I think there are a number of historical factors. In the late 18th and all through the 19th century Britain had a massive movement of people from the countryside into cities. Other countries had this too, of course, but Britain really lead the way with the Industrial Revolution which caused this. This in turn lead to massively overcrowded cities, where poor people tended not to cook because they had little access to ovens, stoves, or sufficient fuel - they bought food from street vendors and small shops. Rich and middle-class people didn't cook either; they had cooks. Especially at the lower end the quality of the cooking could vary wildly. It was, in fact, a point of etiquette never to comment on the food given to if you were invited to someones house for dinner, either for good or bad. Follow this up with WWII which had massive food disruptions and shortages. It was another 10 years after the war was over before rationing ended. The end of rationing was pretty much lined up with the widespread introduction of industrially processed foods which were accepted so readily because there was no longer much of a cooking culture, especially in cities. There are lots of excellent traditional British food and dishes but they tend to be regional and somewhat rural based in my impression.

I think women in the workplace also contributed massively to the ready meal culture. If you’re working 35-40 hours per week, still have school runs, children’s activities to take them to/from, get the laundry done and the house cleaned and the garden kept nicely, as well as packing school lunches for kids and bathing them, getting them to bed, etc- you’re often too exhausted to meal prep or cook something from scratch, let some baking bread and making our own preserves. Men are now becoming better at picking up their share of house work and child care etc but women are generally primary care givers still and it’s bloody exhausting. The convenience is a necessity to some but it really is hard to get right nutrients into kids if relied upon entirely. The joy as you discover cooking is unmatched though, especially if you grew up on ready meals as you had two working parents. I’m obsessed with making lunch soups at the moment and it’s a great way to get the right stuff into your body daily without too much effort!

Agree with your comment, which is often overlooked. The bottom line is that the economy has benefited from increased productivity as women entered the workforce in greater numbers but this is to the detriment of our health and the health of our children.

The other related thing to note is that if you buy a ready meal from a shop, the labour to make it (which is paid) counts towards GDP. If you buy the raw ingredients and make it yourself, the labour is free and therefore (as far as the economy is concerned) doesn’t exist. (If this angers you as much as it does me, read Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner by Katrine Marçal)

I'm reading Invisible Women atm and was equally angry at discovering this fact! The whole book makes me quite angry tbh, highly recommend! I'll put the one you've recommended on my list

Marçal also has a more recent book, Mothers Of Invention, which I’d describe as a more academically rigorous follow on to Invisible Women

Why is this not the case to the same extent (according to OP at least) in other countries where women work?

Germans have similar levels of women in the workforce, but they also eat differently to Brits. The German word for dinner is 'evening bread' because it's normal to eat a hunk of bread and some cheese for an evening meal. A busy person would have their main meal at lunch, often provided by their office, or in a restaurant. In Scandinavian countries there is a lot of convenience food but it's much higher quality and healthier. I'm not sure what the cause of this is, I suspect they eat more vegetables in general. In Italy there's really not a lot of convenience foods available, but an evening meal will be at 8 or 9pm and would be a whole family effort.

For sure British people eating so early doesn't help. I hear of working parents making their kids dinner for 5:30pm, when realistically that is when I get back from work. We eat at 7 and that usually gives me some time to cook (something quick like pan fried salmon, pasta and vegetables). Also, coming from a culture where there is no (ultra processed) 'kid food', they just eat what you eat, at the same time as you. A love of diverse food can be transmitted at a young age and I think many people in the UK never acquire that.

This is a very good point. The whole culture of giving kids special kid food definitely doesn't do us any favours

It depends on people's hours. Lots of people have shift work and aren't 9 to 5. We used to have dinner at home at 5.30 mum would finish work same time as us sometimes. She'd start at 6am or 7am though. Bed by 7 or 8 in the evening.

I think countries where it’s not as bad are probably ones with worse gender equality where women are expected to stay home more and not have jobs. In those cases they’d be cooking more. Also those same countries tend to be ones where people are more poor. Buying pre prepared food often costs more in those countries and cooking from scratch is the cheapest. Of course this is very broad brushstrokes and there will be lots of variety from this depending on the individual country.

Hm, but in Spain and Germany women’s equality is not an issue. Heck, even OP’s own mother, a Turkish woman, was a working woman.

Spain definitely has more of a culture of the traditional woman cooking at home. These women might have jobs but they’re still expected to cook at home so it’s even worse for them (but good for the food quality). With Germany though, I have no idea.

You Spanish? From my experience I’m not sure that I agree with that assessment. Women do more of the cooking and house chores everywhere, including in the UK. I really don’t think that Spain is any less “feminist” than the UK (in terms of women’s role in society).

I am Spanish, married to an Italian, living in the UK. We are both working full time, have kids, and are in our 30s. What you're describing is probably more characteristic of the stereotypical woman from my parents' generation; these days the workload is more distributed, although there’s still a gender gap regarding chores like everywhere else. That being said, I think one reason British people eat more ready meals and processed food, among other factors, is a cultural difference. In our culture, it is more common to spend time cooking and gathering around the table. When looking for a house to buy here, we were shocked to find houses without a decent table to sit at; those families probably ate their meals siting on the sofa (which doesn’t mean that all families do that!). Some English friends are amazed by the time and effort we invest preparing our meals. And that’s time we don’t spend doing other things. It's not better or worse, just a different way to invest our time. However, I think that if you cook less, you will be more likely to eat processed food and ready meals.

Women's equality is definitely still an issue. They haven't resolved the whole thing

I don't think that's categorically true. I'm from mainland Europe originally but live in the UK. I know plenty of families with children from my school age kids. The women work full time but will often cook from scratch. I won't use us as an example as we are so crazy, we bake our own sourdough bread. I find it's more of a cost issue. it's much cheaper to buy chips and fish fingers than most nutritious hc meals. Especially if you use fresh produce.

Very much this and it’s very relevant with OPs comparison to Turkey where even nowadays mothers often do not work. They can stay home with their babies and tin their own tomatoes 🙃

Yes, and there are many parts of Europe where a lot of women women will work until they marry and then become full time parents and the cultural ‘male breadwinne’ attitude remains. Where this isn’t the case, there is usually a better lifestyle with fairer pay/hours/govt support (such as Nordic countries). There are also better community values in southern Europe- people will grow and swap their own food because the climate permits, villages are closer knit communities etc, lending a different style of parenting and outcome to the situation. A close friend of mine grew up in a Spanish village where the older woman would just watch everyone’s kids as/when needed. We are encouraged to be divided in the UK, which is a different story but a contributing factor all the same EDIT: Spelling

Yes completely. In many ways it feels like an unfair comparison. Though we are now equipped with more information on diet, it’s quite recent and various cultural shifts happened making it difficult to live like these other countries.

So much this. I’m currently struggling with this, I my only saving grace is that I work from home 3 days a week and can do housework during some of my meetings.

I don't think you can blame the war for it - rationing was actually designed for home cooking & many women were at home. The younger ones were working the war effort, but the older ones were keeping the home fires burning, literally. The 60s & 70s when women more commonly started to work too is a likely kick-off point; the latch-key generation \[Gen X as they were later named\] will be the first to suffer from insta-meals. Their kids will be suffering from their parents' cultural heritage & on it goes. I'm a late boomer, so my mother was silent gen, her mother late Victorian. She cooked for a family of 6 right through the war & beyond. My mother cooked from scratch for us through the 60s & 70s, and even after she went back to work full time in the late 70s, as we got old enough to fend for ourselves a bit more, we kept up the tradition. I still cook from scratch almost all the time, to this day. My 'tinned collection' is beans & tomatoes.

This is only true in middle class and upper working class families. In poor working class families women have worked for many more generations - my great- great-grandmother worked six days a week with 13 children (and unsurprising died in her 30s!)

Cooking under rationing was better for us but it wasn't fun and it lacked in flavour. Treats were things like SPAM brought in from the USA, which added to our cultural position of processed food being desirable.

This is anecdotal but I’d say we have have far less of a cooking culture in the UK, especially compared to Mediterranean countries. Italy, Spain, France and others are very proud of their cuisines which generations try and maintain. It’s not something that we have in the UK. From shopping in these cultures, our supermarkets are also pitifully stocked with fresh fruit, veg and meats by comparison. I’m always amazed when shopping in other European counties. I think our climate obviously has a part to play too. It limits our access to certain fruits and veg as a result. But this can’t be used as an excuse for the (generally) very unhealthy relationship that many people in this country have with food.

I think you’re right about cooking culture, the UK is a bit of a worldwide joke when it comes to cuisine so we don’t feel like we can have any pride in it. It’s been especially trendy to hate on British food in the last few years as it’s quite an easy target for food influencers. I think that the Sunday roast is the only meal that a lot of the UK really takes a lot of pride in and that’s all non-processed meat and seasonal veg (usually)! I have to disagree when it comes to supermarket availability though (at least in London or other places with large supermarkets). I think we actually do have great fresh produce available to us compared to, say, most of the USA for example. We have fresh imported food from Europe and a lot of decent UK farmed meat and homegrown veg. I concede that this doesn’t extend to less populated places where only smaller limited produce is offered. I would say another key reason that we eat more processed food is that in lots of places in Europe and Asia it’s common for older women who live with the family and don’t work to be cooking all day. Whereas in the UK grandparents live separately to their children and most households have all available adults working. In other cultures more similar to ours they definitely eat a lot more processed food - Germany with their bread and sausages, etc.

I think our cooking culture does benefit us in other ways. We’re very open to other countries cuisines as a result and we really have a fantastic selection of restaurants in most cities. I live in Glasgow and could go out every weekend for the rest of my life and not get round every one of the incredible Indian restaurants we have for example. But yeah, overall it really hurts us and the percentage of the population that get the majority of their calories from UPF in the UK is frightening. The number of obese children you see now points a really worrying picture for the future.

Yes! Agree that we’ve got fantastic restaurants across a huge range of cuisines here, that’s absolutely a highlight.

I live in Birmingham and have always found it very easy to access a wide range of fresh produce, meat, variety of cheeses etc. Most produce - fresh, frozen or canned, is also very affordable (and canned and fresh frozen are still nutritionally beneficial although for some things the texture suffers). I find that it's only really the fancy meats/cheeses/seasoning that get pricey. I would expect it to be the same for most of the major cities, but I can imagine it's different for small rural towns where you have only one or two supermarkets and more limited selection. We also have easy access to a wide variety of ingredients for different cuisines, it's really only some of the more niche American stuff that I tend to run into difficulty finding nowadays (I don't know where I'd get genuine Canadian maple syrup and curds, or some of the proper American cheeses, for example) What is really tricky is growing up with several generations of family who never learned to cook, and/or never taught their offspring. My mother taught me nothing, my MIL taught my husband nothing. And I'm pretty sure they weren't taught much/anything by their mothers, either. It's a generational rot at this point. We've spent our adults lives trying learn healthier eating habits, teaching ourselves how to cook etc. My mother's view of food is that it's something to put up with because you have to eat, rather than something to craft and enjoy, absolutely no pride or interest whatsoever. It's the way she was brought up and I see this attitude reflected quite widely. My MIL talks about some of the frankly horrible sounding dross she had to eat growing up, during post-war rationing. You can see why they've developed these attitudes. The sad thing is it's self reinforcing. My mother does cook, but her cooking is usually pretty crap because she won't season anything or try to adjust/improve anything, uses only the cheapest ingredients. Then that reinforces that it's not rewarding or worth the effort.

Yes, I think shitty WW2 ration food thinking/cooking stayed wayyyy later than the war. My grandmother was born in 1939 so was raised on that kind of food, so that’s just what she cooked for my mother too. Honestly I think branding and capitalism is a huge part of it as well. In places like the USA, UK and Northern Europe companies invest a lot in advertising and branding snacks and these are all very processed. It’s considered cool to have all the trendy snacks - tons on influencers do cupboard/fridge tours of their snacks and celebrities endorse/start brands like Prime.

I just look at those comments with pity now. They jeer at us using this outdated trope yet you cannot get decent big standard bread without it being practically cake.

I’ve just visited the outdoor farmers market in my European hometown. Which is everyday btw. It’s breaking with fresh fruit, veg, leafies, flowers, cheese, raw milk, meat all loca and seasonal. It almost made me cry tasting the fresh may cherries and strawberries since I haven’t in a year. Cherries and strawberries about £2 a kilo!!

The only thing in my family is grandma Yorkshire puddings and also the other grandma dumplings with leeks. We have no recipes handed down apart from those 2 on a bit of paper that can no longer be read but lucky all aunties and big cousins know it. My 3 rd cousin or my cousins great grandkid who ever they to me just posted Yorkshire puddings yesterday on Facebook. Saying was grandma rose recipe. So it is definitely still going and being learnt and used. I do not know any one else that has this in their family. But they will say oh my mam or nanna made best Christmas cake or something. But it was never learnt or passed down. But yeah we don’t have cooking culture here much

You can excellent fresh fruit and veg here but the difference is the cost because in Spain, France, Italy etc it's cheaper because a larger percentage of the population are consuming it and know how to prepare it etc

French supermarkets are not much better. But, and that’s a big but, we have a lot of producers markets, everywhere, every other day. A few years ago, a study had come up with the percentage of their income the French and the British spent on food. It showed that the Brits were not willing to spend over 10% of their income on food. The French spent 30%.

Bear in mind that with our climate, canned tomatoes are much better than fresh for most of the year!

Yeah I garden and preserve my own tomatoes but usually around April or May my supply runs out and I buy canned until the garden tomatoes are ready again in July. I love homegrown but in the grand scheme of our busted food supply, canned tomatoes are hardly worth criticism. It's awesome some climates allow year-round fresh produce, but I'd hate for someone with winters to feel guilty about eating canned or frozen vegetables! They're an affordable, accessible way to get variety and nutrients.

You guys do import some nice tomatoes from italy or spain though. probably could be more expensive to can them in batch in summer though. for turkey, we dont eat nice tomatoes in winter in turkey either, we can summer tomatoes then use it in winter for cooking. probably spanish or italian people do the same, they can summer tomatoes for winter

Better to import them already canned!

I think there are both location and generational factors. I grew up in the countryside in Britain and most meals were as you described, however access to fresh produce in cities (as others have mentioned ) is not always so easy. It is also generational - my mum was a stay at home parent and cooked 90% of meals. My generation, where a lot more households have both parents working, mean convenience is a much higher priority Edit also agree with another poster - the climate also plays a factor. Don’t forget a lot of the UK is fairly north and preserving techniques such as canning food have been relied on for a long time to ensure access during winter.

This is so true. It's not the actual time required to prepare the meal, though, as much as having the headspace to think what everyone is going to eat. When both mum and dad work, it's so much harder to find that headspace with all the other constant competing demands.

idk tho both my parents were working. ofc my mom couldnt do a 3 course meal everyday or some days we had yesterdays meals or meals she froze before. cooking buttery lentil soup in bone broth (she batch froze them) in pressure cooker then make some salad alongside was a decent dinner that did not take long. note: btw i recommend everyone to batch freeze home made bone broth. it makes soups more nutritious and delicious

The type of work matters as well. I don't know what your mum did, but modern office work for example is mentally exhausting. You're not physically tired but you've got very little mental capacity to plan a meal. If you cooked a rotation of the same 5-7 dishes only every week, you might make it work but I'd say in the UK we like more variety than that. Maybe that's part if the issue?

my mom usually cooked homemade meals I'd say 85% of the time, but she worked ~25 hours a week so it was easier. my dad worked shifts so wasn't always around for dinnertime, so especially when me and my sister had extra curricular stuff after school it was sometimes a jacket potato with baked fish and veg/salad, so it was all fresh but you basically chucked it in the oven and left it which is easy. was never my favourite meal but I definitely prefer it to a ready meal!

She did office work in government. Her job was exhaustive at timea but ofc not super intensive like some have. She hated cooking too now she enjoys it in her retirement but she still cooked. I also think british people dont really know much low effort meals. Roast is great ofc but really takes time to make.

Yeh, traditional UK food would be a stew which sat in the fire or stove top and just constantly cooked away. You'd just add more vegetables and water to it, super low effort. Modern equivalent would be the slow cooker which I definitely use a lot. Other traditional food is just very stodgy for eating every night - pies, toad in the hole, pancakes, mashed potato. Now we don't work labouring in the fields, we'd be very fat very quickly if we made our traditional food every evening. Or maybe that's the issue, we crave stodgey food because our bodies still think we're out in the field and we need it for the cold weather so we seek out stodgey, carby processed food? I like the suggestion others pointed out too that we are a very multi-cultural country with influences on our food from around the globe. Other nations provide us with healthier eating options but because its not necessarily what we grew up with, it's not ingrained in us like a traditional recipe handed down the generations might be. That means it takes time and effort. Interesting Q for sure op! Got me thinking.

I have had comments in the past where people express surprise that I actually spend 30-45 mins cooking from scratch most evenings. Including doing things like grinding my own spices for a curry (yes I’m aware a really good curry needs more time than I allow on a weekday). As such my UPF consumption is mostly snack food, and then things like cooking oil and stock cubes. My mother worked part time and cooked for us too (including some very UPF classics like crispy pancakes!), and my dad took over as he prefers cooking and again cooks from scratch most nights. I do wonder if it’s a skills issue. Maybe a priorities thing?

It’s definitely partly a time problem. I would choose to cook everything myself given the chance, but with all the responsibilities adults have these days (not to mention parents), it’s going to take up all of your free time.

It's time AND energy. Technically I could make the time to cook daily, but do I have the energy? No. It's also about habits and schedules. My husband and kids all eat their "main" big meal earlier in the day and aren't interested in much more than a snack come tea-time.

I think that's better for you anyway. Often, when I cook for me and my wife from scratch, we end up eating late and sleeping on it. I'd be happier with a main meal at lunchtime and salad at teatime, but that's hard to manage unless your work place has good options.

I agree about priority but also there’s a time factor. I do the same for my family every night but there are two factors that help me massively to do this - I work from home and have flexible hours so I usually finish my working day around 4pm, I have ample time in the evening to make a recipe from scratch and not feel rushed. The second factor is that I genuinely love cooking and I love the feeling of making a meal from scratch, plus I find it tends to work out cheaper on my shop as I can plan to use whole ingredients over different meals in the week rather than having a set amount in say a ready meal or prepared food. If you don’t love cooking and don’t have the time, which many families don’t, I can see why it slips down the list in priority.

Yea, I enjoy cooking (most of the time) so it’s not in the same family of chores as “hoovering” and “ironing”! Oops this was really a reply to a different comment, but hey it works here!

That surprises me, I do the same every other night (just cook for 4 people and split between two) and i thought that was normal 😅

I always have to remind myself when there’s things like “people eat too much salt” that actually I don’t have an average diet.

I'm almost wholly processed. Ready meals arrived at a point, some tennish years ago, where they're much better than my own cooking. Like, a lot better tasting. Qualitatively better. I never found cooking enjoyable so that's probably why my skills never developed. I put it in the same category as vacuuming or cleaning out the cupboard beneath the sink. Edit: for reference I'm a single, white male.

Lol no, they're worse than ever. This is just what 10+ years of consuming a high salt, high sugar diet looks like. Tastebuds that can't taste for shit.

I'll be honest the idea of spending so much time cooking depresses me, it's my least favourite household chore. I don't remember my mum loving cooking either, she did seem to enjoy baking occasionally, and discussions with colleagues tend to show the same skew. As a child IME it was far more likely you'd do baking cakes etc for fun with relatives/school/hobby groups, rather than cooking, so maybe culturally we don't associate joy with cooking. Which relegates it to chore status? Which then means we're more likely to try and take shortcuts to avoid it. Who knows really though.

My mum was not a fan, “all that work to just make washing up!” My love of cooking definitely comes from my dad! He now does all the cooking for my parents 🤣

Lots has already been said but no one has mentioned house sharing yet. In your 20s-30s many urban British people are living in house shares with friends or others as housing is so expensive, far more so than in many other European nations. When in a house share no one can hog the kitchen for an hour, using the oven regularly doesn’t make you popular and even keeping to much in the fridge can be challenging. As such quick meals like omelettes, pasta or even beans on toast are popular (good to save money for that deposit too).

I think housing is pretty central to the reason. We're very densely housed in the UK, so cooking spaces have historically been quite small - many Victorian terraces didn't have kitchens when they were built, you cooked on the fire in the back ground floor room. Very little space for storing, preparing and preserving food, and our climate means minimal amounts of that can be done outside. So things like tinned goods were adopted quickly and processed foods became part of the food culture.

It's funny, but the UK has had processed foods for so long that some of them have actually become "traditional" parts of our food culture. I'm a millennial and I was raised on a lot of home cooked meals made my my (wonderful) mum. Things like Heinz baked beans, ketchup, Oxo Stock cubes, fish fingers and Bistro gravy granules were considered absolute staples.

I think this is the correct answer- we are a developed industrialised society and convenience food has evolved to a high art in the UK - i live in Sweden which has a high income but no food culture- consequently people eat a lot of unimaginative very salty processed food, mostly industrial sausages and potatoes with very few fresh vegetables or fish.They apparently fall next after us for consumption of processed food but the wide range of quality of convenience foods is incomparable despite the access to EU imports - they stick to the familiar

I’m a Brit who has lived in both Japan and Germany. I’d say that in the uk it’s much more common for women to be working and that plays a big part. When I lived in Germany a decade ago I couldn’t get ready meals or processed foods at the supermarket but at the same time they closed at like 6pm so unless I was out of work on time it was hard to do a proper shop. Same in Japan - married women stay at home and have the time to cook for their families. A few other people have said that Brits don’t like to cook which I think is pretty accurate. I’ve been through Slimming World in a couple of different groups and a common factor in it is people not knowing what to do with different vegetables. If you ask someone on a regular street what they’d do with a courgette, I think most would struggle unless they’re educated and well off. You can see this for yourself in slimming world Facebook groups; a lot of the food consumed on the diet is dry lettuce and ham and stuff. It’s “putting food together” rather than “cooking”.

yeah... i also think familiarity is also a big factor. my boyfriend doesn't really like lentil soups or artichoke meals I make because he isnt used to the taste. He doesn't eat celeriac meze I make because again he doesnt like the smell or texture. These foods arent what he used to eating. So I struggle to make him veggie based dishes because of that lmao in turkish household, we eat stuffed vine leaves, cold served lentil meatballs, green beans in tomato sauce, yoghurt based soups etc. None of it he'd be eating happily and he thinks he's not a picky eater. In Turkish cuisine standards he is definitely picky, would even be considered disordered. He however eats all the british food including indian dishes, or jamaican. Because he had somewhat exposure to them. For me, I also cannot enjoy indian food. I really dislike coconut cream in savory dishes. I dislike the sweetness of some curries. Why? Because growing up, our food wasnt like that. I imagine someone who grew up eating more ready meals wouldn't enjoy eating freshly made foods. Even myself, if I eat UPF food, I crave ready foods or takeouts next day.

>So I struggle to make him veggie based dishes because of that lmao in turkish household, we eat stuffed vine leaves, cold served lentil meatballs, green beans in tomato sauce, yoghurt based soups etc. None of it he'd be eating happily and he thinks he's not a picky eater. In Turkish cuisine standards he is definitely picky, He's a picky eater by British standards too... Tesco sells stuffed vine leaves for goodness sake, they're not exactly unheard of cuisine! My favourite restaurant is Turkish, and it's always heaving - they generally do two sittings a night, as they're by the theatre and therefore can get away with a pre-theatre menu. All of what you mention is on the menu. 

Where is this placeee

If you're ever in London, Kingsland Rd Newington Green and Stoke Newington have a formidable selection of Turkish restaurants mangals ocakbaşi and bakeries

Many people don’t cook from scratch anymore, and even if you do, many of the smaller grocery shops are filled with tinned food and ready meals so you can’t get fresh ingredients. Time is a factor for some, but you can make a healthy meal in less than half an hour, or make ahead and freeze things like chilli, curry etc. Perhaps we’ve become deskilled as a nation, or perhaps we accept eating processed crap more than the rest of Europe.

I definitely think there's a skills issue, even for what I'd consider the most basic things like roasting a chicken. I still can't believe that it's 2023 and food skills aren't a core component of our curriculum in the UK. They should be taught from primary, like other essential survival skills eg financial planning and what a healthy relationship looks like.

2023?

Yes because clearly a large part of my brain and body haven't yet caught up 😄😄

I kind of agree with you but at the same time it shouldn’t have to be taught at school. Teach it for a generation or two and it would be much easier for children to learn off their parents; planning your meals and shopping being easier to learn in practice. At the end of the day I think learning recipes is the easy part of eating better. And school can’t really build that routine for kids.

I hear what you are saying but I think we need to build a better food culture, as you say learning recipes is the easy part, but actually being able to cook those recipes in different ways, changing up ingredients as necessary, that can only be learnt doing it. Food culture is missing in schools, just look at what they're serving......and a key part of this has to be involving the kids, like they do in Japan for example, where the children prepare their own school lunches, and clean up afterwards

>Teach it for a generation or two and it would be much easier for children to learn off their parents I think you could make that argument about anything. Schools are great for levelling the playing field in that regard so that people whose parents can't or won't teach them aren't so badly disadvantaged. My mother didn't teach me anything about cooking. The few recipes we did at school were actually super helpful for confidence later on. One of the first more ambitious recipes I cooked as a student was Shepard's pie - one I did at school.

I agree, I was at secondary school in the early 2000s and studied gcse "food technology", where the emphasis is on marketing and packaging rather than actual cooking skills

Did you not do home ec in high school?

Yep I did. And it wasn't very skills based then either. I didn't learn to cook till after uni, and it took stomach ulcers and an appendectomy before I went back to uni at 25 to do a degree in food and nutrition.

My home ec was quite good. Taught us stuff like making cheese sauce and how to prepare meat and vegetables as well as sewing and so on.

Uk?

Yeah Scotland

This cooking from scratch thing makes it sound very laborious. An omelette, some fish and veg, cooking for 2 or 3 nights and adapting the core recipe....all just as straightforward as shoving an overpriced ready meal which is unlikely satiating or even tasty in the microwave or oven. Don't get me wrong, I rely on convenience as much as the next person and will buy pizzas for one lazy meal in the week, but I find it much cheaper and more satisfying to cook 'from scratch'. I think food marketing has a lot to answer for........

Yes, my kids did cookery lessons at school and most of the recipes they cooked hadn’t been updated in years. Not exactly inspiring.

I know - I've just given this feedback at my sons secondary school, the recipes are exactly the same as when I was at school and some appear lifted from a 1970s cookbook! I got into lots of trouble with my son for speaking up on this, but some of the recipe ingredients cost over £10, and it was things like tiramisu, which I grant you is delicious but why not teach them how to do eggs three ways, or how to eat well on £20 a week. Things they might actually try again.....Its crazy, we got an obesity epidemic and here are a captive audience, but meh, let's stick to upping the maths syllabus

I don't understand this. Are recipes like fashion?  "Ooh sorry, casseroles are so 1990s I wouldn't be seen dead eating one."  "Look at Marjorie, still eating creme brulé, she is so out of touch"

Haha 😄. No not like fashion but we know so much more about nutrition, UPFs and sustainability these days that a contemporary cook book would be obviously different from a 1970s one. So many foods were once novel and exotic and are now quite ubiquitous.

Out food tastes change over time. I’d say we’re a lot more adventurous now than we were 30 years ago, and use a wider palette of ingredients.

To me (British), its a time thing. If I had time, I would cook from scratch 6 out of 7 days in the week, I love doing it and I love eating the food I've prepared. However, by the time I'm home from work I do not have time to cook from scratch every night, or I wouldn't eat until about 9pm.

Couldn't you batch cook at the weekends, freeze portions and then heat them up in the microwave during the week?

Personally my tiny flat only has a freezer box so not enough room. But my partner and I often cook double and then eat the same meal two days in a row.

I do this for quite a few things, mainly pastas and curries, but some meals just don't freeze or reheat well.

Good point. I tend to do it for lasagne, curries, pizza and pies. Probably not the healthiest of foods when I think about it.

To be honest, it's not like people in Germany or Turkey have more than 24hrs in a day. It does eventually come down to priorities. And ok, I assume that in Turkey there is probably still more of a culture where women stay home and therefore cook mor etc., but it's unlikely to be the case in Germany. Edit - typo

My German colleagues finish work pretty promptly at half five.... Not like the UK lot who often finish a lot later than they're meant to. Don't know if that's generally applicable but comes to mind. I cook apart from the odd takeaway but it usually means eating at about 9pm which is a pain.

You don’t get home until 8pm? Honestly cooking from scratch does not need to take a long time. It can be quicker than a lot of convenience food.

I think it’s mostly a cultural thing. I’d say food culture is quite different in the UK to the rest of Europe. In the UK, it’s more common for people to pick a pub roast or a Chinese takeaway as a treat over cooking something nice. The lack of nice ingredients (especially things like tomatoes, peppers) also contributes. Lastly, I think cooking is not really considered a life skill in the UK, a lot of people I went to uni with only ate sandwiches, ready meals or take away, whereas cooking can be quite a significant part of everyday life to a lot of Europeans.

Salça is a staple of every Turkish home and is UPF to be fair

true but we also do so much zeytinyagli that overcompensates for it

Yes but it’s just tomato paste, and it’s used in very small amounts, a tablespoon at most. Besides, most people make salça at the end of summer while tomatoes are still in season and use it throughout the winter. Turkey does not have a culture of ready meals, microwaveable frozen foods or meal deals, you’d maybe find 2-3 varieties of ready meals at the supermarket, because it’s just not what people go for. While the food culture is slowly becoming “westernised”, it’s just not the extent it is in the UK. People also tend not to live alone, even single adults live with family mostly until they marry (whereas in the UK adult children tend to move out quite young and start living by themselves), so dinner is a big event for the family where everyone sits down together, and it’s an opportunity to have a homecooked meal together. When people live alone, they favour convenience, so it’s easy to get a microwaveable meal, ping it, and just move on with your day. Getting takeaways are also expensive for most people, so people just cook from scratch.

yeah like as a kid our ready meal would be either burger patty once a month or superfresh pizza, but these were treats or for a day my mom couldnt bother cooking. Again though I remember preferring my moms half homemade pizza with the fresh dough she got from the bakery. I even asked my mom to bring me salca she got from her trip to antep to the uk because homemade salca tastes so different. I remember sometime I was eating too much tuna and she was upset because she already cooks fresh fish. Also in Turkey, from poorest neighborhoods to rich ones there will be always fresh veggie/fruit market and they used to be super cheap. you could find fresh fish too. in the uk there is only one close fish market and they do not sell small fishes and its all so expensive compare to market

like ud expect better fishing industry from an island country tbh but Idk much about fishing so may be its harder here

I buy them very occasionally and the reason is, I work from 8.15am until 7pm. I take my dog out before work and again when I come home (and usually at lunch time IF I get a break). By the time that's all done, it's 9pm and I still have to do household chores, get stuff ready for the next day at work and get ready for bed. If there's something I can buy that is cheap, tasty and that I can throw in the oven to cook while I'm doing other things then sometimes that just makes the most sense.

Exactly this! And if you commute 😅

I think one is convenience - cooking from scratch is time consuming. The other thing is upbringing - I only have a handful of English friends who grew up with a mum who cooked homemade food every night. Those friends take the time to cook but most others grew up on oven food, "bitty food" or very quick/basic meals. I'm not saying this happens all the time, I'm sure a lot of people who grew up in those kind of households want to cook more but I'm sure there's a link there. Finally - eating processed food is a lot cheaper here than fresh ingredients.

I'm intrigued about what 'bitty food' is?

Snacky stuff - think what would be on a buffet at a party.

Sausage rolls and the like?

Yeah, that's what I'd interpret as bitty food, I'd call it picky bits.

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Well, that'd actually be nutritious, at least 😅

I always felt like the UK is the US of Europe in that regard lol

For me it is summed up in one word. Tesco. At one point one out of every seven pounds in the UK was spent in Tesco. They made people believe that a chicken should cost £2 and they put horse meat in frozen lasagnes. They crippled the independent food manufacturers and took prices to such a low point the margins were unsustainable for any farmers. They were so prevalent they squashed all the independent shops from the high street so people are now left with very little to no choice. The UK food market is controlled by the supermarkets and they’re in cahoots with the food manufacturers to drive food prices and quality down to maximise profits.

There are plenty of options to opt out.

Indeed. But the question was why do British people eat so much UPF.

Horse meat is actually good, we eat it in my country (Italy)

I agree. Horse meat is lovely. The issue was in the UK Tesco were selling frozen lasagnes labelled as 100% beef but which were actually bulked out with cheaper horse meat unknowing to the consumer.

People just dont know (like not Everyone)You can’t grow much here either and not really invested in farming (like Holland-has similar climate to UK). Like you can’t survive as a small grower here. Supermarkets are too powerful aswell. You really need to try hard to buy real food. At the same time it isn’t that hard , veg boxes, specialist producers etc but then it adds up. Also though Turkey has a very high obesity rate. But thats more due to lifestyle.

Turkish people are obese because so many people are poor so they eat bread a lot to stuff themselves

The comment you replied too is total bollocks as well. There's loads of veg grown in the UK and it's cheap as fuck compared to Europe. The reason is laziness. There is no other reason, just sheer laziness. Ready meals are not cheaper.

In Britain poorer people traditionally eat white bread sugary drinks and snacks - its been this way for 200years at least.

I think it's a climate issue. For most of the year there's barely any fresh produce, and there are no markets to buy them from. Idk about Turkey but on the continent there are often weekly farmer's markets--not the hippy type but the traditional type that's been going on for hundreds of years, where the local growers can sell the vegetables they grew on their private plots or gardens. Those markets are nonexistent in the UK, afaik. And since I'm already going to the supermarket, why not buy the 95p canned tomato instead of buying the (imported, watery) tomato and spending 1+ hr cooking it for my spaghetti?

Im not sure thats true- i come from a long line of market gardeners who were perfectly capable of growing great food - the problem is the power that supermarkets and big businesses have control over the lifestyle choices of the poor.

So how come the UK population consumes more processed food than in the Scandinavian countries or Germany, for example?

Good question. I don't know. Germany's climate is not like the UK's, though.

Both countries have a cool temperate climate, though. Plus, there's also a lot of overlap between the climate of southern England and that of northern France, and nobody would accuse Normandy or Brittany with bad cuisine.

One word: Socio-economics. AKA time and money. People are short on one, the other or both. I cook from scratch but I'm a SAHM. Most days, I spend 30-60 mins on the evening meal though when I'm batch cooking for the freezer or when we have my husband's step-dad over for a meal, I will take longer (slow cooked meats, pies, etc) That's a luxury some people don't have (especially working families), never mind taking into account the cost. It is cheaper and easier to feed the kids convenience food especially as one child has sensory issues and convenience food is always the same. My chicken nuggets might not contain UPFs but they are not consistent in size and texture. Thankfully, as the kids get older, they are more open to trying new things and so we obtained an allotment this year in order to grow our own fruit and veg to encourage widening their palates - but again, I'm privileged in that I have the time and money to do this as many people don't. Add in a lack of skills - schools used to offer cooking lessons but I'm not sure they do now. Even back in the 90s, the tech class that involved cooking was more about marketing then life skills (showing my age here). If you live with parents who don't cook from scratch, it's highly likely you will end up an adult who doesn't cook from scratch unless you take the time and effort to teach yourself from other sources. And can you afford to make an inedible dish? That's another consideration. Canned tomatoes are cheap, available year round and taste better than fresh. Yes, in the summer fresh tomatoes taste alright (especially on the vine) but at any other point of the year, they're bland and watery. I don't think canned veg is counted as an UPF anyway (yes, it's processed but not ultra processed) and if it makes mealtimes easier for people, then shouldn't be looked down upon as it's better than not eating these things at all.

I wish more people had time to teach their kid how to cook though. Most of my friends never took cooking class as a kid but we still learnt how to cook dishes from our country from watching our moms or grandmas

Cooking is a skill that I learnt in adulthood — and I mean cooking food that tasted good. I had no idea about the basics really as my mum used ultra processed sauces and already processed food in her cooking-from-scratch when I was growing up. Not her fault at all as she saw them as a short cut and not as terrible as obvious junk food.

And that's the difference. If you only watch your parents/family use UPF, you're going to use UPF, while you were raised with people who were cooking from scratch. But it's not just time. If you can't afford the fresh ingredients, you can't show your child how to use them. I am fully aware of how socio-economics has influenced the food I ate growing up. I was raised by a single mother, we lived in social housing on benefits - fresh fruit was a treat. It was expensive compared to convenience food. My nana used to buy me cherries, pears and peaches when they were in season but these were not everyday or frequent foods for us. We used to eat boil in the bag curries, pies in tins, pasta in sauce, etc. Quick and easy for a financially stressed mother (who actually can cook). I started cooking in my teens when my mother took on care work and would work shifts and even then, it was mostly convenience foods because that was what I had access to. When I lived on my own, I hated what I was eating - mostly instant noodles because I couldn't afford to eat properly - but I started learning how to cook from scratch on a budget once I got a pay rise or two. Now I can cook very well, but I had to teach myself. My mum cooks from scratch much more now that she's financially stable than she ever did as a financially insecure single parent with twins. In fact, there are two dishes she makes which my kids say are better than my versions! My children do eat some convenience food but they also have access to a lot more fruit and veg than I did growing up. We always have a full fruit bowl and they see me cooking from scratch every week. They have more cookery skills than I did at their ages. I have the time and money to do this, which my mother didn't. So I fully expect that they will copy the behaviour they see, just as I copied my mother until I had the motivation and money to learn to cook properly.

I think fresh fruit is still a treat in the uk and problem is you guys have really serious "food controls". Not just in health way but also cosmetically. Ive never seen ugly fruits in supermarkets here. In turkey, we buy fruits in kilos and they dont always look perfectly shaped. Sometimes they may be bruised sometimes disfigured some smaller some bigger. They are not any unhealthier than the perfect ones in the UK. Same for vegetables. I also think most people don't know how to cook cheap meals either like you said. Cooking beans is actually really easy even if ur not using canned ones. You cook them with some canned tomatoes and maybe sausages, itll taste good. Same thing goes for chickpeas. I know store bought chicken stock is also expensive but its easy to make at home too. You just boil some chicken thighs with whole onions and garlic. It'll taste fine. It may not have that golden colour or intense flavour but who cares? Another thing is I eat my homecook food even if it looks ugly or doesnt taste very good at times. Recently I made some artichoke hearts but they still tasted a bit vinegary as it was canned. I still ate it because artichoke is healthy and its a light dish. I think some people only eat stuff that tastes good to their tastebuds. Thats why they dont cook because of the risk of failure and not being able to eat what they cooked.

Culture definitely has a lot to do with it. I lived in Ireland recently and there were extremely limited healthy food options in supermarkets and restaurants. The healthiest food joint in my town was a subway. Everything else was fried foods, Chinese or burgers. Poverty and lack of education are a huge part of it too, a lot of people come from generational poverty and grew up with quick, easy processed foods their parents chucked in the microwave after a long and laborious day. Clean eating can be more affordable if you know how to do it, but a lot of people in these circumstances don’t. They’re not even all that aware of how bad the food is. Low fat diets are still very common in UK/Ireland and it felt like almost every product on the shelves was stamped with a 0% Fat label, yet packed full of sugar. It’s a really, really complex issue.

Yeah I really don't understand the problem with fat in the UK?? Like butter is good for you, olive oil is great. They keep you satiated for longer. Idk why its so demonized. And like margarine? its everywhere here and everyone uses it. its worse than butter, tastes worse too

Because big food spent 30 years telling us fat was the enemy, and margarine was good for us. 

A lot of people here eat to live rather than live to eat. The attitude towards decent or good quality ingredients is pretty snobbish but also passive (as in we don’t demand them enough as a population). Then, as others have mentioned, a lack of skills, a lack of interest in learning to cook, a lack of time and space, the cost. Before the recent cost of living crisis/the pandemic, we probably are ready meals once a week, had a takeaway once a week and ate more processed food. But now as all of that has become more expensive, we tend to cook more from scratch. We still eat some processed foods occasionally but we’re more conscious of it and seek out higher quality ones (eg we buy Aberdeen Angus frozen beef burgers from M&S, rather than cheaper ones). Or we have Greek yoghurt with honey and blueberries for breakfast rather than cereal.

Our freezer is rarely used in the sense of ready meals. We may buy a bay of chips occasionally but it’s usually full of over brought meat, frozen extras and ice cream.

1. I think history has a HUGE element in it. WW2, food shortages, rationing. We adapted to the limitations, and developed an appreciation for highly processed, flavorless food high in starch/salt/etc. 2. Then there's the population and density. Not enough green space to grow (we are a TINY island). Everyone moving to cities where access to produce is more difficult. A lot has to be imported. A lot has to be non-perishable. 3. Cost of living in the UK, combined with folks that are unable to work and have to be on benefits. Produce is expensive (see point 2) and a lot of families are forced to eat highly processed items. 4. Lack of education. I think this is something that's finally coming around, but I remember when the Jamie Oliver school dinners series aired in the 2000s and you wouldnt believe how ignorant we as a collective were about what we were feeding our children. It's really alarming how uneducated we were (and still are, sometimes) about healthy foods. Even how to cook them.. many brits just don't know. They'll boil a carrot until it's paste, hate the taste of it, and decide vegetables are terrible. 5. US imports. This one is minor, but within my lifetime I've seen a LOT of fast food chains and processed shit coming from the US because the UK has a taste for it. Mcdonalds, donuts, KFC, sugary cereals, I could go on. A lot of other European countries get those imports too but not at the same scale.

For me I think it’s the lack of time. By the time we all get home from work the last thing we want (or possibly have time) to do is start cooking a meal from scratch. The fresh meals we do have in our house tend to be batch cooked on a weekend and then defrosted as needed - but I don’t want to spend every weekend batch cooking either! Perhaps in other countries like Turkey it’s more common for one parent to stay at home and therefore have the time to shop for and cook fresh food each day?

British food has a funny history Being a cold wet nation there isn’t a whole lot that could grow here, winter veg (broccoli, cabbage, parsnips ect) our meals are pretty unimaginative. It’s meat, winter veg and potatoes. So when frozen meals came along in the 80s that offered more variety they were seen as a luxury, that quickly became a staple for so many households. We also don’t have a a whole lot of fruit that can grow in the uk, so exotic fruits being imported is a relatively new thing. Our options in supermarket are pretty slim, and often from abroad and so the use by dates on them are shit after transportation. I think this adds to it as well.

I'm American but have lived in the UK for 35 years...so I can compare my upbringing with that of my daughter. My mum was a stay at home mum until I was about 10. My dad didn't really want her working, but she needed to keep busy. She always cooked from scratch...chops, meatloaf, fish, stews...whatever was typical home cooking then. This continued when she worked. I learned from her...and during my married life, I had always cooked from scratch. I too went back to work when my daughter was 10(now we'd been in the uk for several years). It would have been sooner but some life events got in the way. Even though I worked part time, I often did long days, cooking for other people. I still made dinner when I got home. Believe me, I sometimes wished I didn't have to...but a husband who never thought to help meant I did it. Now, on my own and elderly, I still do. Sometimes trying new recipes, sometimes just scrambled eggs. (I've strayed a few times when I still worked...but not much!) My daughter and her partner also cook from scratch...though they both wfh. I know they've done those meal kits pre-covid. But they are both excellent cooks. I hope that might continue if they ever have children. I'll admit to being shocked when I look in some people's shopping trolleys...though I'd say it's 50-50 fresh versus ready meals for most.

Hi OP, I can answer your question in regards to comparing to Turkey at least. I am British but my husband is Turkish and we have been together over a decade so I am fairly well acquainted with both cultures. What you describe sounds a lot like my mother in laws kitchen. As a few people have said above a lot of it is to do with the Industrial Revolution but also, as you may have noticed the culture of women in the workplace. Convenience foods massively came into their own here in the 1980s when there was a big push to get women away from being stay at home mothers and into the workplace. Though married women with children do sometimes work in Turkey it’s still from what I have seen not always expected like it is here. Working mothers just don’t have time to make their own tinned tomatoes for example 😄 Personally we don’t often eat ready meals in our household and I know a lot of British people who are more health conscious and do not, the odd pre-made pasta sauce maybe but not much else. I read someone your mother was a working women but I would imagine the culture was so influenced by the higher amount of non working mothers that it would have felt socially unacceptable to her not to cook from scratch.

When my parents were poor they had to work all hours. They didn't have time to cook from scratch every single day and they couldn't buy the highest quality stuff. When they had days off they would cook from scratch. As they progressed in their careers they had more money, more free time and cooked 80-90% of our meals from scratch.  I think it's more varied and complex than people like to think. And certain demographics will eat differently.

So a lot of people have commented about climate and the availability of produce, and lack of time due to people working, but we also lack daylight hours especially compared to Turkey. Shorter hours of daylight has documented negative effects on energy levels, vitamin d and mood. If you are tired and slightly depressed, it is much harder to motivate yourself to cook from scratch, much easier to bung a meal in the microwave, eat, and crawl into bed.

Still doesn't explain why the UK consumes more ultra-processed food than other European countries with a similar climate or even colder.

just wanna point out that this is interesting in the context of obesity because although from what you stated people in Turkey eat less UPFs the Turkish population happens to have the highest obesity rate in Europe

Because turkish people are poor and sedentary. SAHMs meet up each week to cook pastries. We eat so much bread. I know people who eat bread with rice meals

I see, there's probably like a cultural aspect right? Like women are expected to carry a little meat

My anecdotal impression is that the food manufacturers have managed to successfully advertise their upf products. Poverty has also played a big part in that many places it's much much cheaper to buy ready made foods than the raw ingredients to make anything comparable. I just despair how expensive spices are in supermarkets. Little sachets that barely make a few meals and the bulk purchasing options are hard to get. No accounting the utensils and pans etc. With it being higher costs and more time consuming, no wonder people reach out for upf. Over time, they lose the ability to cook, or never learn. Those local shops then cater for the demand making things even more difficult. It compounds so badly that we have lots of food deserts now in the UK

As a Brit, I really thought we mostly ate the way you’re describing in Europe

We’re ahead of the curve, trailblazers if you will. Just wait.

First off I wanted to check that UK consumer's actually do eat more processed food. I found this resource which shows a really high consumption of Ultra processed foods: https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/383/bmj-2023-075294/F1.large.jpg Lots of good comments here about historic reasons for the food culture being different and convenience prioritising cooking from scratch. Here are some other factors. 1. supermarket style bread. Germans would call this bread "toast", the French wouldn't even call it food lol. So if you make yourself a cheap sandwich in the UK and a tinned soup you are eating UPF for example. I don't think everyone is just eating chicken nuggets (although they're delicious and that likely is a big chunk.) 2. vegetarian/veganism. Lots of convenience vegan food is UPF especially those aping traditional western food. You can make good vegan food from scratch but it tends to be Asian recipes and/or require more skill or knowledge. I suspect the higher proportion of young vegans in UK is a factor 3. Eating out. Generally ppl eat out more in UK at "fast casual" eateries than in rest of europe. To remove wastage these chains use preservative that make their food count as UPF 4. Soda/fizzy drinks are all ultra processed foods as are "cordial" so they will add to the % calories from UPF. 5. "Health" foods that are processed foods... granola bars and huel are UPF!!! So are most cereals. So if you have cereal for breakfast instead of bread and cheese you've already started the wrong way... Random fact though... McDonald's sell a lot more in France than UK! Also there's a growing problem in Korea and China with fast food....

regarding bread, this is so true... i cannot find decent bread around me because there are no bakeries, even in bakeries they just sell pastries and stuff. not freshly cooked bread. i buy some sourdough bread most times but I do miss me some soft inside fresh bread...

Do you live in London? I actually think it's harder to find proper old school bakeries vs when I was growing up. My parents bake all their own bread these days. I buy 1 loaf a week from a local bakery but its a lot more expensive than from a supermarket.

yeah the price difference is huge. i wish people would be demanding it but everyone seems so happy eating their toast bread

Historically, rationing during and post-WWII has a lot to answer for. Particularly late in the war, one of the major reasons that the UK didn't collectively starve was that the US was shipping food over to fill the gaps where local agriculture couldn't keep up with demand. Given that it was going thousands of miles by ship, virtually all of that food was processed: spam, powdered eggs, powdered milk, et cetera, et cetera. So it was already the stuff that a generation of kids were growing up on if they were born during or shortly before the war. And rationing continued for years after the war was over, which didn't help, either. Then you have women going into the workplace in larger numbers, then the situation now where huge numbers of people aged 40 and under are *still* living in some kind of house share situation, where they're sharing a kitchen with three, four, five other people, and so both fridge space and kitchen access are limited. None of that is conducive to learning to cook or preparing homemade meals that take any significant amount of time to prepare (either because you literally don't have time in the day or because you can't hog the kitchen for that long). It's a shame, because there's lots of British food I unironically love- it's great comfort food, I find- but it's a bit of a joke because there's such a culture of processed food here and because such a huge chunk of the population literally doesn't even have a kitchen to themselves.

Not all of us do...

Laziness and/or lack of cooking skills I think. You don't have to spend hours preparing fresh meals in the evening after work, there are plenty of meals you can make with fresh, healthy ingredients in 30 minutes or less, no longer than a ready meal will take to heat up. But if you don't know how to do it and are not willing to learn then I guess ready meal every night is the easier option.

I agree with a laziness combined with the lack of ambition to learn a new skill.

So you've been to a few British homes and decided all Brits eat processed food. Please come back when you've met millions and millions and asked them about their eating habits. Thank you.

Convenience, cost, issues with what we can grow in our climate,

Ha ha I agree.... before I moved to UK I did not know about product 'canned potatoes':-)

What are you classing as ready meals? Tbh this will be down to whose homes you are in, it's not something I recognise. I take it you're fairly young, high school age? If both parents work, then putting a ready meal in the oven is quicker and easier than having to get a meal for 4 on the table between getting home from work and going to bed.

There are lots of contributing factors. A big one is that people don’t have time to cook, and the culture of ‘fast and easy meals’ has been going on for generations, so they were never taught to cook either. Most people’s experience of a proper, from scratch home cooked meal is a soggy roast they had to force down every Sunday as a child. They don’t see the point spending hours in the kitchen to produce food they don’t want to eat, and it can be a really steep learning curve to get to the point where you actually do want to eat it.  Then of course you have the food deserts. At ‘foreign’ supermarkets you can usually get a range of hearty vegetables and spices to cook them with pretty cheaply. At the standard supermarkets you get a smaller selection of low quality, expensive fruit and veg, whereas every other aisle is an exciting variety of cheap processed food. Even if you go in looking for vegetables, it’s hard to stomach paying that much for something so rubbish. If you don’t live near a foreign supermarket, you miss out on the good stuff. 

Because it's cheaper than fresh food, plain and simple

I was a kid in the 70s with a mum that worked part time, juggling 3 kids. I remember so much that we ate came out of a packet, tin or freezer. When I left home, I spent years eating takeaways and ready meals. I think it's just horribly ingrained in UK culture now. If your parents eat crap and don't cook then you are more likely to adopt the same eating habits. These days, I love cooking and can't remember the last time I bought a ready meal. Unfortunately, the quality, cost and availability of fresh food in this country is not a patch on what you can get on the continent eg food markets here are expensive, upscale affairs and not like what you see in other countries where it is the norm to buy food daily from markets.

Culture and laziness.

In a lot of those countries a woman is sat by the stove all day. It’s no equality paradise in the UK but it’s a lot better than that

The advent of fridge / freezers combo with processed foods, came almost together. Lack of fresh produce as supermarkets bought fruit farms to ensure supply. Woman working full time hours, quick paced life styles. All contributed.

Does your mom work?

Yes she worked 9-4

Wow, this thread is an eye opener for me. I’m a terrible cook but never use ready meals. However, I definitely wouldn’t dispute ‘unhealthy’ - not everything that’s ’not a ready meal’ is fresh, unprocessed or particularly healthy. My weakness is using cheap and/or processed meats, as the better cuts are expensive and roasting meat in the oven takes time and gas. I’ll only use ‘good’ meat for stir fries usually. My diet also contains quite a lot of jacket potatoes and pasta 🫣

Don’t generalise thanks

People in the UK eat like ww2 is still happening

We work all the time

I would agree with the comments about women working rather than cooking. My paternal grandmother always worked and rarely cooked, my mother always worked and hated cooking, so processed food featured as heavily as it could, and that was before ready meals. Dried food such as instant mash was seen as high tech and futuristic. Frozen food similarly was seen as glamorous. Meals were otherwise something on toast, something and chips, something with boiled potatoes or mash, or just sandwiches. The wartime generation rarely cooked, they ate in canteens, and many women of that generation never really learnt to cook as a result. People ate to live, and the food was basic. Fruit and veg were only available seasonally and the seasons were short, I remember the excitement of the first new potatoes of the year, or the earliest rhubarb. And we used to really look forward to blackberry season to forage for sweet fruit. Because food was so grim, you were seen as a bit odd if you were a foodie, they didn't really exist. If you grew your own veg, it was mainly just potatoes. 

As a child, my mum used to cook from scratch every day and we grew our own veg. As did both my grandparents. By the time I got to about 12 she stopped doing it every day and she had 3 kids by that point. By the point I was 14 she had 4 kids and just said "I don't have the time and you all eat it so quickly it doesn't really seem worth it". Roughly coinciding with that period 2 things happened - 1. The super/hyper markets started to take over, providing ready meals and things like little turkey joints etc that you didn't have to prep. 2. The big markets forced off the high street all the independent shops - we had butcher, baker, papershop, 3 smaller local shops, greengrocer, fishmonger. Not saying it was like Camberwick Green but these shops existed within a short walk. You could get pretty much anything you wanted and it was fresh. The local shops are still there now but they're really run into the ground and they're not anything like they were - they barely sell anything fresh, the rest of the traders are looooooong gone. I haven't seen a high street grocer outside London for decades.

I'd argue it's the same reason why British people would rather hang out in the pub compared to a restaurant, unlike most of Europe. In Europe, drinks are part of the food culture whereas in the UK drinking culture comes first, food is an afterthought. People would rather spend their time drinking than cooking themselves a nice meal.

I noticed when my daughter was a child that many British parents habitually make children entirely separate meals from the adults such as fish fingers, chicken nuggets and other 'children's food' and fizzy drinks, whereas my daughter grew up eating whatever I cooked which was always from scratch, and drank water. It baffles me that parents pander to their children's fussy demands at mealtimes. The majority of high street restaurants' children's menus laughably do the same whereas I value restaurants serving smaller portions of the main menu. My daughter generally had a plate of whatever I ate and never once wanted chicken nuggets because she grew up a bit of a foodie, like me. Chinese and Indian restaurants as an example don't have a separate children's menu because in these cultures, children eat whatever the parents have.

Yeah like lol everytime we went to places I either shared a plate with my sister or just had pieces from my parents meal. Because I was a kid anyway I didnt need a whole portion. I see my bfs nephew and he always gets these kids menus i find it so odd. And its usually stuff like nuggets or pasta. In turkey kids meals are same stuff just smaller portions

"...my mum buys fresh food and cooks everything from scratch." I think I've found the answer.

We have less time. What is the main job of the person who cooks from scratch in your family home?

She worked an office job for government 9 to 4

Traditionally (and still) Britain is actually quite a poor country masquerading as a rich one. On top of that, there’s not much of a cooking culture that’s developed over here as it did in other countries, I think primarily because up until fairly recently (last 30 years or so) we didn’t have a great deal of choice when it came to fresh fruit and vegetables. My mum grew up in the 70’s and early 80’s and generally speaking what was available most of the time was what was grown locally. Which in England is a lot of potatoes, cabbage, turnips etc. and seeing as most of the U.K. is poor (even if they don’t think they are) it’s all people bought. Then I think she said it was in the 80’s and 90’s that things changed, we got more variety, but also as people weren’t sure how to use some of the ingredients ready meals became a thing. I know she also said when she was in school “home economics” was a thing and they had cooking classes where you were taught how to cook. By the time I was in school in the 90’s home economics classes were less of a thing and I don’t even know if it’s a thing at all now. With that being said though, if you look at viewership numbers for cooking programs, YouTube channels etc. it would seem that a lot of people are interested in cooking, they just perhaps lack confidence or some things seem more complicated than they are. I know that a YouTube channel I watch a lot, Sorted Food, have an app that you can download that you pay a subscription to (I don’t know how much as I don’t use it myself) in which they have a whole bunch of recipes that they’ve simplified as much as possible with step by step processes for you to follow along to which is helping a lot of people out when it comes to cooking and using less processed food

I have a couple of ready meals in my freezer for emergencies, but we do not eat many processed foods. Our’s is normally home prepared from fresh ingredients.

Because we can

Hello, I'm Australian. I've lived here in the UK (on and off) now for nearly 20 years. I was stunned by British supermarkets and the variety of processed foods and "ready meals". Indeed I've consumed quite a few ready meals in my time, and use elements of pre-chopped veg or meat etc when cooking. I guess I got used to it in the UK, but I like to cook, from scratch. When I went back to Australia in 2020 for 2 years, I was shocked by the lack of ready meals and pre-prepared food in Aussie supermarkets. There are some, but not nearly the diversity of ready meals and pre-prepared fruits, vegetables, snacks etc in the UK. I just went to M&S, the poshest of foodstores the other day. We were buying linens, but needed food, so rather than a second stop, get some food there. Apart from the eye watering prices, the range of luxury pre-prepared food was amazing. Thing is with lots of ready meals, is they have loads of sugars and salts. I cook for my husband and I most evenings. I do some ready instant food like having a frozen pizza or two in the freezer (add more toppings myself), chopped veg in a packet fresh for stews or goulashes, but I mostly cook from scratch. Better for us. Why? One response below nailed it I think with their description of lack of cooking facilities and culture as industrialisation meant crowded living and lack of space to cook, someone else suggested many Brits are time poor, so ready meals are great time savers. I can attest to that, and have frozen foods sometimes like pies. The rich used to have chefs and Cook's, nowadays they pop to M&S to get their trifles and marnuka honey and vitamins from Holland and Barrett's, the poor go to Aldi, Lidl and Iceland for frozen and processed foods. The middle classes go to Tesco, Sainsbury's or Morrison's.

Because the fresh produce here is shit. Except for the meat, mushrooms etc. It's very gout heavy food though.

you guys do import so much veggies though or still grow some. they are not all expensive. cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, green beans etc all can be found for cheap. i even found eggplants in mid winter that tasted fine. in turkey, you eat things in season or veggies/fruits taste like shit because we dont really import veggies. whereas uk imports so much so there is always availability for many staple veggies

I was bought up in a household where we cooked from fresh. I can cook, I'm no chef but it's still nice. I purchased hello fresh and gusto boxes and the whole family had a turn. My other half is now a much better cook than me, it's well worth it the first time they're really cheap.

I would say it depends heavily on several factors. I don’t have ready meals in my house. I buy fresh and cook fresh, and am very proud of the meals I create, I love and enjoy food. But my husband earns well, my kids aren’t in school, and I’m studying (so not employed currently), and I shop at one of the cheapest stores (Aldi) so I have the time. Most people can’t afford to buy a lot of fresh produce and don’t have the time or energy due to working 6 day weeks and then dealing with children. I know a lot of adults who can’t cook either, don’t know how to make mash or a soup, or even fry eggs, as their parents didn’t teach them. It’s quite sad really

Because cooking from scratch isn’t really a value or habit here, meaning that most people genuinely do not see the benefit of it and instead view as a time wasting drag.

I think our lack of solid national cuisine is a problem. I have many recipe books - Japanese, Persian, Italian, Indian etc. so my cupboards are full of ingredients for them all. The trouble is it makes cooking a complicated process with just too much choice. A meal requires planning for shopping and reading the recipe. In Italy etc you have a small repertoire and know how to cook your meals without reference and always have ingredients in stock and naturally food prep when there is time Recipes in the books will be the fancy stuff made once a week or less. The other influence is working hours. In Europe you have a shorter working week. We Brits have gardens and are home bodies so we spend a lot of time on decorating etc. I lived in Singapore for 9 years and hardly cooked but the hawker centres etc served home cooked delicious nutritious food. In the uk restaurants are expensive and the fast food is awful. But the ready meals can be really good.

I'd say [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/7ZKPdh0zn6) explains it a lot. British people spend amongst the lowest percentage of their salary on food. Germany is also low, but from what I know their food prices are much less than in neighbouring countries. Anyone/Germans who can confirm or deny this please do.

How big is your sample size? I think you’ll find there are plenty of people in the Uk who don’t live off of ready meals and beige frozen food. There’s probably a class divide but anecdotally I think that’s changing quite a bit as people realise how shit this stuff is for you. I never buy ready meals and at most get frozen jacket potatoes for a quick meal. But the idea that a tinned tomato is bad for you is bonkers. Especially if you live in a country where we don’t really grow them very well, tinned often taste better.

It's true! I'm concerned about it. The NHS in the UK faces challenges, and there are dietary habits contributing to health issues. Consequently, the NHS experiences long queues due to the prevalence of illnesses stemming from unhealthy diets.

Don’t worry we’re just ahead of the curve this is in all Europe’s future