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.

Rarely tray stuff but I do bloody love a Crosta and Mollica frozen pizza. And sometimes some curry Supernoodles

Sometimes! I'm in my 20s and still live at home with my parents but I do the majority of the cooking for the household simply because of the way our working hours line up. If either one or both of my parents will be home in the evening, I cook an actual meal, usually from scratch, either in time for when they get home or I make something that can be kept warm and dished up throughout the evening depending on when people are hungry.

I always put portions of what I cook aside in the freezer as "single" meals for when both of my parents are working in the evening but if, for whatever reason, I've not got one of these available I have a few ready meals in the freezer as a last resort. I am a bit fussy with which ones I like though. I'll usually get a chicken and bacon pasta or a carbonara one and then defrost it, stick it in a saucepan and add fresh mushrooms, other veg that I have spare and some extra herbs etc. I can't really eat a ready meal straight out of the plastic without sprucing it up first haha!

I used to eat microwave meals when I was in my early-mid 20s and lived alone but I haven't had one for maybe 6 or so years now. What actually classes as a ready meal though? Does a tin of soup count as one? I do keep an emergency tin in my desk drawer at work.

Ha ha - Is it wrong that i'm now desperate for this! XX

Our local farm shop does its own ready meals that are really good actually, so we sometimes have those.

I have said upthread we have tens of have a jar of pasta sauce in as my DH will use that on the occasion he does cook…

I eat GF pasta at home.

GF ready meals are also prohibitively expensive and just one portion.

I could probably buy a chilli, my habits have just evolved around not being able to eat most ready prepared stuff.

You would be surprised how much stuff has gluten in that you wouldn’t expect, for example stock cubes so lots of things have wheat in because of that. Even marinades etc.

It’s really annoying picking up packets and examining them - over the years I’ve adapted and now just stick with what I know.

Also been many occasions over my life where I’ve just not been catered for and I mean I was once served a dish of VEG at a wedding with a pudding of apple - despite the venue knowing I was gluten free. Imagine eating just bloody veg and fruit for a day whilst drinking. So I prefer to know I can eat rather than rely on chance as there’s been many times where I’ve been desperately scouring to find something I can eat and have struggled. Travelling and airports are the worst!

Occasionally, I might have a covent garden soup, otherwise, no, we never eat them. I like cooking and often batck cook and freeze things like lasagne, curries etc

Whenever we have lasagna, but that's not very often. I just can't be arsed with it. It has a ridiculous effort:time-to-eat ratio.

Are you my twin? Only I don't have a partner who cooks!

The irony is I love cookery books, just to read and look at the pictures🤦‍♀️

@Bumdealoftheweek microwave rice is processed if you consider any food that has been cooked or prepared in any way to be processed.

Ben's Original Rice (microwave pack - side note, when did it lose the Uncle?!)
Ingredients:
Steamed Basmati Rice (98%), Sunflower Oil

The oil is in there to stop the rice grains from sticking to one another.

The way the rice is heated and packaged determines it's shelf stability these days. Same with a lot of packaged and tinned wet goods.

You might not like it but class is a thing and poverty, and by extension food poverty is a thing closely linked to class.

Thats not really my opinion nor a topic I wish to debate.

Exactly the same here!

No, we don't - very occasionally if we know we're going to be in a rush but not as a regular thing at all. They're not very nice imo.

However, I'm surprised that you need to ask this question. A brief look at any supermarket will tell you that a lot of people clearly are consuming these meals quite regularly, simply because of the vast amount of space that's dedicated to them.

No judgement from me. Some people can't cook because they are time poor. Some can't cook because of disability or long term health issues, including mental health issues. Some may not realise how unhealthy they are, and appreciate the convenience. Some don't know how to cook for themselves.

That’s what my DH says. He always says it’s such a shame how long it takes to prepare a meal vs how quickly it’s eaten.

We have a Charlie Bighams meal a couple of times a month but I work a couple of evenings each week so they're handy to have if I don't feel like cooking when I get home at 8.30. Otherwise I cook from scratch, occasionally using a Simply Cook slice kit. I tried gousto and hello fresh last year but I thought the quality of the ingredients they supplied was really dire and it took ages to sort out all the different components.

The microwave broke recently and I can't afford to replace it, so no, now we don't eat ready meals. We didn't often before then tbh. When there's 6 of you they cost a lot of money. I (or my DCs) can cook from scratch cheaper. And bigger portions - important when growing teenage boys!

We do have freezer food occasionally- pizzas, chicken stuff, chips etc. but I hate oven chips so I don't eat them that often.

I need to read the Ultra Processed Food book.

You would be surprised how much stuff has gluten in that you wouldn’t expect, for example stock cubes so lots of things have wheat in because of that. Even marinades etc.

Soy sauce is the bane of DD's life as she likes Japanese ready made things. Gluten free soy sauce is so easy to get, I wish they'd use it in ready made sushi, poké bowls etc.

You are amazing OP and of course you aren't judging people that have to make a ready meal of nuggets and chips.

Maybe you could start a group/tread to show all of us how to:

• Make from scratch every day whilst:
• Work full-time and bringing in a good wage to enable for holidays etc.
• Looking after children.
• Manage and deal with any illnesses/mental health issues.
• Deal with death and any other health issues.
• Deal with any other issues we all have!

If you could let me know where above my husband and I could feed my children better, i'd really appreciate it

Does this include things like quiche etc which were having this evening with new potatoes and salad? In which case yes we do but how do people find time and energy to cook every night from scratch when working full time, kids etc? Charlie Bigham is fresh food though frozen so don’t think that counts? How is frozen pizza express pizza different to ones in the restaurants?!

I buy the occasional soup if I can't be bothered to cook. When I lived in the UK I would sometimes buy fish cakes, but those aren't the kind you put in a microwave and eat on their own. You still have to bake them in the oven and then make a salad or whatever you want to have with it. I now live in Sweden and there aren't that many ready made meals around and the ones that are I don't fancy.

Exactly. I think it’s very easy for people to say “you could just” but unless you have actually lived with such a limitation you don’t know exactly how challenging that is. Just because a food can, or is typically gluten free, doesn’t mean it will be.

Like grated cheese? They often use wheat starch to stop it sticking together. There are alsorts of food where it just gets slipped in. I have just learnt what’s safe and what’s not and basically learned to make stuff myself.

I think where the lines can be blurred is in non-English cooking. Eg Indian ready meals aren’t just from a plastic pot - you can buy them freshly made from sweetmarts too. Nutrition is often worse because some chilled then reheated ready meals are better for diabetics (eg boil in a bag basmati is a million times better for your blood sugar levels than real basmati). So if you ask an Indian person they will say no, they don’t eat ready meals at all, but do. Also some tinned veg used in Indian and African cookery has no much salt or sugar it should be classed as a ready meal - eg mango puree, ‘saag’, any tinned legume.

Also unless it’s freshly made at home fresh pasta is ALWAYS a ready meal while dry pasta isn’t. But many people don’t realise this & will spend so much money on what is an unhealthy food. I crunched the numbers and eating 3 fish fingers & baked beans everyday is usually healthier than some of these fresh pastas.

We don't have microwave oven so we never eat ready meals. I do feed kids with fish fingers and chicken nuggets sometimes.

Yep been there with the weddings . And I know about the stock cubes from when I could cook.
My partner is actually more fastidious about checking the ingredients than I am. But the comment about the sauce\chilli was because it is something available at our Co-op.
Again have obviously been very lucky as have found food at the airport normally on!y a one choice sandwich though.
It's amazing how different experience people have.

Maybe twice a month? I usually keep some in the freezer along with batch-cooked stuff. They're useful in case of commuting delays, illness, unexpected change of plans eg kid was expected to eat at holiday club but didn't go.

I get the kid M and S Tastebuds or the Cook ones, and adult ones generally from Cook.

Many much older people have to live on them!