Rant warning! Are we becoming a nation of bone idle wastrels.

Oh I'm all in favour of 'bone idle wastrels.' I'll buy bags of prepared stuff if I need them. And I think crustless bread is great, saves having loads of half eaten crusts around.

We always buy things like that when they are reduced. They then cost very little and no hassle or waste - perfect!

DGD only eats crustless bread - well, she leaves the crusts and of course her hair is still straight!. The birds have the crusts.
(curly feathers?)

I think ready mashed potato is about the worst example of bone idleness.

Guilty as charged. I always used frozen mashed potato. OH has very tiny appetite and I am not exactly a great eater - so I can prepare just the needed amount. Bone idle and proud!

rosequartz i tried that with my DGS when he wouldn't eat crusts. I am sure I believed it when I was told it and ate my crusts (although my hair stayed straight). DGS at a very young age fixed me with a hard stare and said "Don't be silly, Granny." Were we just more gullible?

I certainly was, trisher

DD2 just said 'I don't want curly hair!'

Like trish, I am also in favour of 'bone idle wastrel-ness'. I am, in fact, in favour of any kind of bone idleness when you can get away with it.

Ready prepared veg are a lifesaver for my arthritic hands. Saves chopped fingers and swearing.

Bone idle......What about the latest device?....... A pot stirrer, no less lol ??????

Oh No!!! Enough stirring around here already!

What bugs me apart from all of the above!!,,, is that young mums especially then say they can't afford fresh/ healthy food, they have to rely on fast food/ chips etc., which are actually more expensive!! Bring back cookery classes in schools, and home economics, teach our children basic cooking skills, avoiding waste, and budgeting!!!! There,, my rant over too!! ;-)

A pot stirrer!

It brings to mind the advertising leaflets that fall out of the Sunday papers, and that the postman brings. As my OH says - "Full of stuff no-one could possibly want or need."

My OH and I and DD had a real laugh going through one of these the other day - anyone fancy a "dog gazebo" so that your dog can "experience the good life" wherever you are!?

Although I don't buy ready prepared food, my daughter, does. She is a paramedic and getting home at the earliest 6.30 pm after a hard 12 hour shift, if she is lucky enough to finish on time, she just about has the energy to put ready made mash and steam ve mixed fruit into her lunch box. I can assure you she isn't bone idle just knackered from work and wants to make her life as easy as possible.

There was a series on BBC1 recently about families with strange food habits.
One was a family where the mother bought a lot of pre-cooked or pre-packed stuff and binned it as soon as it was overdate.
She had a freezer full of it.
She was working quite long hours, I think that was the one where the Dad was home more, so they taught him to cook tasty meals for their 2 children.
Then they compared prices and showed how much they would save if they stopped buying packaged stuff. Quite an eyeopener.

Facing at a pile of muddy veg from the garden today, I thought it would be nice to have a bag of ready prepared veg .....

Facing at ?

I did buy ice once when we having a party and I couldn't make it quick enough (should have thought ahead a bit!)
I've bought the crustless bread once too - when I was catering a baby shower afternoon tea party, but I was appalled at the price.
I draw the line at pre chopped fruit and veg though!

Why shouldn't people take a few shortcuts if it suits them? The programme TriciaF referred to made me cross. Supercilious no-it-all celeb chefs, with all the wastage that no doubt goes on in their posh restaurant kitchens. Grrr!

Yes, people should realise that any vegetables or fruit cut up, in liquid or exposed too long to light will lose all of their vitamin content.

Not all their vitamin content rozina and certainly very little of their mineral value will be lost. And it's not jus cut up either, most vegetables and fruit lose a portion of their vitamins if they are not eaten quickly.

Their fibre value is largely unaffected.

Who took the picture of me and put it at the top of this thread?!!

Maybe ready chopped fruit and veg are useful for people who work and pop into a supermarket or large railway station which has a food store ? Getting home at 6 or 7 and preparing veg would be hard work when you're tired after a day at work. Given that they're on display they must be used by enough people to warrant selling them. Crusts off bread does sound a bit extreme though.

I'm glad to see more people saying they've bought prepared fruit and veg.

Plenty of good reasons have been given for these products being available in every supermarket. It's all down to individual choice and how we choose to spend our time and money. I use mainly frozen or prepared fruit and vegetables because it suits me. I make no excuse for doing so and object to being called bone idle. Some of you need to be careful getting off those high horses.

PS Thank goodness for diced onions.

I`d never even think of buying crustless bread, to me the crusts are the best part. I don`t buy the bags of prepared salads, etc., but did buy the bags of salad when youngest son was still at home, he loved it on his sandwiches for work. I buy frozen roasties, they`re nicer than mine! And I buy frozen oven chips, as hubby hasn`t to eat fatty foods, we have normal chips.