Do You Eat A Lot Of Ready Meals?

[pastafreak]

You may not want to after reading this by Joanna Blythman , a well respected investigative food journalist.


More than three billion ready meals were eaten in Britain in 2012
They make up the biggest sector of the UK's £70 billion a year food budget
Food manufacturers carry out little or no preparation of raw ingredients
They buy treated ingredients, mainly frozen or dried, from other companies
Meat, fish and vegetables are kept at sub-zero temperatures for months
But when the food is thawed and cooked it can be marketed as 'fresh'
A ready-meal factory can churn out 250,000 portions a day using 70 different ingredients


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2978316/Read-ll-never-eat-ready-meal-again.html#ixzz3TPSJe95O
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

[humbersloop]

waves at pasta and whistles Big Yellow Taxi ;)

this isn't an arguement about "convenience" food, take aways or ready meals as such at all. People have always eaten that way, especially in an emerging urban setting- out of pie and chop shops, for instance, dedicated domestic kitchens are a relatively recent thing. You'd be daft to think they haven't or sniffy about a failure of moral compass if they still don't.

There's something qualitatively different going on here though. Entirely synthetic Stuff (for want of a better word) - which is cheaper than yer actual Food, is being silently and deceptively bunged into said Food to max out the profit, and it's changing expectations and experiences of what Food really is.

I say deceptively, because it's clearly a cynical work-around industry strategy. You aren't being given any say in this, and if you think you are by just exercising consumer choice over having an odd ready meal, or not, good luck - and goodnight Vienna to every other bit of processed food in the chain from here on in.

[DTCwordfan]

//Entirely synthetic Stuff (for want of a better word) - which is cheaper than yer actual Food, is being silently and deceptively bunged into said Food to max out the profit,//

Such as in a Gregg's (so-called) Cornish pastie? - see their profits are up!

[humbersloop]

dtc, I didn't say I was immune to eating the odd lump of unsavoury slop, secure in the knowledge that's exactly what it is - *** hell man I make a mean red flannel hash and I gave up reading the side of a corned beef tin long since!

I also posted on a topic related to one this a few days back. Read that article too, this is a very nasty juggernaut

http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Food-and-Drink/Question1402362.html

[Old_Geezer]

Got too bored of reading about half way down a rather long article but even if some issues are highlighted it seems to me the author is making too much of simple things. Of course food is prepared to last and so has preservatives. Of course they will use whatever is most convenient if considered acceptable practice by law. Frozen isn't such an awful thing. Of course preparing meals from scratch is best but convenience is useful too. One can worry too much.

[ummmm]

How old do you think the potatoes you prepare 'fresh' are?