Do you eat ready meals regularly?

[RedRosette2023]

Following from another thread - I heard a statistic the other day that said up to 90% of people regularly consume ready meals. As in, in a plastic container and from the microwave or oven.

I sense that MN is quite middle class so likely not representative of the whole of the country. But I was surprised by that statistic.

I genuinely can’t remember the last time I ate a ready meal. I occasionally gave eldest DC an Ella tray when they were weaning, a meal I could keep in my changing bag and have handy in case we were out over tea time. My youngest refused any pouches etc so he has never had one. He’s always just eaten what we’ve eaten and taught me baby food is totally unnecessary, albeit convenient at times.

I am coeliac so it’s possible my habits have been formed due to necessity - I would struggle to pick up a ready meal I can eat with ease. M&S do some and I think GF ones slightly more available now but I just don’t buy them.

I’m also not a SAHM Mum, I work a pressured job four days, my DH works away mostly during the week, I use hello fresh etc 3-4 days. But I always find time for a meal. My ready meal is something batch cooked out the freezer.

No judgment - just genuinely interested.

Yes, I eat microwave meals, mainly because I hate cooking. I manage to cook from scratch max once a week and will do a few portions. The other days I either eat out or have something simple like toast.
The ideal I suppose would be quick and easy healthy food like veg you can just put in the microwave.

I actually live in a country now where microwave meals are very expensive, basically the same price as eating in a cafe, but I still get them sometimes.

I can't vote on this because it really depends on the definition of 'ready meals'. If it includes frozen stuffed pasta, baked beans, frozen carrots, tinned mushy peas (my guilty pleasure!), cottage cheese - I could go on - then yes I have ready meals. Cooking from scratch, say a chilli, uses tinned tomatoes and tinned kidney beans. The issue isn't ready meals but what we called in the Olden days 'convenience foods'

Never really, everything is cooked (by my amazing husband!) he does use some of those meal kits where the spices/paste are ready to add to the rest of the ingredients but everything is fresh. We had a ready meal a few months back as we had to be somewhere and didn't have time to cook after work, honestly it tasted so bad I didn't finish it.

I never gave any of my children processed baby food either, they just ate normal food. I find it funny the obsession with feeding small babies Ella's kitchen stuff, I seemed to be in the minority on the mums group I'm in not turning to the packaged rubbish. There's some clever marketing going on with that brand, lots of mums buy into it (many middle class too!).

While they say 90% buy them regularly I can't see what they define as 'regular'.
This is how the 'regular ready meal market' is broken down. Only 24% say they use them often. Almost half of people either have them as an occasional treat or in an emergency so the 90% and regular in the same headline is a bit disingenuous.

Yeah, Buy Cook meals occasionally. They have the same ingredients that you would make at home, so from that point of view, anything you make at home is processed too! I would not class those as UPF.

I'm a weird person who never uses my microwave to cook with. Its only there for defrosting or warming up coffee. Nothing else. Could do without it tbh.

Yep, most nights as I hate cooking and they're quick and easy ways to eat.

Wow if they include premade cakes into the equation then I'm not surprised it's so high

Never at home but we usually pick something up when we visit my MIL because there's never any food in the house and I don't like to turn up there and start cooking.
Her idea of dinner is poached egg on one slice of toast.

@AFishCalledKeith and @Sissynova

Sounds like my surprise was totally justified as my interpretation of what was said isn’t actually factually correct either. So less my “judgment” and more that I was mislead and it’s not as it sounds.

yes to all of this!

No. I couldn’t tell you the last time we had one of the complete tray type meals. They are too salty for me. We don’t have a microwave anyway so I can make something much quicker than I can cook one of those in the oven. If we fancy a lazy meal we have something on toast (beans, eggs, smoked salmon etc) a pitta or French stick pizza or we do have fish fingers ans scampi in the freezer most of the time (do the count as ready meals?).

I absolutely love cooking though so I don’t see it as a chore unless I’ve had a
dreadful week!

Yep! We eat them probably around once a week (a Charlie Bighams type thing- usually their creamy delicious pies or the Thai green curry), we also have a takeaway every other week and eat processed meats and the odd slice of shop bought cheesecake. Other than that I tend to cook from scratch and we eat a lot of fruit and veg but sometimes life’s busy and it’s sausage sandwiches for dinner.

DH recently came third in a local 10k and according to this work medical has the heart age of a 25 year old (hes mid 40s) and I’m a normal weight and exercise a lot- pretty fit. It’s all balance- innit?

Fairly often - 2/3x a week. I'm at work/commuting 12 hours a day, 5 days a week and don't get home until 11pm. I'm not going to start cooking at that time.

If we have fish pie, which is about 4 times a year I’ll buy a higher end ready meal. The reason being my kids don’t like it and I don’t want to cook 2 dinners from scratch. I have a friend who eats meals from Cook serval times a week, they look quite nice actually.

Im eating them all the time at the moment as im on a calorie controlled diet and find this the easiest way for me, but i do cook either fresh veg or have lots of fresh salad with them depending on the type.

Never bought a microwaveable meal personally. DC will often ask for one, say macaroni cheese for example but will often accept my alternative of cheese sauce cooked from scratch poured over pasta!

But UPF's?! As a family, we have far too many and this will be changing. I'm reading the book atm and it's eye opening. Had to skip the bit where the research people stitched rats/mice together though; couldn't read that. 😳

Well good for you.

What is the point of this thread, exactly, other than to make people feel shit?

24% are using them in the way I imagine the 90% were. I’d say 24% is probably more in line with my expectations.

I mainly cook from fresh ingredients and have an organic veg box and we don't eat out. But we do get supermarket pizzas (Crosta and Mollica) about once a week which is much cheaper than eating out but a nice treat. We generally eat healthily, wholegrain, wholewheat pasta, pulses, fish, a little organic meat and lots of fruit and veg. But I do keep things like vegeburgers, fish in breadcrumbs, peas and oven chips in the freezer for the odd time I'm too busy or tired to cook.

The point was to discuss a piece of research I found surprising.

Sometimes we do. We buy a ready made lasagne every couple of weeks because fuck making lasagne. I also get a chilli con carne one every now and then because nobody else in the house likes it and I'm not making it just for me (no, I don't want to batch cook it).

Occasionally we get one of those takeaway Indian meal bags, but sometimes I make curry from scratch, and sometimes I use a jar or a paste. It's a balance.

I think they are getting the 90% from only looking at the 65+ age group and including everyone but the 'only in an emergency' category. This is allowing them to say 'up to 90% of people use ready meals regularly'.

Which is a crock of poop, obviously

Thank you for sourcing that. I had images of 9 in 10 people eating ready meals most evenings and that seemed a lot.

Never. They're salty, tasteless and overpriced. Plus we enjoy and prefer cooking from scratch. The closest I come is an oven pizza for a quick weekend lunch sometimes. I do a bit of batch cooking so I usually have a few home-made frozen meals in the freezer for weekday evenings when time is tight.

Yes, the only thing I really use my microwave too cook with is for porridge. But I also use it to reheat leftovers. And it is a combi so we use the grill/mini oven quite a lot.