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.

It’s not all that thin - I’m talking tray, not a tray.

That made me smile. My Dad tells me my Great Grandmother would roll in her grave if she knew there was such a thing as ready made Yorkshire puddings and roast potatoes!

I have a stock of aunt Bessie’s roasts because I actually quite like them and I’ve never made brilliant roasties and hate all the oil!

Personally I would just rather spend money on a good quality premade item, so an assembled but uncooked fish pie or prepared chicken that has been pre-marinated than spend my free time or weekends batch cooking and living out of a freezer.

The earliest I can start cooking is 6pm and its gone 7pm by the time DH gets home, I also work full time and don't want to be lumbered with the cooking every night just because I have to start my working day earlier so cooking most things on the evening just doesn't work for us.
I like to spend my evening with DD rather than fussing over the hob and ignoring her as she's too young to really get involved, and equally I'm not going to start making a fish pie at 7:15 after she's gone to be and be eating dinner at like 8:30 or later.

Interesting though as was pondering the other day. One of my DC's friends eats ready meals almost every night and has a wide range of food they eat eg curry, chinese etc. My DC don't but have much more plain taste (but do eat veg). I was wondering which was best!

My partner does all the cooking now so I only eat them when he isn’t here but before we met I’d eat them fairly frequently and have a takeaway probably once a week. I really, really, despise cooking. HATE it. So much so that I often just stay hungry rather than prepare food or I’ll have a bowl of cereal, some pre-chopped fruit or a smoothie instead of a meal. If I could live on astronaut mulch I’d be happy, I really cannot emphasise enough how even thinking about cooking stresses me out. It’s not an eating problem, I love eating and all kinds of food, I just want nothing to do with the preparation

I think processed food is a big problem and is a main contribution to the obesity crisis and ill health populations are now experiencing (not just UK). The food industry/government has as lot to answer for.

I try to go as non processed as much as I possibly can but even small things like making a homemade lasagna/chilli etc may involve canned tomatoes or passata so it is really hard to be totally 'clean'. I make my own cereal - wouldn't touch any shop bought stuff.

I buy the M&S ravioli ready meals for DD when she has lots of rehearsals (drama student) so won’t be eating with the rest of us and wants something quick. She likes them and it solves a problem.

I would guess once or twice a week we have “pre-prepared” meals, which are basically ready meals but just not in the plastic tray. Pizzas we add toppings to, a meat pie for the omnivores we serve with veg, a Charlie Bingham fish pie (also with added veg) if I know we have a busy week.

The plastic tray ones for vegetarians and pescatarians tend to be pretty rubbish, so I don’t really bother.

I buy M&S vegetarian mousakka once a month.

The ingredients look fine to me and it is only once a month.

IngredientsWhole Milk, Water, Tomatoes (8%), Potatoes (7%), Aubergines (6%), Semi-Skimmed Milk, Carrots, Dark Speckled Lentils (contains Wheat, Gluten) (5%), Wheatflour contains Gluten (with Wheatflour, Calcium Carbonate, Iron, Niacin, Thiamin), Whipping Cream (Milk), Mushrooms, Cooked Chickpeas (3%) (Chickpeas, Water, Salt), Onions, Courgettes (3%), Red Peppers, Tomato Paste, Rapeseed Oil, Single Cream (Milk), Mature Cheddar Cheese (Milk), Cornflour, Garlic Purée, Medium Fat Hard Cheese (Milk), Salt, Ground Spices (Paprika, Nutmeg, Bay Leaves, Cinnamon, White Pepper),

Maybe once a month, if that, we'll get a prepared curry and add rice, onion bhaji and naan. It's a lazy Saturday night dinner as an alternative to a takeaway.

Yes they do look fine.

Im not condemning ready meals.

I agree. It's modern life. If I was a housewife I'd make my own bread and whatever, but we need two wages. So supermarket bread it is.

I'm not even going to look at whether there's a load of crap in the coffee I chug like it's going out of fashion. If there is I don't want to know 😆

There's a weird snobbery that comes with people declaring that they don't eat ready meals. I'm not accusing the OP of it or any user in particular, but in general it's definitely a thing.

These days there's such a range of ready meals that they're not all ultra-processed garbage by a long shot.

I'm gluten free by choice and I eat the occasional "Amy's" ready meal. I also occasionally put in an order to Green Cuisine (or Green Chef, I always get them muddled) which are healthy ready to heat and eat meals that come in little vac bags of 3 elements (broadly 1 carb 1 protein 1 veg).

I like having a meal that's easy to grab for the days when I don't have the energy. If I didn't have something like that in the freezer I'd stop at mcdonalds more 😳 in reality I have one maybe once every two weeks.

I also like to keep a tin or two of soup at work so I don't get stuck without lunch if I've forgotten to bring it. That's pretty much a ready meal!

You could buy gluten free pasta and a sauce easily enough, also again they podaily would have chilli,

My other go to for easy food is Brie and JS Kalima olive bread. This is delicious, ask my bathroom scales….

People like to get pretty on their high horse about any food that you haven't made in your own kitchen from scratch that evening but the reality is it is perfectly possible to buy good quality pre made food.
There is a world of difference in the ingredients between a fresh preassembled meal that you stick in the oven and a value range microwave meal.

@TedMullins that made me smile. I suppose Im fortunate I enjoy cooking. I wish I was less food motivated! I am a Labrador!

Same.

Still breathing, last time I checked.

I've always been a cook from scratch person but now my DC are 14 and 17 I'm buying more and more ready meals. They both come and go at different times and I got fed up cooking a meal only to find out they had already been out for Macdonalds or Nando's , or they've been invited to stay to eat at their friends house. DH only eats with us one or two nights of the week as he's usually had a lunch out with a client so there has become less and less need for me to cook at all. I do still batch cook occasionally but the kids usually just want to grab a ready meal out of the freezer when they want it as it's easier for them. We've started having weekend brunches just to make sure we sit and eat together as a family at least one day a week.

Class is and should not be a thing in this day and age.

Food Poverty has nothing to do with class!

Food Poverty is completely different and is a very real situation that needs to be recognised but, that has nothing to do with 'Class' which is such an outdated term.

@apairofblueeyes100 why do you think of tinned tomatoes or passata as, for want of a better word, "not clean"?

On average once a week or every two weeks. I enjoy cooking, and much prefer the taste of home cooking, but sometimes I simply cba.

I think it's good to make some effort to reduce one's intake of processed food, but I don't think it needs to be feared as much as it is either. Too much of anything is bad for you. I'm sure the odd ready meal is fine.

Not very often apart from pizza. OH and I bought some frozen moussakas from Lidl from their Greek Week range though as I love moussaka but just wanted something to shove in the microwave after work. They were £3 each so not cheap as such but really tasty

It is processed. If you look on the ingredients it has a preservative in there as it already cooked.

I buy convenience foods like pizza and breaded chicken, oven chips - but that's the closest. In all honesty it's because I just don't like them. They always have a tomato sauce which tastes really acidic to me - so I always make anything tomato based myself.

There wasn't a distinction between a fish pie and a ready meal, I was the one who brought up the fish pie and said I did class it as a ready meal. But you also keep claiming you're talking about things that come in "plastic trays" and most preassembled fish pies are raw and in a foil dish as they are cooked in the oven.

We probably have one most weeks, from Cook.
We cook mostly from scratch but we are time poor and have little freezer space. Our farm shop sells the Cook meals so we grab one of those. I like them.

I also sometimes take a supermarket ready meal to the office. The Tesco prawn curry is a guilty pleasure. I give no shits that it is processed, going to die of something so might as well have something I like.