To think processed and pre cooked food is way too common in this country?

[HotPotLove]

Before you all start yelling at me, I know that there are of course millions of households that eat a healthy diet, cook from scratch all the time, carefully choose ingredients etc etc. But my feeling as a foreigner (have been living in the UK for almost a decade though) is that ultra processed food, pre cooked and ready meals etc are very much normalised here and part of most people every day life. It’s pretty obvious just by looking at the supermaket aisles really.
Curious to know if people are generally trying to stay away from these and make healthier choices or whether it is generally so embedded into our lives that we are not even noticing?
Second disclaimer is that I am not pointing any fingers, infact I often buy these myself but what makes me think about this is that I would have never bought these types of meals when living back in my own country (also less available than here overall)

Not sure I understand. You find it easy and cheap to produce a delicious plate of pasta with some basil leaves……yet you also buy ready made stuff?

Surely you can answer your own question? Why do YOU do it?

Also curious where you are that fresh herbs are so cheap that people with very limited resources find it cheaper to buy them than a jar of sauce? At the supermarkets in my area a bunch of basil that still needs tomatoes and oil and garlic to make a sauce is more expensive than a jar of pasta sauce.

A basil plant will produce heaps of leaves. And the leaves can be frozen

It's easy and cheap to grow a lot of herbs (basil, mint, parsley for example) and they can be grown in pots on the window sill if necessary.

I have read your post. I think that the amount of ready meals consumed by SOME people could be a problem, but as MILLIONS of people don’t eat them I don’t understand why you choose to use sweeping statements about people in the UK.

Strangely I have only one windowsill in my house. It's a Victorian house so I suspect they didn't like windowsill. The one windowsill I have is in the more recently built extension. So growing herbs for me is a challenge indoors. Luckily I have a garden but if people are in flats with my windowsill issue they will struggle.

I think a big challenge with cooking is tiredness. As I said earlier I do largely cook from scratch but I am exhausted so much of the time my menu is limited. I probably have about 6 go to recipes and luckily my family like them. When you are exhausted it's hard to cook. I can cos I used to love cooking so I can do it easily but if I wasn't a confident cook I probably wouldn't.

It is a big problem in the UK, but its uncreasing everywhere. We don’t eat a lot of processed stuff, I like cooking, but we also have some allergies and we’re dairy free vegetarians, so that rules out a lot of upfs anyway. I think oreos are the only thing really apart from beer and wine.

A lot of the issue is a lack of confidence with cooking, but also poverty, if the food budget is tight you can’t risk buying/making something that the family won’t eat, especially if that meal is fuel heavy.

@Simonjt there are loads of UPFs out there regardless of whether or not you eat meat or dairy. There are loads of vegan biscuits available. Lots of people think vegans eat junk and some vegans do. I suspect you are more naturally drawn to whole foods and are not so aware of the sheer amount of UPFs.

Whilst food budgets may be tight, it doesn’t stop some having takeaways multiple times a week and yes they can cook and most of them have a reasonable amount of time. The odd night of feeling tired and can’t be bothered to cook has shifted into cooking being the rare event and takeaways being normalised, which for some are multiple times a week. It’s become too easy to get a takeaway delivered without having to move from the sofa other than to answer the door.

Trust me there aren’t loads of upfs that are guaranteed meat, fish, dairy, nut, seed, kiwi and strawberry free.

Of course it is and way too unhealthy.

Do you know the average margin that supermarkets in this country make?

Yes, yanbu.

Its due to the advanced state of industrialisation, including the food industry.

We've been weaned onto easy, instant calories, and its hard work going back to cooking.

I speak as someone who did various VLCDs and then never restarted cooking. 😔

And contains very little nutrition. Carbs with some fruit cooked until the vitamins are gone.

Or I can buy a high class ready meal with protein, 2 of my 5 a day and some flavour that I can pop in the microwave after being out at work since 7am

The culture is different here and unfortunately a lot follows American culture. I have friends who don't work and should cook a proper meal but instead choose to purchase ready meals to put in the microwave, it's pure laziness.

It can if that is how you choose to do it. But a tasty and nutritious sauce can be made very quickly!

CFS can save a family a fortune but not enough people have the skills and knowledge to do it! The skills that used to be passed down in the kitchen from generation to generation have largely been lost. I'm lucky to have grown up in a multigenerational household where cooking was part of growning up. Me and my brother (professional chef) loved cooking with my gran and our parents.
We cooked from ingredients, soup was made fresh, never out of a tin or packet (and a great way to use up leftovers or veg). We baked cakes, made chutney out of garden produce like marrow and tomatoes, apples were stewed and frozen, oraged blackberries made into jam.
Knowing how to utilise cheaper cuts of meat and how to turn basic foodstuff into a meal out of leftovers is a real skill which seems to be very undervalued.
I look around my local area and can't believe how many fast food outlets there are now....and the food is so expensive (and in the majority of cases) nutritionally poor.
My dc cook, they enjoy it. Student dd can't believe how much some of her peers spend on buying food rather than taking lunch from home.

It would be expensive feeding a family of 4 on the better ready meals each day surely

Pasta contains both protein and fibre (more so with wholemeal) along with a range of micro nutrients. Cooking anything will reduce the vitamin content including nuking a ready meal.

Over half (56%) of ready meals are high in salt, 47% high in saturated fat and 71% low in fibre. See action on salt May 25 report. So unless chosen very carefully, they may be quick but seldom healthy.

I don't think it's rude or Brit bashing, I think it's sadly true and for a number of reasons really. My partner and I went shopping this afternoon, got two bags of groceries, mainly fresh meats,fish, fruit & veg and a box of cat food came to £88 with a Tesco clubcard - £116 without the card! So I often stand at the till watching parents load up the conveyor belts with ultra processed freezer food, dairy lea lunchables, chocolate breakfast cereal, crisps, sweets, biscuits, cakes, ice cream - they pile the belt high with it because I guess it's cheaper to feed the kids chemical crap than buy fresh produce! Two bags of meats and veggies etc shouldn't be £116 or £88!

I'm not feeding a family of 4. I'm feeding me.

I also don’t understand why people are saying we’re on the ‘third generation’ of people who didn’t learn to cook at school. I’m 30 and we had food tech until year 9 and learnt all through primary and up until then. I was at a bog standard comp too..

@HotPotLovepasta with oil, cheese and less than a single portion of vegetables (botanical fruit even) is not particularly healthy at all. Especially if the pasta is white and not whole meal (so the good stuff has all been stripped out). You’re basically eating starch, saturated fat and half a portion of vegetables.

Get an Oddbox. £20 for a massive box of 9 types of fruit and veg that will last ages (the large is enormous and they always give more by weight than described - I check).

It’s also important to remember that a lot of people who eat mostly staple foods due to poverty- usually cereals like rice, corn, sorghum, quinoa, wheat - do often get vitamin and mineral deficiencies. They’re not living some Arcadian lifestyle while we get fat.

Vitamin A deficiency (makes kids go blind), and anaemia are common in parts of sub Saharan Africa. Vitamin A deficiency affects 21,000 in 100,000 (1 in 5) in some parts of Africa.

South Asia has high rates of protein energy malnutrition.

Iodine deficiency which if it gets bad enough leads to brain damage affects billions globally yearly…

I think it's more likely we're on the - second (?) generation of people who didn't learn to cook at home. Because by that stage, most people had two working parents so even if they could cook, they weren't necessarily demonstrating cooking skills to their children. With the best will in the world, even if you had great cooking lessons at school, doing one dish at most once a week during school terms isn't going to give you a comprehensive range of cooking skills, or stay in your mind in the way it would if you were watching/helping a parent cook several times a week.

Yes which is understandable. But many posters state that ready meals are used as people are too busy to cook and that would be far more likely when you work full time and carrying a couple of kids to evening activities

So do you still eat well or are there just not the things available to? Fruit and veg are quite rubbish here tbf, people just aren’t used to cooking basic healthy things and there are so many processed ready meals and takeaways available. I remember when all the French exchange students were here when I was at school and they were going mad buying all the chocolates in the shops because they weren’t used to having that much of it (that was a long time ago) What evening meals have you had in the last week?

Tonight we had beef stew made with joint of beef £6 on yellow stickers, onions, carrots, swede and parsnips all of which are very cheap - stock cubes and some cooking sherry - served with a jacket potato each
Made a huge meal for 3 adults and 3 single serve portions for the freezer
Under a tenner for 6 generous helpings - I couldn’t buy ready meals for that!