you can't possibly call a meal junk food if it had all of your 5 a day!

[bonded]

So a few weeks ago we had a play date that went well. Friend just what's capped me asking for advice for a meal tonight. I said recently that this went down well and is super healthy:

Baked beans, one of your 5 a day
Fish fingers, good source of ohmega and protein
Frozen sweet corn and peas, frozen has more nutrients.

Pudding frozen bananas whipped up into ice cream with a little chcoclate sauce and chopped dates.

Said friend called meal a bit to junky. I thought it was really healthy...

Lolling at some of these comments!!

I love baked beans, never heard of anybody making their own though.

Me and dsis brought up on freezer stuff - beige tea as me and dh call it now. Luckily my dh is a great cook so not much of the fish finger type stuff now. I love a fish finger sandwich tho.

It is impossible to say how healthy someone's diet is based on one meal.

Some of the people on here have the most bizarre ideas about food. What total shite have you people been reading? "you can't class frozen veg as a vegetable"....what the fuck else is it, chopped liver?

ITs fish and beans and vegetables and fruit. It's a perfectly fine meal for anyone. Leave the organic guatemalan quinoa and line caught fish to the boring, worthy and mostly wrong types....

Socially - I live in London. So of course I don't. We take the kids to the beach maybe once a month, and stock up for the next. I mean it takes 30 secs to chop some fish up. 2 mins to dip in egg/ breadcrumbs etc. Then 2/3 mins to turn oven on/ throw fish on tray/ throw board and knife etc in dishwasher. Cook.

Bonded - yes, my children will shrivel up any minute as the eggs they just ate were from the local market, not hand laid by myself

Durham - some people's tend to be McDonald's, icecream, crisps, cadburys chocolate, sausages, biscuits, chips, cake - for us fish fingers and beans fit into the 'crap treat box' very nicely. Our tastiest treats are things like 85% dark chocolate and pistachios - not everyone's ideal

bonded if you made that for my DS on a play date, he'd wolf the lot. He'd be grateful and I would be grateful too. You've made him a hot meal, with 5 of his veg/fruit and he'd have enjoyed it.

I LOVE MN. So totally bonkers and completely on a different planet to my RL. You drive to the harbour, buy fresh fish, go home and marinate it in your homemade pesto, before digging up some yams from your allotment that you've fertilised with your family's shite (waste not want not)?

Well, that pisses all over my 20 minute trolley dash round Sainsburys, you win mum of the year.

It's not the healthiest meal you could possibly offer a child, but it is balanced and would be eaten. So you've got my vote bonded. Except my DS doesn't like bananas. Please provide home grown, lentil based superfood dessert option instead.

There are no such things as healthy and unhealthy foods or meals, jut healthy and unhealthy diets. This meal is fine to have. If anything it needs more carbs as children need energy. Fat is also required in a healthy diet. The sugar content is nothing to worry about. Beans, sweetcorn and peas are all counted in 5 a day. If someone lived off this meal for all meals everyday that would not be healthy as the key to a healthy diet is variety. Apples are 'healthy' but if you ate only apples you obviously wouldn't be healthy. Don't worry OP, as part of an overall healthy diet the meal was perfectly fine.

No, thats not super healthy! Fish fingers high in omega 3 oils? hahaha, Captain Birds Eye really has brainwashed you hasn't he? Your meal is mediocre at best.

Mini - we don't drive to get a fish. We drive to the beach one day out of say 30 so our children can have the freedom of running on the beach, and have fun. It happens to sell fish at the same time..
I don't live near a sainsburys

Artandco I can see you are very pleased with the way you manage your children's diets and it all sounds lovely.

But it comes across as a bit smug.

I don't make my own fish fingers because I fundamentally can't be arsed. And I don't think that makes me a worse parent than you.

Socially - I'm not being smug. I'm saying it is possible. You do one thing, I do another. It was you who asked who actually works full time and cooks half decent food and I answered.

I agree minikieves, I don't drive, and DH drives but preferred local driving so no chance of going to tge sea anytime soon. It's a balanced nutritious meal, no it's the ultimate example of super healthy, but it's fine as part of a well balanced diet.

I agree socially I can't be arsed either, dd woukd much prefer the bird eye variety, as long as she eats something decent I'm fine with that. She is skinny enough already, with ribs in show to gave me worried about the finer arts in chikdrens gourmet cuisine.

Reading this thread reminds me of Goodness Gracious Me "I can make it at home for nothing"

OP, I wouldn't call it super healthy but it's perfectly reasonable. It's not Turkey Twizzlers and fried Mars Bars FFS! Fish fingers are something I feed DS on days where I don't have much time to cook anything else and he loves them. I made my own once, and I would like to add that I'm a fairly competent cook, but they tasted nowhere near as good as a Birdseye fish finger. And I didn't find it any more cost effective either.

Next time I'll pop down to my local harbour and for pudding I'll knit my own yogurt

Nearest sea is 5 hours from me and the supermarkets don't do much fresh fish.

I don't think dd had realised that fish don't swim round in the sea in breadcrumbs yet

I'd have swapped the beans for a carb and ditched the ice-cream and chocolate sauce. A banana chopped with dates and a spoon of yogurt would have been healthier and still a treat.

Why exactly are fish fingers 'processed food'?

Is frozen fish a processed food if served grilled?

Is bread a processed food?

Fish fingers are fish, bread crumbs , natural colours and spices

And 100% respect to you, OP, for getting kids, any kids, to eat dates.

I thought pulses / beans offer complex carbs?

I'd be happy if you provided that for my DS.

But I wouldn't call it super healthy either.

It's not junk food but when I make it (and I do sometimes) I consider it a (and I hesitate to use this word as I'll get jumped on) crappy dinner. It's a quick meal that I know everyone will eat and enjoy but I don't consider it a good meal, iykwim.

I'm not a food snob or the food police but as someone with Type 2 diabetes (and a LOT of close family members with it too) I do need to make the healthiest choices I can for me and especially for me DC who have a greater than usual chance of Type 2 diabetes in the future.

And it does only take 5 minutes to make your own fish fingers so I don't know why so many sneering posts about it? Buy a packet if you want but people were only mentioning that's it's actually a quick and easy job if you do want to make your own.

Artandco clearly puts in a lot of effort making sure her children eat healthily. Surely this is a good thing??? Why on earth would it be sneered at?

I wouldn't call your meal "super healthy" and I doubt that it contains all your 5 a day as the portions sizes wouldn't be big enough. However, it is fine and certainly not junk food.

I don't get all the snobbery regarding frozen food. I thought that frozen veg often contains more nutrients than so called fresh. I also find it quite ironic that people who disapprove of buying frozen food do a lot of batch cooking and freezing. What is the difference?

Blu any food that's been through "production" is processed. If it's been altered in any way from it's natural state..then that is processed. I suppose if you were going to be really weird about it then cooked food might be processed....but not really.

I try to avoid all processed food basically. It's always got some shite in it. Extra salt, colours etc.

There's nothing wrong with making your own but nutritionally frozen fish and breadcrumbs is the same regardless of whether you assembled it or someone at Birdseye did. Homemade might be nicer but it's not necessarily healthier... Especially if you add pesto which is mostly oil, salty cheese and lipids. Delicious but not nutritionally better.

So really claw most food is processed tgat you buy from the supermarket like fresh meat, fish vegetables etc

This thread is really making me crave Birds Eye Chicksticks. They were terrible junk. Potato and chicken breast mashed up and coated in breadcrumbs. When I was a teenager, I used to grill them then eat them in soft white rolls covered in tomato ketchup. They stopped making them, I checked a few years ago. I wonder if the Birds Eye Chicken Fingers are as good/bad, does anyone know?

Now if I want chicken fingers, I make my own: free range chicken breast cut into strips, coated in first milk, then seasoned flour, then eggs, then breadcrumbs and oven baked. But I do miss dirty dirty Chicksticks.

Apologies for missing commas.