Obesity

[neil_merseyside]

I've made those too. I can bore you to death on the subject of weight control via Turbo depositors and Ishida multihead weighers, but I'll spare you the details. There's very little difference between a meat pie and a ready meal, it's just manufacturing. I may use a travelling oven with a heating section 20m long, but it's just an oven with a steel conveyor belt travelling at a particular speed and giving a particular dwell time.

It's the ingredients not the big appliances that make the difference, it is the extra ingredients used over a home recipe and the cheap nasty versions of these home and added ingredients, oh and the fact that the flavour only comes from salt, sugar or fat. Want a low fat variety? Drop the fat and up the sugar, I stopped the manufacture of printing cyclinders for McV lite digestives as the calorie count was 10% up on the standard! I got into a lot of trouble as it seems low fat was true, but they had just upped the sugar to compensate.

 

[KnittyNorah]

...when I compare the list of ingredients for my marmalades and chutneys to what's in the ones available in the supermarkets, the mind does boggle somewhat.

I bake as a hobby - have been baking for over 60 years - and I say the same about my cakes.

 

[Fab Foodie]

There have been studies done, but it escapes me where - they were referenced on "Eat Well for Less" however.

I should have been clearer that it is on processed food versus the home cooked version of the same thing. Highly processed and refined foods (and yes, ready meals are processed to within an inch of their life) are easier for your gut to extract the calories from than the same thing you've cooked at home from scratch.

I’ve seen evidence to the contrary, including data that’s shown when analysed that home- made products such as bolognese, curries, shepherds pie etc. are worse for you (higher salt and fat) than ready-meal alternatives.
It’s really not that simple. An industrial ‘ready’ meal is generally made exactly as you’d do at home but the scale is bigger and the control far better. The Gregg Wallace progs are worth it to see that in action.

 

[BoldonLad]

The common denominator is that they are all means of self gratification. The super-rich buy yachts, houses and Ferarris, the poor buy take-aways, tattoos and scratch cards. They’re almost 2 sides of the same coin....

The middle class gamble on the stock market and in other financial deals, the difference being that a lot of the time when they get it wrong, we all lose.

Isn't the difference in the level of or control of self gratification (including gambling)?

Many of us indulge in our little vices (drinking alcohol, smoking, gambling including stock market, eating too much or unhealthily), but, not to the point that it ruins our lives.

Some of us even buy more bicycles than we actually "need", but, we don't bankrupt ourselves, and/or deprive our children to do it.

 

[Fab Foodie]

I make ready meals, amongst other things, for a living. They are not "processed to within an inch of their life". I can walk you through the manufacture of, say, a meat pie and demonstrate this. The thing that changes is the scale. They are not easier for your gut to digest.
Edit - the whole point of manufactured foods is that they are as close as is humanly possible to something that you make at home. There have been great strides in "clean label" development etc. The point is here that if you read the ingredients you won't often find anything that sounds like a chemistry set, you will find stuff you can buy in the supermarket. This means no more modified starch, but more "maize starch" and "potato flour". No more E162, but more "beetroot juice". I might make flaky pastry on a 72-fold laminator, and it's a beautiful thing, but it's no different from me rolling and folding at home 72 times, or an artisan baker doing the same thing with a series of passes through a Rondo. It's just quicker, and fortunately I don't make a tonne of pastry at a time in my kitchen, or add butter 25kg at a time.

Bugger...just made the same point!!

 

[Fab Foodie]

I don't know if it is true or not but I seem to remember being told/read somewhere that McD chips had 20 odd ingredients! How? Short of reconstituted mush with added crap I can't imagine how they would manage it. Wouldn't surprise me though.

You were told bollocks.

 

[Oldhippy]

I guessed as much.

 

[BoldonLad]

1947 vintage reporting for duty!

I suppose from a lower-middle-class background - dad was a schoolteacher, that being the first step up the ladder - a keen gardener, with a large allotment and a greenhouse, and mum was a excellent cook, as well as being that unusual thing - a working married woman, and mother, in the 1940s and 50s.
We seemed to eat and eat and eat. My aunts on both sides of the family seemed to be in perpetual competition with each other as to who could put the greatest amount of food on the table and which of my cousins could eat the most - yet none of us were fat; I had one cousin who was referred to as a 'bonny lass' until the age of about 9 when a growth spurt saw her rapidly change into a skinny-ma-link! My two boy cousins were said to have 'hollow legs' - where else did all the food they ate, go? Cooked breakfasts, elevenses, hot dinners, cooked teas, suppers ...
We were undoubtedly much more active in all sorts of obvious, and not so obvious ways and access to junk food much more restricted. Shops were open very restricted hours; even those children who had the money, couldn't buy sweets, crisps and fizzy drinks if the shop was closed, could they?
If anyone doubts that 'real' food is lots, lots cheaper than 'fast' food, they need to have a look at the blog https://cookingonabootstrap.com/
But of course to cook 'real' food, you need to (a) know how and (b) have a minimum of equipment to actually do it. A kilo of potatoes is cheap, but if you don't have a pan and a hob at a minimum, you're still going to go hungry ...

"Bonny lass", haven't heard that expression for a while!

Sounds like you experiences were not too dissimilar to mine, even if you were more affluent.

The bolded bit is a definite problem, agreed.

 

[matticus]

I can only go by what my friends who also work in the food industry say. There are ready meals and there are ready meals, I suppose.

Yes. I don't have any evidence, but I think ready meals vary enormously. I can well believe that @battered makes stuff with less presvatives, less refined carbs - that sort of thing - than many. I'll have a look in Sains ... I mean Fortnum's later!

 

[KnittyNorah]

I guessed as much.

UK/EU McD's fries - maximum 3 (or four If you consider the oils separately) ingredients viz spuds, unhydrogenated vegetable oil(blend of sunflower and rapeseed) and - at the beginning of the harvesting season for spuds - a little dextrose. Ie basically deep fried potatoes.
US McD's fries - 14 ingredients I believe. Including salt added before cooking, an anti-foaming agent and hydrogenated oils as well as hydrolysed wheat and milk, which result in an 'addictive' umami flavour - and result in the US fries not being vegan friendly. Or me-friendly either if they use milk from rbST-treated cows ...

 

[Reynard]

I’ve seen evidence to the contrary, including data that’s shown when analysed that home- made products such as bolognese, curries, shepherds pie etc. are worse for you (higher salt and fat) than ready-meal alternatives.

Ah, but that totally depends on the cook, doesn't it?

This is the advantage (or not as the case may sometimes be) of home cooking that you can make something as healthy or as naughty as you want it to be.

For instance, with spag bol and cottage pie, I will use half beef, half green lentils and dry fry the beef. No one says I *have* to put half a cake of butter in mashed potato or a whole tub of full fat yoghurt or cream in a curry.

I tend to find it amusing when I do have a ready meal (I very rarely buy them), that there tends to be a fair bit of fat / oil puddled on top. Much more so than when I cook the same thing at home.

 

[Reynard]

I bake as a hobby - have been baking for over 60 years - and I say the same about my cakes.

I've just made a batch of marmalade today as I had some bits that wanted using up. Nothing in it but oranges, tangerines, ginger, just enough water to cover and the same weight of sugar to what I had uncut fruit.

Shop bought marmalade is up to 70% sugar and is made with fruit juice, gelling agent (probably corn starch), added pectin and maybe a sniff of peel in there somewhere. I mean you can buy a jar of marmalade for 27p...

 

[Fab Foodie]

Ah, but that totally depends on the cook, doesn't it?

This is the advantage (or not as the case may sometimes be) of home cooking that you can make something as healthy or as naughty as you want it to be.

For instance, with spag bol and cottage pie, I will use half beef, half green lentils and dry fry the beef. No one says I *have* to put half a cake of butter in mashed potato or a whole tub of full fat yoghurt or cream in a curry.

I tend to find it amusing when I do have a ready meal (I very rarely buy them), that there tends to be a fair bit of fat / oil puddled on top. Much more so than when I cook the same thing at home.

This is true. Watch a TV chef ‘globbing in the Olive oil’ and ‘liberal sprinkling of salt’. But in general the point still stands. You and I may be outliers!

 

[Fab Foodie]

Isn't the difference in the level of or control of self gratification (including gambling)?

Many of us indulge in our little vices (drinking alcohol, smoking, gambling including stock market, eating too much or unhealthily), but, not to the point that it ruins our lives.

Some of us even buy more bicycles than we actually "need", but, we don't bankrupt ourselves, and/or deprive our children to do it.

But that’s a question of wealth, not the need for gratification.

 

[Fab Foodie]

It's the ingredients not the big appliances that make the difference, it is the extra ingredients used over a home recipe and the cheap nasty versions of these home and added ingredients, oh and the fact that the flavour only comes from salt, sugar or fat. Want a low fat variety? Drop the fat and up the sugar, I stopped the manufacture of printing cyclinders for McV lite digestives as the calorie count was 10% up on the standard! I got into a lot of trouble as it seems low fat was true, but they had just upped the sugar to compensate.

That’s a valid point.
If you want to make ham with just salt you’ll get to hold about 5% water. Add phosphates, a few percent more. Now, start adding a variety of gums an stabilisers you can get 50% water added.
There are ingredients that perfom a wide range of functions to increase fat content, water content, extend shelf life, enhance flavour yadda yadda, but these days these are being engineered-out in most retail and QSR food supplies. However...in a lot of very cheap and particularly take-away foods these products do exist to make food seemingly very cheap indeed.
However, most major supermarkets, brands and QSR outlets in the UK are working against this.

EDIT:

Now consider the hot roast chickens and parts you can buy in a supermarket Deli counter. These have been cooked once at the factory, distributed chilled and then reheated and held hot for say 30 mins. Do that with a chicken at home and it will be dry snd tough as old boots. In this case some water holding and flavour technology delivers a product quality which should ordinarily not be possible.

Sugar-free products can only exist with ‘ingredient technology’.
It’s complicated...