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.

"I genuinely don't believe eating healthily costs more"

Really? Surely if thats the case nursing homes wouldnt have been trying to get away with giving residents cheap junk food. Its because junk food is cheaper.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/920382/food-care-homes-elderly-scotland-meals-substandard-complaints-nutrition-dementia

It's not cheaper financially, but it takes much, much less time. It's also easier to budget and work out the cost per meal when you buy think ready made.

The real luxury for health and fitness is time.

For me-with all those things- it costs less to eat healthy. It should do considering my user name!

Are there stats on how many people in the UK do not have a cooker or fridge? Genuinely would like to know.

A lot of junky, processed food is easy to portion out and tastes the same every time. People can be sure of portion size and that their kids will like it. On a tight budget, risk of waste matters.

https://www.turn2us.org.uk/About-Us/Media-Centre/Press-releases-and-comments/Millions-across-the-UK-are-living-without-househol

• 1.9 million people living without a cooker (1 in 20 earning under £35,000 a year)
• 2.8 million people living without a freezer (1 in 10)
• 900,000 people living without a fridge (1 in 30)
• 1.9 million people living without a washing machine (1 in 20)

However those stats are probably deceptive, since they only cover households. People who are homeless (which is a broad umbrella, and doesn't just mean rough sleepers - the vast majority of homeless people are hidden homeless eg those who sofa surf, and people housed in B&Bs) probably don't have access or reliable access to cooking facilities.

A lot of people living in B&Bs, sheltered accommodation, or even bedsits don't have access to cooking facilities, only have access to shared cooking facilities which might be disgusting or unsafe, or have inadequate cooking facilities.

I was housed in a B&B at 16 (had cooked breakfast but not much else), then a couple of months in what was supposed to be a foster placement but I wasn't welcome and the kitchen was also disgusting and had lots of filthy litter trays everywhere so I spent all the time either in my bedroom or walking the streets and sitting in parks (pretty much lived exclusively off sandwiches and dry breakfast cereal), and then a bedsit at 17, but it had no heating and a very dodgy cooker. It did have a fridge, but cooking facilities were limited to toaster and microwave. And I was one of the lucky ones.

Yeah, you've absolutely hit the nail on the head. People forget about the time factor. And the time factor isn't just about not having time to spend cooking because of long hours at work or whatever, but if you're sharing cooking facilities with lots of other people you don't want to cause fights and ructions by hogging the cooker.

Also carrying stuff home from shops on foot/bus. It's much easier to eat a sandwich in a park next to the supermarket than lug tins or bags of lentils home on the bus, get access to the cooker for an hour or two, stay up late cooking, pay the fuel costs, buy a cool bag which was the suggestion made upthread, just to have something healthy for lunch.

I actually do make dahls a lot now, but it wouldn't have occurred to me to do that when I was younger.

Part of the problem is that in the U.K. we seem to think a meal isn’t a meal without meat. If you pop across to the ‘what we’re eating this week’ thread, 9/10 of the posts are meals centred around meat. Which is unhealthy but more to the point, really expensive. If you’re buying 6 or 7 portions of meat every week for 4 people, it isn’t surprising there isn’t much cash left over for fruit and veg. And this isn’t just a thing on here, virtually every family I know has meat with every meal.

And this isn’t just a thing on here, virtually every family I know has meat with every meal.

Apart from breakfast and sometimes lunch we eat meat every day. I'm quite limited with what I can eat so meat is easier - I can't eat lentils, chickpeas, too much veg, mushrooms at all and a lot of fruit. That rules out a lot of things that I could have in the place of meat. I was told on here that I would get used to it if I tried but I'm not prepared to make myself ill on the off chance my system adjusts!

Well the thread was originally about meal
deals which are usually lunches. It is definitely cheaper to take your own lunch to work, and doesn’t involve a lot of time or effort.

A lot of people living in B&Bs, sheltered accommodation, or even bedsits don't have access to cooking facilities, only have access to shared cooking facilities which might be disgusting or unsafe, or have inadequate cooking facilities.

I was going to mention this, too. Many people in bedsits only have access to a kettle. Even if they buy themselves a toaster/ slow cooker - there may not be room to easily use it. Not all bedsits are large rooms with sleeping/ living "areas" - some are just tiny rooms with space for a bed and bedside table. Only storage space is under the bed.

I think calorie for calorie it costs more

At the end of the day people still need to eat and so if they can get their calorie requirements from something they stick in the oven rather than a huge number of different types of plant calories (fruit and veg and lean meat), its cheaper that way

The problem is that using very processed foods means that quite often the calorie requirement is exceeded but it annoys me during these types of discussions when someone will nearly always pipe up that its cheaper to give a child an apple than some biscuits. It might be, but if those calories are not enough you need to top it up with more aples or more fruit etc etc.

Well the thread was originally about meal deals which are usually lunches. It is definitely cheaper to take your own lunch to work, and doesn’t involve a lot of time or effort.

Also confused why people are talking about cooking facilities (having lived in exactly such a place as a teenager with no oven, freezer, or washing machine or heating for that matter!). But meal deals and that article were about lunches which are generally wraps or a sandwich or salad plus something else plus a drink aren't they? So don't need cooking anyway, that's the point: that people buy them for a very fast lunch if travelling somewhere etc.

But does involve access to a workplace fridge. Thursday's site has a fridge but Wednesday's doesn't, I know this because they are both repeat visits.

Do sandwiches and crisps or a wrap really need to be kept in a fridge?

I dont even keep my salads and cooked lunches in a fridge. If I want my chilli or curry warmed up for example I am lucky enough to have access to a microwave at work, but if not, I just eat it as is from my work bag.

Crisps would be an example of the kind of junk food that we are being castigated for buying in meal deals.

Having had food poisoning out of both ends from an egg sandwich that was not kept chilled, I regard a refridgerator as essential for bring-from-home lunches.

@bellac11 is it really such a race to the bottom now, that we are ok with employers not even supplying something as basic as a fridge?!! A fucking fridge.
Cos these tight fuckers would be the first to moan if an employee was off work with food poisoning.

Funny how crisps become ok to eat when it means we are not putting these employers out.

It’s All ultra processed shite though which can lead to awful
health issues I’m afraid so yes, the government is right. It’s not about calories, it’s about the quality of food.
I think Jamie Oliver got it right years ago when he did his programme with those on a lower budget making good quality home cooked food. I bought the cookbook at the time and used it a lot.

I dont know and Im not sure why you needed to be so aggressive in your response

We have a fridge at work, I simply choose not to use it for my lunches, I do for milk for my tea

But Im sure there are employers where there isnt scope or room to have a fridge.

I was simply making the point that a fridge isnt necessary for the equivalent of the meal deal, which is why I mentioned crisps and sandwich, thats the normal meal deal combo.

Kids take that to school every day, they dont put their lunch in the fridge either.

IME people are all for your healthy eating until it puts THEM out.

If you are a care worker, walking on and off for 14 hours. What should you carry around. Because carrying 2 litres of water and a sandwich is heavy.
Or if you work on a building site? Or have to walk half a mile to the bus stop, including your laptop.
Because my food gets banged about, just from car to office. And no I don’t want to eat 6 hour out of fridge cheese sandwiches because they sweat. Yuck.

I have said this about artificial sweeteners for years. They all, even Stevia, give me horrendous migraines and vomiting/diarrhoea. They cannot be good for you. I’m part of a Facebook group where we share ‘safe’ foods and drinks and where they can be bought in the UK. I notice that other countries that still sell full sugar versions of drinks don’t all have huge obesity problems.

One by one, the drinks companies have fallen (Fentimans and Soda Folk being the most recent). Even those that haven’t, like Teissere (sp?) must face an uphill battle here as most supermarkets only stock the sugar free version.

Obesity/weight is much more complex than meal deals.

Cooking isn’t taught in schools anymore: I did GCSE Food Studies almost 30 years ago. My parents queried the actual lack of cooking involved and were told by the teacher that “you can actually do the full two years without doing any cooking at all.”

Many people live in unsuitable housing; I lodged with a family once where I wasn’t permitted to use the oven/hob, only the microwave. I ate lots of ready meals and takeaways. I didn’t have a choice.

I live 25 miles from work and work shifts, it’s knackering and hard. I’m up at 0430 and I’m so shattered, I just want whatever’s easiest and fastest. My late shift starts at lunchtime so I just end up picking all day. I’d love to live closer to work but can’t afford it. There are no jobs in my town.

It’s hard to fit exercise in around this, I do have a hobby that I try and go to. The traffic in my town is horrendous around rush hour so it can take me up to an hour to get there and the last thing I want is to be sat in traffic a couple of hours after I’ve got home from work after being sat in traffic…..

I think people would be fitter if we could work locally, my friend lives in central London and can walk to work, she walks everywhere. I (and countless others), live on a new build estate in a town where you have to drive to get anywhere. There isn’t even a paper shop nearby. There is a train station, 1 train per hour, last one about 7pm and no Sunday service.

Having to pay extra for a kit Kat won’t solve this.

Yes but the vast majority of people are able to eat those things.

Because some posters are saying that you shouldn't eat sandwiches because bread/cheese/meat is processed, that you should cook lentil soup at home and bring it to work in a cool bag instead. This thread has really banged the drum for lentil soup, and I like lentil soup, but realistically very few people are going to actively choose a damp supermarket sandwich if they had delicious hot home-cooked food readily available, they choose the sandwich because it's what they have access to that fits into their life.

If you are a care worker, walking on and off for 14 hours. What should you carry around. Because carrying 2 litres of water and a sandwich is heavy.
Or if you work on a building site? Or have to walk half a mile to the bus stop, including your laptop.

Exactly. Some MNers just assume that everyone lives in a naice big house and works in an office. Plenty of people don't work in an office and are on their feet the whole day, or travel to lots of different appointments, or don't have any access to storage at work much less a fridge!

Someone upthread said it was lazy not to cart a coolbag plus whatever other bags they have to carry around with them all day, and there was even a suggestion to take a shopping trolley to meetings with you, so that you could bring lunch in a coolbox, and therefore avoid the evils of... bread.

You know the Americans declared Independence because of Sugar Tax (well Mollasses Tax) it was never about tea and many other crates were thrown into the water.

Molasses is used for making Ale or Beer and the founding fathers surprise surprise owned Breweries and Establishments that sold what they brewed.

Maybe it’s time to stop being so I’ll whine behind closed doors and take action starting with not buying things with artificial sweeteners in and telling everyone else not to. It’s like chucking crates into the harbour if enough of us do it.

Viva La Civil Disobedience!

Hit them where it hurts! Their bottom line!

I take either muesli /bran flakes/porridge with me to work, plus fruit and a yogurt. My milk is in a lidded beaker, I have one of those small cool bag lunch bag things.