beans mash and sausages is a healthy meal

[madhurjazz]

Mother in law thinks its junk food. But the beans contain 1 of your 5 a day, mashed potatoes are just veg and a good source of carbs and the sausages are full of essential protein.

We often have ketchup, this has been shown to reduce many cancers like prostate, and a glass of juice.

Seems healthy to me and not junky.

So much twoddle on here.

Broken down, there is a nice amount of carbs, protein, fat & salt - all are required as part of a child's diet!

We need salt to stay alive!!!

Wowzas that's taken me 20 mins to read all the replies.

Points taken about the veg, I'll add peas and sweetcorn to it.

Not sure about the reduced sugar and salt beans, don't these have artificial sweeteners that are way worse than sugar?

I'm not about to swap the meat for veg. Vegetarian sausages are way more processed and quorn is not a natural food.

No - reduced sugar and salt beans just have less sugar and salt in. Heinz uses stevia to make up the taste. Artificial sweeteners are only worse than sugar in the world of mumsnet anyway and definitely don't cause obesity Which why if you are used to the normal ones they don't taste so good.

Can't stand beans anyway so doesn't bother me

Blimey, some of you lot would have a stroke if you saw what my DS's diet is like. I long for the day he'd even consider eating sausage, mash and beans!

So I'm sorted tonight sausage mash and beans (butchers sausages obviously)
Tomorrow corned beef hash (tomatoes on top)
Wednesday Fishfingers chips and peas
I'm going old school

Lol at some posters saying they only do this if they are feeling lazy! Lazy is stabbing the cellophane on a ready meal and bunging it in the microwave for 4 minutes.

I might try these beans again. I'm sure in the 90s the had that aspartame sweetener and that gives me a headache.

Tomato puree and chickpeas with spices would probably ttaste good.

Sausages aren't healthy.

www.theguardian.com/society/2015/oct/26/bacon-ham-sausages-processed-meats-cancer-risk-smoking-says-who

That's nitrate Apple.

We often have ketchup, this has been shown to reduce many cancers like prostate, and a glass of juice.

This made me smile - I grew up in the US in the 80s and Ronald Reagan got quite a lot of flack when his administration re-organised ketchup into the vegetable category for school lunches. It was a big news story.

I don't know if its healthy or not but the idea of sausage, beans and mash disgusts me. I'm Aspie and the potential for the sauce from the beans to run everywhere - urgh!
I don't eat sausages - bad stuff in them.
Mash and beans - would never eat those together, for reasons outlined above. And I would never eat them 'out of the house'. If I ate these things, I'd have had to make/heat them myself because no-one else would get them hot enough to be other than vomit-worthy, and mash has to be smooth but not sloppy... oh, the whole meal is a minefield...

Have a chicken sandwich.

The only reason potatoes don't count as a vegetable is that people these days tend to eat them in small portions: you need to eat large and frequent portions of boiled spuds (and proportionately smaller portions of the meat dish) to get your vitamin C from potatoes. In less affluent days aka when I were a nipper, people lived perfectly healthy lives on a diet that mainly consisted of large helpings of spuds and tiny by today's standards helpings of meat or fish.

Reading MN I do really wonder how on earth many of us made it to adult hood with all this 'rubbish' 'junk' food that were once considered a normal every day fairly healthy meal!

OP - sausage and mash is a fine dinner for adult or child.

Is that right cory? Why is sweet potato included? And you don't have to eat that much potato to get great nutrients, just one potato really. No different to 7 strawberries or 2 plums- they don't contain that much, but it's still good enough to be a portion.

I really think it's because the government assume people will eat a few portions of potato a week without needing to be told

It sounds lovely to me, probably because it wouldn't agree with me!

It will be a cold day in hell before I eat low salt/sugar ketchup and I will never be convinced to step away from my lovely mashed potato! I have potatoes with every evening meal, I love them.

No OP, don't get low salt low sugar beans. Instead you need to make them yourself with organic beans you grew, dried, soaked and cooked yourself, home-grown heritage tomatoes and unicorn tears for natural sweetness.

Of course it's not a meal to be eaten every day, but nor is anything. If you ate grilled chicken, wilted spinach and sweet potato mash everyday that wouldn't be 'healthy' either.

We need variety in our diets so we get a range of vitamins and minerals. We are lucky that we are able to have more variety in our diets than previous generations, though I'm not sure that necessarily translates into more vitamins as a lot of fruits and vegetables will travel further and be stored longer, which can deplete vitamin content.

I also get frustrated with the idea that there is such a thing as a healthy diet. What is healthy for one person might not be for another. Even taking out food allergies and intolerances, different people have different needs. A diabetic will need to restrict carbohydrates, whilst someone who is very active (including most children) will generally need to eat plenty of carbs. Most people should try not to eat too much fat (but we do need fat in our diets for certain vitamins and minerals, and I believe we need more fat than Slimming World etc say) but those who are underweight do need a larger amount of fat in their diet. The truth for Mr or Mrs Average falls somewhere in the middle.

My DS is underweight (0.4th centile for weight yet between 25th and 50th for height) and we got referred to a dietitian. The list of foods we were advised to give him would make most people faint! Extra butter in mashed potato, full fat milk with extra milk powder, lots of crisps, cakes (good protein in that from the eggs), sausage rolls and just fortifying anything we can with more cheese, butter or cream. That, plus veg, carb and protein is what makes up a healthy diet for him.

So many people tut at the idea of letting children eat sausages, pizza or baked beans yet boast how 'healthy' their children are because they eat six pieces of fruit a day or drink a huge smoothie.

On a more serious note I worry about what message some children are going to grow up with when a simple dinner of sausage and mash is deemed unhealthy junk.
We already have plenty of eating disorders and many self conscious pre teens/teens, especially since the growing use of social media has occurred in the younger age groups. If so many people are then pushing the quite often unhealthy message of what is good/bad food, ignoring the idea of little and moderation , with just outright 'that's crap food' instead then what on earth are our children going to grow up like.

I see so many people who have managed to develop a warped sense of what is a truly healthy and balanced diet - it worries me.

Please do NOT use the words naughty/bad/sin etc to describe food to your children.
You are storing a whole lot of issues for their future if you are not careful.

Health properties of lycopene below ...

www.independent.co.uk/news/ketchup-cuts-risk-of-cancer-1156620.html

Sorry, but not my definition of healthy.
Sausages belong to Group 1, carcinogenic to humans. The same group as cigarette so just you know www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/. Canned food is still processed food with additives, so not healthy. Mashed potatoes. I would say normal food.

It seems odd to me dissecting the nutritional value of a single meal, rather than looking at a diet over a day or a week.

We eat sausages, mash and beans occasionally. We always eat fresh fruit at every meal - no puddings. Lunch might be vegetable soup, bread, cheese and salad veg, followed by fruit, breakfast muesli and either milk or yoghurt, with fruit juice. A fruit flapjack for tea.

In that context, I can't get too worked up about the nutritional content of that one single dish - to me, it is the overall diet that counts.

*Some of the language used about food is worrying.

Naughty meal
Sinful

I really wish food wasn't seen like this. Food such as bangers and mash has been a UK staple for ages. By giving it labels, it just creates an unhealthy obsession.

The report this morning about how people over eat and take in more calories than they claim is probably the key food and diet health issue.*

I agree, a hundred times over, it's really concerning.

There's such a lot of shit spoken on this thread it's unbelievable and the posters pretending that they only feed their children on mung beans and distilled angel tears is even worse.

I hate beans with mash but i had sausage and mash last night with peas instead, there was nothing wrong with your dinner I often wonder what some mumsnetters do eat some can pull apart an apple as unhealthy