occasional baked bean or bit of squash. I tend to give my head a wobble and go back to rl where all the people I know do the same

Yes Thumb I had pointed that out several times, but certain posters seem to prefer the 'It's evil it has 6 spoons of sugar in it' drum banging

Jesus Christ folk would argue the sky is green just to feel justified.

There is added sugar and salt in this sauce. Both will be added to improve shelf life and taste after processing. Not to improve nutritional quality.

Both are best avoided and can be easily by making simple adjustments.

But you know, rock on confusing people like the poor op admits to being now. It's perfectly fair and perfectly right to say this is neither a terrible nor a wonderful meal. She obviously asked because she was interested in whether she could improve it. Hope you're happy to have utterly confused her to make yourself right, and blatantly misquoted people to make yourself feel big.

A jar is 350g so it's not 6 spoons of sugar, it's 4. In a whole jar. So when you divide that by how many people are eating it and the fact that it's mostly tomato sugar, it's not really enough to get your knickers in a twist over.

Family size jar is 660g.

Advertised as serving 4.