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.

@Pluvia posters asked that those of us who don’t have ready meals post meal plans.

Never.

To be fair, ready meals are in their comparative infancy in Melbourne, even when compared to the UK when I left in the mid-2000s. I still remember a tradie remarking in amazement that such things existed.
Having said that, I didn't eat them in the UK, either but this was because my late DH would rather have poked nails in his eyes than buy them, loved cooking, and did it all.

Sometimes gousto includes those microwave rice pouches. That's it. I've plenty of leftovers in tupperwares that I can defrost and microwave.

@IhearyouClemFandango we have chickens too so dippy eggs, pancakes, omelettes are a regular for lunch 😋

No. My dc do occasionally eg once a month.

Not anymore. They are expensive, portions are usually too small, full of salt and my stomach never feels OK after them.

It has oil in (usually sunflower) and, often, salt. It is also processed as it’s cooked.

Yes the diet there is much better

You have a takeaway though which is probably no better than a ready meal.

🙋‍♀️Sorry yes I do.

In my defence :
I didn’t when the kids were at home (except for pizzas)
I always cook from scratch for the grandkids.
I don’t use oven chips. I think they taste disgusting.
I never get a takeaway.
But
My ready meals frequently include M&S fish pies, M&S curries and Charlie Bingham food. I also eat a lot of fruit and vegetables and I do cook more often than I don’t.

DT’s were weaned on pouches and jars - made life easier, they enjoyed the range and grew up with no food dislikes. Never had to cook separate meals for different people in the family.
We use Cook regularly and buy prepackaged fruit and veggies. Microwave rice is a regular and I buy things like onions ready cut, gravy and sauces in pouches.
Everything and anything for an easy life!

I don't eat ready meals generally. The last one was probably 8 months ago.

However!
I went on a diet a couple of years back and lost 2 or 3 stone. I am now very trim and happy. During the main phase of my weight loss I did actually buy ready meals a couple of times a week.
The reason being the calories, fat etc ate printed right there. I didn't need to do any napkin math to wotk out calorie values like with home cooked meals. Lots can be low calorie if you look for the right ones and they don't all taste terrible (some are a sloppy mess though!). I was so busy with all the other stresses of life and finding time to exercise that it was nice to have a night that I didn't have to cook and didn't have to add up all the various bits for a home cooked meal. I will say I did choose the meals based on their calorie value, I think m&s so some that are under 400 cals which is very good even as a lunch.

I'm on a diet - portion control so yes.

A couple of times a week:

microwave pouches about once a week (Tesco brown rice spicy Mexican bean - topped with spinach, avocado, jalapeños and hummus - great quick lunch)

a tin of soup once or twice a week

Frozen pizza about once a month for the kids. I don’t really like pizza that much so sometimes if I’m lazy I’ll have one of those BOL plant pots - the Thai one is amazing and pretty much just veggies

The rest of the time we eat reasonably healthily and we are doing the best we can. We both work 50-60 hour weeks and have three kids, two nursery aged. Five years ago I made all my own bread, hummus and pesto but now we buy all sorts of cheats…even lazy ginger.

I won’t lose sleep over it. I get up at 5 every day to exercise as it is and am dead on my feet most nights by 8 but it’s something I’m sure I’ll think more about when I feel I have bandwidth!

[Start rant]
This is a feminist issue and as women (most of us I assume) we need to be talking about the politics of food and how we got here and why so many women who shoulder the burden of care for children are now being stigmatised for reaching for a ready meal after a long day at work followed by a commute and the pressures of modern motherhood.

As the main cook in the household and a woman who's tried to cook vaguely healthily for myself and others for 40+ years, I get bored out my skull standing in the kitchen with my knife and my onions and celery and carrots or whatever. Cooking for most people is a daily chore and just because some people manage to love doing it, or approach it as another challenge to be conquered, doesn't negate the fact that lots of us would like a holiday from bashing out the healthy dinners ourselves.

We need to think about how we can change our work-life patterns so that women aren't run completely ragged and forced to rely on the cheap labour of other women. We need to think about how we can provide healthy affordable food to the people who are struggling to get by and how we can better feed the elderly and sick good food.

I don't know much about the Zoe project but I know it's headed by three men and I know how medical science has always ignored women and used male as the default. If you've heard Tim Spector speak about food (I have) you'll know that he's gone down the wormhole on this food issue. As someone back-thread noted, eggs and bananas etc are all full of chemicals.

Don't blame women, don't blame mothers, look at the food industry. And don't keep displaying your perfect menus produced from your own organic hens and gardens or whatever. That isn't what life is like for huge swathes of the British population and you're coming as smug show-offs.
[Rant off]

We have the Cook ones when we go to Center Parcs sometimes - the mushroom risotto or fish pie. Does that count?

Never at home though.

Not often, although it does depends on what you class as a ready meal. The last time we ate ding microwave meals was when had our kitchen refurb 5yrs ago. We have pre made pizzas, lasagne and burgers every couple of weeks although I do occasionally make them from scratch. It takes hours to prove pizza dough and ages to make a lasagne so ease wins. We have fish fingers, swedish meatballs and chicken goujons too, those are processed. The kids love pot noodles.

i agree oven chips are vile. We had au pairs when I was a kid and the 90s frozen oven food put me off for life. I was fed oven pizzas, chips, fish fingers and packaged tortellini for years and can’t stand any of those things!

Oh we do buy pouches of rice and tins of spaghetti hoops too!

We don’t eat any ready meals except for pizza & sometimes frozen fish and chips.

On occasion when there is a massive yellow sticker discount, they are good to have on occasion in the freezer for emergency situations. I would never go out of my way to buy.one.

@Pluvia

Why don’t you suggest to the author of the book that contained the study I referenced explores this topic?

Yes, I agree with that.

Mnetters can come along and say their partners are the chief cooks but if you were to look up and down the land right now and see who the people who are putting food onto the table, I think that labour would be an unarguably feminised labour.

So when there is a discussion like this, about the perils of quick and easily prepared food, without recognizing this context - it's easy to suggest that individuals should just up their game, cook from scratch and remind people that even the most minor of shortcuts is poison.

But what is that achieving. If this is a dire health threat then it needs to be tackled on a society wide level. And parading your own labour heavy, expertly executed wife-work is unhelpful.

@takealettermsjones I got these https://amzn.eu/d/14ziGSA there are slightly cheaper ones but the lids aren't hinged, just bendy plastic that will eventually snap, so I went for these hinged ones. THere are also sets that are lots of different sizes and a mix of round/rectangular, but I realllllllllllly wanted same size/shape and this was the best I could find.

They arrived the other day and seem pretty solid and well made to me :D

Yes absolutely. Our kitchen is tiny. There’s one square of worktop space that also holds the kettle and toaster, the cooker is rubbish and the only space for the fridge and crockery is the far side of the house.
To have space to cook you have to wash up and put away every stitch of everything.
Then do it all over again because of different dietary requirements. Damn right I have a shit ready meal every week or 2, and what we save on takeaways we put in the ‘new house with a proper kitchen’ fund.
I also batch cook but it’s not a satisfying, wholesome, smug-making experience. I’d go so far as to say it’s bad for my blood pressure.