To wonder how anyone can live on so much processed food?

[MummyMumMumMummy]

Let me start by saying I’m not by any means a health freak. I have periods where we’ll have frozen pizzas, frozen beige food and cans of beans for dinner.. but it makes me feel so so rough!

For example, in the last week we’ve eating frozen pizza, a McDonald’s, a night of cheese and biscuits, and we’ve had beans on toast, ready meals like lasagna or currys. This is just down to using what left in the house before doing a food shop and I feel awful. I feel slow, my anxiety is high, I have aches and pains and I just feel generally ‘bleurgh’

This happens every time I swap out out usual cook from scratch lots of veg type meals to these ready made quick and processed foods.

but my point is; does anyone else feel this way?

I have friends who quite consistently live on beige food and ‘hate’ veg. DH before we started dating would literally only eat beans on toast and frozen pizza. He still enjoys them from time to time but even he prefer home cooked meals with lots of veg now.

I’m not in any way judging anyone’s diet, I don’t care what you eat it doesn’t affect me. I just wonder whether other people feel such a strong physical sense of being healthier in mind and body (that sounds super green!) when they eat more organic, fresh foods?

@ManateeFair To be fair I don’t really favour organic over non-organic I think I just used the word to emphasise what I mean by fresh ingredients 😂

A few people have mentioned exercise makes them feel so much better. I really need to get on board with this. I used to have a fairly active job but now I’m in a desk job and barely move every day. I have a treadmill and really need to start using it properly!

I have no idea how people eat crap all the time either OP.

It makes me feel ill and gross

I tend to get indigestion and/or constipation if I eat lots of 'junk' food but I think it's just my body's way of reacting when I'm eating stuff my body isn't used to.
If I ate processed food all the time (like I used to) I'd soon adapt.

Me. One meal like that and I’m moaning. I don’t know how people live on it consistently. They must feel so rough all the time.

Many people can't afford a diet rich in fresh fruit & veg nowadays; it is so expensive. Thank goodness for bags of frozen vegetables!

If I ever have so much free time on my hands to start a post worrying about what anyone outside my home eats I will either take a second job or pick up another hobby

I feel the same as you. Thing is, if you always eat shit and grew up eating shit you won't know you don't feel good, as feeling shit is just 'normal'

I’m not in any way judging anyone’s diet

Aye, right

Nor indeed can they afford butcher, fishmonger or farm shop prices for meat which are not just a little bit more, but sometimes two, three or four times as much. Plus I have to drive twice as far as the supermarket to even find one.

What I'd love is a greengrocer though. Supermarket fruit and veg seems to have got worse in the last ten years, they just aren't trying. I think it must be twenty years since I've seen a decent supermarket peach or plum in the summer in England. I've tried veg boxes but it doesn't really suit either.

Frozen veg and fruit are great! Especially for non seasonal or difficult to get stuff. I always have frozen berries in and frozen spinach and molokhia. Never got on with frozen broccoli as a sice though. Too soft, i like veg crunchy, but good in omelettes.

But lots of fresh is cheap. 1kg carrots for 60p is simply nonarguable, btw frozen sliced is more expensive in asda😶wtf. Cauli 95p, leeks are about 2.50 a kilo (that's a lot of leek), cabbage £1 a kilo and so on. Pears under £2 a kilo, apples, satsumas, bananas the same.
It is very doable on budget to eat lots of fresh veg and fruit but it's especially doable in combination with frozen stuff (not asda carrots tho)

What people usually mean when they say it on here is "it's expensive to eat lots of fresh non seasonal imported veg and fruit". I have seen on MN many people moan about price of their groceries when buying fresh strawberries in January and similar months....

Everything is relative I guess, I very rarely eat any ready meals at all and I never eat takeaways. But that’s because life has changed and I have a lot more time and energy to cook than I did previously. The trick is to find a healthy balance that works for you at that time I think. This will change as circumstances change and that’s OK.

Exercise definitely makes a difference for me, I'm much less grumpy and sleep better if I do hard exercise
Food not so much

@Elastica23 foreign supermarkets. They have loads and it tastes right when in season. Agree on peaches. Have been disappointed for years!

We have quite a varied diet. Rarely have takeaways or meals out and I generally cook every evening often from scratch. Sometimes we have frozen food, eg oven chips, pizza etc I like to eat a relatively healthy diet as I train 4-5 times a week as do my 2 teens.
we definitely enjoy treats at the weekend though. For me it’s all about balance

Indeed, so nice on holiday.

Yes, I feel better when I eat better, but I don't always have the time to cook from scratch. I'd say I'm halfway in the middle. Lots of fruit and veg, but lots of jars of sauces rather than everything from scratch.

Also, I have 2 young kids and it is disheartening to make a nice dinner from scratch and have nobody eat it because they've caught sight of a tiny piece of courgette in it or because the lasagna is "too spicy" 🙄

We have a take away once a week. Depends what you have even then though, a chicken shish kebab isn't junk food.

I mean foreign supermarkets in UK. 😁 Like Asian/arabic/african/EE. They somehow usually have the stuff. Plus you can touch, smell, pick individual pieces usually. Love it.
They also often have good priced butcher.

I always go crazy in supermarkets on holidays😁

I haven't really got any foreign supermarkets close by. The nearest thing is the "we don't quite know what to do with this lot" aisle in Sainsbury's.

How difficult is to buy some fruit and salad? Just buy some cucumber tomatoes maybe lettuce apples oranges, and have some with the beige food. We grew up in poverty but still managed to find fruit every week.

I feel this. I had an awful diet until 7 years ago, McDonald's all the time, kebabs, takeaways, cooking for me was a jar of dolmio sauce with mince. Then after some health issues were raised I completely overhauled my diet. Went plant based, whole foods and my goodness did it do me a world of good. I lost 7 stone and felt like a new person.
If I eat anything processed or fast food now it makes me feel absolutely gross, quite honestly, I feel how I used to feel all those years ago. Lethargic, headaches, bad stomach pains etc

As a child of the 80s I grew up very poor and lived off freezer shop food frozen, mousse, mini frozen pizza, tinned hamburgers even tinned salad! I went vegetarian in my teens but still lived off cheap processed foods as I didn't know any different really and cooking from scratch seemed very complicated to me as my parents only made mince and stews and even then most of the ingredients were from freezer shop bags.

At University I was exposed to more middle class eating habits and thought a salad in a big bowl tossed in vinaigrette was the height of sophistication! I started to cook a bit myself things like lentil bolognaise and veggie chilli and in my early 20's I really noticed that if I was eating plenty of fresh fruit and veg, home cooked meals however simple I did feel better and barely noticed my period coming on while if I ate too much processed food I would get really bad PMT, spots and headaches.

Now DH and I really prioritise good quality food and cooking from scratch at home as we do both feel so much better on this kind of food. We do eat the occasional supermarket pizza but we mostly eat all home cooked stuff that is made with optimal nutrition and flavour in mind. I wouldn't go back to eating processed food daily / weekly if you paid me.

I agree. I always see so many excuses on this issue and it drives me nuts. Processed food is NOT CHEAP. It is just good if you're feeling lazy, but I could never live off it long term.

It doesn't make a difference to the way that I feel. I have had periods of both eating mainly from scratch and mainly processed food and don't notice any difference.

For me it's all about how much fruit and veg I eat. If I'm eating lots of fruit and veg I feel good. If I'm not eating fruit and veg I feel bad. Simple as that.
Processed food isn't really an issue. I don't eat loads of it but will often have something like a ready made pizza after a long day at work. I'll add veg to the pizza and have it with a salad and I feel good afterwards. I don't think eating processed foods makes me me feel bad unless I'm not getting the food stuff too.
I do wonder how people feel who only eat beige foods.