AIBU a generation that can’t be bothered.

Ready chopped veg can also be a real boon for anyone who has limited mobility in their hands - arthritis, for instance. My MiL is in her 90s now and simply can't chop foods on her own. I now make huge pots of soup and take some to them every week, but before that, at least the ready chopped stuff meant she could simply throw it in a pot and make some herself.

Was the woman in the article a real mum of two, or a journalist on a 'dreadful local paper'? If the latter, her trolley is indicative of nothing - in fact a randomly chosen mother of two doesn't say anything about the whole generation to which she belongs, either. Of course a family of four could be fed on £60 if they ate nothing but beans on toast every day, or vegetable soup, whether made from prepared vegetables or ones they prepared themselves. It wouldn't be a varied diet, though, and

People commenting on here about other people's trollies have no idea whether they are shopping for themselves or others - a young shopper may have been filling her trolley with ready meals and gin for her parents, or an older couple shopping for 'sensible' basic ingredients may have been helping out an adult child who cooks from scratch before popping to the pub for their own lunch, or going home to microwave something from Wiltshire Farm Foods.

As someone said upthread, there is no moral dimension to this, and there is no generational divide. Why £60 a week, incidentally? Was the journalist suggesting that it is too much to allow people on benefits, or that people need more? In either case, one shop is no indicator - they would need to live for several months, until they have bought all the incidentals that you don't need every week - herbs and spices, condiments and so on. There were no household or personal hygiene items on that list either - shampoo, washing powder, toothpaste or tampons. They also make up a significant part of a weekly shopping budget.

We did DS, Victoria sponge and Danish open sandwiches spring to mind. Very useful.
I could only grill and fry when I first got married. Butterscotch Instant Whip was my signature dish!
My skill has definitely improved over time as has my appreciation of good, nutritious food but just occasionally I will be that person in front of you in the queue with ready meals and……. Horror of horrors lots of alcohol.
If people are short of time and can afford to buy ready prepared food I wouldn’t have a problem with that if it wasn’t for the packaging. It gives someone else a job.

Thank heavens my children can both cook and my DGD has been capable of cooking a meal on her own since she was 12.

Over my working life I always cooked from scratch - and I was no martyr to the kitchen -. I had a couple of large casseroles and a cooker with a delay function. I could bung the makings of a casserole into a pot in less than 10 minutes before I left for work, push it into the oven with the delay cook feature on. it would turn on at around 3.30 and would be cooked and ready to eat by the time I got home from work at 6.30. i would make two portions one to eat immediately and one for the freezer.

I was never taught to cook- but we had no money- so I just got on with it. Take aways and ready foods I could have never afforded when we were young. And how long, and how difficult, is it to peel potatoes and mash them with a bit of butter and milk, or boil rice. Really. But veg in season and boil, same for fruit. Not really the end of the world.

Now I don't mind what people do, but then stop complaining about being short of money.

Her article probably would not have been relevant to her own age group if she hadn't bought the things you describe.

Apart from that I do agree that it is odd that a generation that is so concerned (rightly) about the environment buys these kind of things, but do they have an option?

We taught our son to cook, but lots of his contemporaries have grown up in homes where they were never required to help with cooking, laundry or any other kind of housework.

Nor were they taught these skills at school.

So it is hardly surprising that they buy ready -made meals and powdered potato mash, is it?

The other consideration is that if your money has to be stretched you can't afford to waste it learning to cook - if you make a meal your kids won't eat, or it's undercooked or overcooked, you have to feed them something else.

Most of the food on the list requires to be warmed up and all of the 'real' alternatives can be cooked in a microwave. So only having a microwave is no excuse for not cooking

I am also deeply sceptical about this story that young people live such' busy, busy' lives young people these days and have no time to cook.

Ofcom reports that the average family spends up to 6 hours a day, watching tv, streaming and surfing the web. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9862695/Families-spending-nearly-six-hours-day-watching-TV-streaming-new-Ofcom-report-finds.html.

They have plenty of time to cook, talk to their parents and do all those other things they do not do because they lead such busy lives. They just need to spend less time stuck in front of a screen for non-work purposes and put the healthof their children ahead of themselves and their screen addiction.

Well I see your point to some extent, but we know nothing about this woman’s circumstances.
To be fair, there were veg and rice in her trolley which could have been full of crisps and biscuits.

Yes, I have a chicken casserole in mine as we speak.
I just put in everything I can find and hope for the best.

Miss Adventure I worked full time had 3 children and a husband that was away a lot.

A slow cooker was a wonderful aid, I would prepare the food in the kitchen as the children sat at the table pretending to do their homework, in 15 minutes I can bang a chicken in the oven, prepare the veg and set the table.
Chicken out to rest, start off gravy, roasties in and veg on, that’s 25 minutes.
A nice glass of wine in the interval and hopefully some interaction with the children.

Farzanah

I’m more amazed by the alcohol I see older people putting in their trolleys.

Oh, it could be worse, they could simply have wasted their money!

Yes, I see your point.
I do always check out the very cheapest option first, and usually go for it.

The point of the article was to see if a family of 4 could be fed on £60.
With this in mind I would have expected the journalist to have researched, done a meal plan and bought the best value & quality possible.
Buying prepared vegetables is not really budgeting

I never made a meal in domestic science lessons, either.
We made Victoria sponges, and did things like laying out a tray for tea.

It's 'Food tech' these days, Ellan.
My grandson does it.

Dickens

Schools used to teach kids to actually cook - I remember rushing down to the playground to hand over ingredients to my son who'd forgotten to mention it the night before...

Now they study Food Technology. Parents, pupils and teachers have expressed concern over the value of this part of the Curriculum, namely that too little time is devoted to learning how to cook nutritious meals and too much time given to 'investigations' and written work, and complex 'product development'.

So we shouldn't be surprised at what they put in their trolleys, and I'm not going to judge them anyway - no-one knows the lifestyle or commitments of a mother with a trolley containing instant mash or pouches of pre-cooked rice.

I was born in 1956 and I did not learn to make meals while at school in the 1960’s. I could however make perfect toast, lay a tray of china to make a pot of tea and make puff pastry! We occasionally made a casserole or a cake but not often.

It's just normal cooking, as far as I see it.
Unless people are growing and harvesting veg to make coleslaw, and fiddling around making sauces and so on.
It's just cooking.

What happened to cookery lessons at school ? Domestic science it was known as.

Chardy

Up at 6, out the house by 7, kids dropped off, work by 7.45, home by 5.30. Kids fed, out again to football practice 2 weekday evenings, plus Brownies. Get one doing homework, the other reading to me every day.
I started planning tomorrow's work when kids were in bed
And people telling me how easy it was being a teacher and only working 9 to 3pm
And obviously I should have been cooking from scratch too

That was a typical day for me as well - a single parent of three! I did not buy convenience ready meals though as personally I don’t like them but I did batch cook at weekends and bought frozen things like chicken, burgers, fish fingers, chips etc for the other days when we had after school activities.

I was very lucky that I earned enough as a senior manager not to worry too much about the food bill, a good job really as I had two boys with hollow legs! Had I been on a tight budget, I’m not sure how I would have coped, no way did I have time or energy to cook from scratch every night.

MissAdventure

I don't know how people find time to "cook from scratch" and work full time.

Planning my daughter has it off to a tee although it’s much easier now she mainly works from home. The slow cooker is her friend
She also has some new fangle express cooker that will cook a risotto in four minutes
Cooking from scratch does not have to take hours my husband did toad in the hole last night in 30 mins

GagaJo

Actually, I've just come in from the supermarket. In front of me, at the checkout, was an elderly couple. Mid 60s probably.

No basic meal ingredients. Ready meals. Ready prepared meat and veg packs. A frozen chicken / stuffing oven-ready thing. The only unprepped stuff was a pack of tomatoes and some grapes.

So not really a generational thing at all.

You could have been behind us, GagaJo! Were you in M&S? Marvellous ready made meals.

Certainly not generational. My DH does most of the cooking. Sometimes we have made from scratch meals but often a ready made meal is ideal depending on what we've been doing that day.

As for the rice. How I love microwave rice. All that bother gone. I always was useless at getting rice to be just the right firmness. It was either raw or mush.

Microwaveable has put an end to that trauma

MissAdventure

I don't know how people find time to "cook from scratch" and work full time.

Simple foods I guess. Doesn't take long to throw some chicken in the oven, with a couple of jacket potatoes.

I don't know how people find time to "cook from scratch" and work full time.

Certainly not a generation thing both my son and daughter nearly always cook from scratch. We also cook from scratch as my husband is a bit of a foodie and wouldn’t entertain ready meals. But if I lived alone it would be different I absolutely hate cooking so the quicker to prepare the better