To think peoples lives are crap enough without needing the government to interfere with Meal Deals

[Jeansmeansheinz]

FFS just let people have the pleasure of a Meal Deal. I really don't need the Government telling me what I can and can't eat.

maybe if the government didn’t force Women into work, then more women could be home making lunches for their family.
call me old fashioned but once upon a time mothers would be in charge of this sort of thing, and would make sure her family were all fed and looked after, schools would provide proper meals not the rubbish they serve now.
now we have tired over worked underpaid, exhausted mothers who are often far too knackered to cook let alone make endless family sandwiches. And yeah yeah I know there are some superwomen out there, but try and work a 12 hour shift and come home and make 6 packed lunches and a home cooked meal every night. The government are a bunch of idiots .

NOOO, let's not return to the 50s.

Yeah fuck them farmers. They don’t deserve a farthing. Amirite?
@MissyB1
I wonder if you realise how expensive it is to grow, pack and ship one piece of fruit from the farm to your table - and how many expensive steps there are. Or if you ever bothered to think about it or if you just go to the market and buy your fruits & veggies and bitch about how expensive they are - while the farmers’ kids are wearing hand-me-downs from a generation before them.
The farmers farm because they love the land and work the same property their fathers and grandfathers worked before them. Generations of families dedicate themselves to the same patch of land.
Their sacrifices are many - their rewards are few. Some years it’s a loss if there’s a freeze in the spring or other natural disasters like drought.
And the thanks they get from you is you’d like to see a deal.
Well, wouldn’t we all.

—a farmer’s daughter

Don't shut the takeaway before the pub shuts. When I knock off a late shift, I'm famished and it's too late to be clanking around in the kitchen cooking. The takeaway is a lifesaver then.

I went into the bakery Wenzels and bought a sandwich and coffee. The assistant said if I bought crisps it would be cheaper as a meal deal than not buying crisps. That’s all shades of madness so the Welsh gov might have a point.

I bought the meal deal including crisps and ate half the bag, even though I don’t really eat crisps ever.

In what way does the Govt force women to work?

I think you'll find that house price inflation, loss of manufacturing jobs, and deunionisation of the workforce has a lot more to do with women working.

I can understand your perspectives. Fair points

I think Tesco has these. DH sometimes buys them. But it works out a lot more expensive than taking your own fruit or carrot sticks from home, so I don't. I think the pasta salads are full of mayo though.

I don't disagree that a blunt tax doesn't reflect the nuances of the selection, clearly there is a goal of reducing the uptake of poor choices

I do agree the consumer should be incentivised via pricing or other mechanism to avoid less nutritiously harmful options

It isn't dissimilar to the pressure for fast food outlets to offer supersize meals for small incremental costs some years ago, but agree there is a balance between consumer free choice versus making unhealthy options less available

It might not be right to offer a 10,000 calorie tin of tasty grease for £1, so there is a line somewhere where controls are valid for the greater good even if some are able to moderate their intake by only drinking a thimble a day

they would ban ready meals altogether. And convenience foods in general.

Like a lot of autistics, I have sensory issues around certain foods that go far beyond mere dislike. There's no such thing as a shop-bought salad or shop-bought salad leaves that I can eat. I don't know what the manufacturers do to make them taste like Stop And Grow nail varnish, but they taste like that to me. The only salads I can eat are the ones I grow myself. Out of season, I don't get to eat salads.

Like a lot of autistics, I struggle with cooking even on good days. I also have no choice but to follow a gluten-free diet. The combination of all of that means that that Tesco or M&S gluten-free sandwich may be the only thing in the shop that I can have for lunch or dinner. It's cheaper as a meal deal than it is on its own.

Even ignoring the gluten making it poisonous to me, a pasta salad really is not healthy. It's full of carbs and fat and little if any veg. It's a salad in name only.

Because it works as an easy way to make money.
It’s all just about someone making money as usual.
Noone js going to make much of fruit and veg because people won’t eat that in excess. But market 100’s different types of cakes breads and chocolates and you are on to a winner

The nanny state strikes again. Ffs when will this government just let people make their own decisions?! Am I the only one who thinks that it is not going to make one iota of difference to the obesity crisis by trying to interfere with our food choices?

I would like to see deals on fresh fruit, eggs, salad stuff and veggies instead. Why encourage people to eat shit?

But there are deals on these things?! Eggs perhaps aside- although can get 10 in co op for £1.59. I got some fruit from sainsburys yesterday:

6 x apples: 85p
8 x mini bananas: £1.05
Strawberries: £1.80 (400g)
Easy peeler punnet: 89p

There were offers across salad stuff too.

I agree that those are pretty good prices for those items but if someone is financially struggling and trying to keep food costs down then they're more likely to buy a bag of cheap nuggets instead of the strawberries, a bag of pasta instead of the bananas, a loaf of bread instead of the apples and a pint of milk instead of the easy peelers which is probably why malnutrition is a problem in this country. When my budget is low I'd sooner buy cheap crap I can make a meal out of than healthy foods that I could really only consider snacks.

I'm meant to turn those items into lunch at work how?

Fruit salad ?

Ffs! Absolutely idiotic.

People aren’t fat because of meal deals. They are fat because they do no exercise and/ or eat far too much.

For those who do need the calories, like manual workers and others popping into a Sainsbury’s et al on their lunch break. What now? Spending £6/7 on a sandwich and side. No. More likely to nip to the back and grab 2 for £3 deal on the hot counter and get two sausage rolls or pasties. No healthy option there at all.

Just absolute fucking morons! Probably never had bought a basic meal deal in there lives.

And is this surprising when we keep turning half our food stuffs into essentially air based zero calorie options and half into super super high calorie. It’s not surprising lots of peoples bodies can hardly compute that.

A simple sandwich was a pretty safe bet amongst the chaos! And we are going to throw that out. It’s just insanity.

And actually if I look at all my peers - millennials. Barely any are fat. Let alone 60%. Yet apparently we have cancer up 25%. Double that of any other group. So maybe we should go back to sausage and mash, sandwiches and spam.

Agreed. Plus the ‘benefit’ to smoking is that it’s an appetite suppressant. For many with addictive personalities, over eating has replaced smoking now that eating is far cheaper. Our bodies have evolved to find high fat and sugar pleasurable and the more we eat these, the more we crave them.

It is a big nanny state but it’s costing the government and tax payer a fortune with health issues because people are obese. It’s not hard to select a lower calorie meal deal. I always do, but some people will go for the best deal money wise and that could be a triple sandwich and crisps and you’re looking at nearly 800 calories and god knows how much fat and salt. Eating a few calories lower due to government forced deals isn’t going to make people slimmer over night as people need to take action themselves over their weight, as you get older it’s not just cosmetic but real health concerns. But it can’t hurt to just put the healthier sandwich’s / snacks on deals

I see your point in a lot of cases, but I think there's also a lot if cases where people buy sandwich + crisps + bottle of pop because its cheaper than say, a sandwich + an apple. Certainly I would never buy a drink if it wasn't oart of the deal (so actually cheaper) as I have access to water & tea at the office.

Meal deals only piss me off because they always seem to include a drink! I never want a bottle of drink and its a waste of plastic, but it's usually cheaper than excluding it!

Very very true.

I agree it is a class issue to sneer at people eating meal deals - the more expensive supermarkets like Waitrose and M & S don't do them with sandwiches but it's still easy enough to pick up a high calorie sandwich from those places & a high calorie packet of crisps and a high calorie drink. Charlie Bigham ready meals are often very calorific but no one sneers at them because they are expensive enough to be perceived as upmarket.

I don't eat many meal deals because I do happen to shop at the more expensive supermarkets. But neither am I always healthy with my food choices and I'm afraid I am overweight. Banning meal deals will do nothing to stop obesity, people will find other ways to eat unhealthy food if that is what they want to do, and if they are health conscious they will already be buying lower calorie meal deal combinations. They won't suddently switch to lentils and beans., it will just cost them more money to buy the same sort of lunch they currently buy on a meal deal.

You buy them at the start of the week and then take them with you? Sainsburys also certainly has loose fruit as part of the meal deal. People always seem to say supermarkets are bad as there's never deals on fruit or veg but it's not true.

Ugh...control freak alert.

Thank Goodness you're not in charge as your world sounds like a dictatorship.