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)

Nail on head. It's "direction of travel" across the continents. As you rightly say, we would laugh at the US a few decades ago, and now we''re the same in the UK. And yes, a few decades ago, mainland Europe was very different to the US and UK, but now you can clearly see the deterioration in France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, etc., as they are likewise drifting towards processed and ultra processed foods, not just in shops, but restaurants etc - menus are changing! It's all coming downward from the handful of enormous global food processing firms that dominate the Western World.

So sad to see. We're old enough to see the change. Back in the 80s, we were going on foreign holidays to USA, Canada, throughout Europe, etc., and European food in shops/restaurants was head of shoulders better than the UK which likewise was head and shoulders better than America. Now that wave has swept over the Atlantic to the UK and now crossed the Channel to Mainland Europe.

You can also see the very obvious and clear effects on the populations, i.e. most people overweight, large proportion obese and morbidly obese, with all the resultant mobility and health problems than affect employments/benefits healthcare costs, etc.

I hope the Europeans are taking notice of what has happened in the UK and US as they're heading in the same direction and will also start to see collapsing healthcare systems etc.

@gannett , you and @MrsSkylerWhite really are just making excuses in my opinion. I grow herbs in my garden (could easily be done on a windowsill) and some are very good dried which is dead cheap. We have a culture of culinary laziness in this country unfortunately and people have acquired a taste for ultra processed food.
This does need to change because it would massively benefit the health of the nation. Children need to be taught about nutrition and how to cook in school or they risk following in their parents footsteps which is undesirable if those parents didn’t ever learn to cook themselves.
I don’t blame people who don’t cook from scratch, billions has been invested by the big food companies to make us addicted to the rubbish they produce. Unfortunately we are going the same way as America in this respect. @HotPotLove is quite correct in her observation and she’s also correct that elsewhere in Europe people are more frequently eating more healthily. If they can do it why can’t we?

It is pretty insulting. You could carry on eating "Italian style" and leave everyone else to their own choices.
It's coming across as rude.

It is a culture problem. In countries like Italy, it’s normal for people of all classes to be interested in food and have access to good raw ingredients. Here, it’s definitely seen as a more middle class thing. Also, some people don’t have the confidence and background in cooking from raw-so after a day at work, they buy a ready meal. In Italy, the average supermarket produce section looks like something you see in Fortnum and Mason. But we don’t have the climate to grow such good food cheaply, nor the interest.

I agree with you in that people associate preparing a meal with meat and sauce. One of my favourite meals after work used to be pasta with olive oil, cherry tomatoes, mozzarella and basil-only the pasta needed cooking. However, ready meals do exist-certainly in France, the supermarket is full of them.

A decent tomato sauce isn't hard to make at all.

I agree that people's expectations around meat are high. When I was a child, home made veg soup would have been a common weekday meal. It was bulked out with barley, served with bread and perhaps a bit of cheese on the side. But I don't think many people would consider than dinner any more.

This. I can make a decent tomato sauce, and it does not take hours.

Yes I totally agree, OP.

High street butchers, fishmongers and greengrocers very hard to find. In-store fish and meat counters likewise. This doesn't happen on the Continent. Does it happen in the USA, idk.

Who does this benefit? Profit obsessed supermarket chains. The British consumer, already susceptible to high-fat, high-sugar, easy-fix food, is now having a very hard job to navigate the outrageous price deals, buy reasonable size portions and cook from scratch affordably.

Retail engineering designed to maximise profit and make us reliant on supermarkets. While also destroying communities and high streets.

British people are so gullible, it makes me angry.

That’s the point though. UPF are becoming increasingly popular in countries like Spain and Italy. They might not be at the same stage that we are but they are certainly on the right(wrong) track.

I’d say that was a pretty shit meal nutritional wise

Why would you think that?

I agree, and those food are definitely pushed to us a lot more by the food industry. It's not that much amount but the variety of fresh produces available here is really lacking compared other European countries, which makes cooking from scratch harder / boring.

The lack of proper fishmongers, butchers, and food markets is a real shame.

It really is not, and is likely to be part of a meal, consisting of several courses.

You’re absolutely right and the defensiveness people have around it is part of the problem in tackling it.

If you say your kids eat brown oven food and never touch broccoli you’re normal and people admire your bravery in being honest. If your kids love broccoli, eat salad and spices you’re lying or showing off and people think you’re a dick. It’s a weird inverse snobbery, especially around children’s diets.

There’s an advert out at the moment imagining the bizarre situation where a veg van pulls up and the child asks for broccoli as if nice green vegetables are a weird inappropriate thing for a child to choose to consume. That’s mad. Why is an apple a consolation prize while a lollipop is a normal treat? This stuff starts very early on. If you say you choose to wean your baby on sugary pre-made baby food you’re a real mum with more important things to do. If you give them a crust of bread or spoons of your homemade curry you’re a crunchy mad hippie who knits lentils and makes motherhood your identity. Even though it’s actually easier, quicker and cheaper.

I absolutely love cooking. And I despair that my kids look around and see fast food and ready meals as the norm.

But I look back at my childhood, and mum had dinner on the table at 6pm as my dad walked in the door. Those days are gone. I'm a divorced single parent. I don't leave work till after 6. Any chance of getting a decent meal on the table at a decent time is long gone.

I batch cook. We still eat mostly home cooked, but times are different. Society has changed. And it's been decades in the making.

Cooking is a basic life skill, but there's often no one at home to teach it, and it's off the syllabus at schools. No wonder ready meals are so popular.

It's true. But people here are in denial and won't thank you for saying it. It's almost becoming a taboo subject lately.

There are British people who know how to cook soups and stews from scratch, use extra virgin olive oil and can make a fresh tomato sauce. But they always get shouted down on here, accused of being morally superior etc. And people start talking about the cost of fresh ingredients and about not having time.

We're vegetarian and we always cook from scratch. As a migraine sufferer I'd find ready meals or takeaways too salty and would wake with a msg headache if I ever tried.
Even if we're pushed for time it will be pasta with a home made sauce or maybe an omelette or frittata. We also always have some pots of homemade soup in the freezer and it doesn't take long to thaw on a low heat.
We're a fairly low income household but we'd rather buy a good bottle of olive oil than a bottle of wine.

I'd say that was a pretty shit comment, accuracy-wise.

It's usually eaten in the middle of the day, is usually followed by green salad, cheese, meat or other protein, and fruit.

That’s not what the person commenting the recipe was suggesting though, they’re suggesting it’s a full main meal, no mention of sides or additional courses

you see I find it funny how people here are generally obsessed with having a lot of proteins with every meal. Nothing is going to happen to you if you don’t have meat or fish or other proteins every now and then. Same thing for a good earthy minestrone or vegetable soup served with some good bread - it’s a very healthy meal guys! You don’t need a chunk of meat on the side to “balance” thibgs out ffs!

I agree, but it goes higher than the supermarket chains. It goes up to the food processing firms. Literally a handful of huge conglomerates own nearly all the big brands between them. They control the supermarkets, who in turn, control the shoppers. It's why they're so desperate to get rid of UK farmers - they don't want competition and want to buy out UK farming so they can control it too (either to produce food or to sell off the land).

Nail on the head.

I think this is totally overblown.

Yes, it would be great to have more butchers and fishmongers, but there are enough options in most supermarkets to facilitate hundreds of home cooked recipes of high nutritional content.

People choose to buy other things.

You wouldn’t think twice having a s.it take away or burger with fries I imagine (and neither do I to be fully honest!) but you are saying spaghetti with fresh tomato and basil is a shite meal? What bad things can possibly happen to you of you eat that a couple of times a week? I know dozens of Italians that have lived mainly off pasta, vegetables minestrone and cheese and bread and lived 100+ years, you don’t need the chunk of meat to be healthy

Even without additions, it's a perfect to acceptable meal though. What do you think is wrong with it?

I highly recommend Mutti tinned tomatoes which I always buy when they’re on offer but for someone not so affluent any supermarket tinned tomatoes with a squeeze of tomato purée, a tiny bit of olive oil and salt is going to taste better than a jar of cheap tomato paste sauce.

Is there anything else you notice about this country and the way of life that might be linked to the use of processed food. I grew up on a farm and experienced real fresh tasty veg. I find so much shop veg and fruit to be so tasteless even organic stuff. I wonder if fresh veg and fruit in other countries is tasty?

I wonder if the working culture has anything to do with it? The long hours etc ... I work long hours and commute and I still cook a lot from scratch but I do the same recipes over and over cos I don't have the bandwidth to try new stuff and I used to love to cook. I have really lost my love of cooking with the drudgery I experience every day.