The rise of lazy foods

i`d rather buy my potatoes from the market and peel them myself. same goes for all other vegetables, i like to know they are fresh.

Haven't read the whole post yet, but oh God, I hate those things like pre grated cheese and peeled potatoes. They always look gross for one thing! I mean once you peel a vegetable the goodness starts to leave it. I would imagine they cover them in wax or something to solve that problem, which likely means you're just eating extra crap.

I do occasionally buy prepacked salads, because it's tastier to have a variety of leaves than just buying a single lettuce (and I don't get through salad fast enough to make buying more than 1 lettuce at once worthwhile.) I've also been known to buy pre grated parmesan...but grated cheddar seems so much lazier.

A couple of people in the comments have good points about arthritis. I should have thought of that first really, because my Mum has arthritis. I don't really know what she cooks for herself these days, but I imagine her days of bothering with a real onion are over (She would more likely just buy onion powder for flavour than chopped onion though I think.) Her lifestyle is very different now from when I was young and her hands were fine.

Tokis wrote:

I never buy these "lazy foods". However I can see that from the view of a single person, if you want roasted vegetables for example, you need to buy a lot of different, large vegetables and either use the same ingredients all week, or end up wasting a lot.
Will B

Ever heard of the freezer? Automatic solution to the problem of left-over veg or veg cut-offs.

To be fair a single person is much less likely to have a large freezer for leftovers. (Freezing compartments in fridges tend to be about big enough for a tray of ice cubes, a bag of peas and maybe one or two packets of meat in my experience, and you have to pick one to sacrifice if you ever want to eat ice cream..)

I have to admit to being a fan of pre-sliced/chopped onion - far easier to open a packet and pop it in the pan, than peel & slice, and wipe away tears. And as for pre sliced apple... surely it's better to pass a packet of pre-prepared fruit in a packet to a small child than a packet of crisps?
Amanda, Winsford, Cheshire

Tears can be avoided when chopping onion by avoiding cutting the centre base of the onion (as this is where the stinging juices are most concentrated) and running a tap while chopping it (the stinging juices react with water, this is what cause your eyes to cry, but you can also get around this by running a tap while chopping).

Secondly, whats wrong with just giving a kid a whole apple or banana etc instead of a pre-peeled/chopped/sliced bag of preservative soaked fruit salad of packet of crisps? Surely this is an even better (and cheaper/more nutritional) option!

I tend to get very severe tears the second I slice the onion open, no matter where or how I cut it. It can hence take me quite a while to chop one in between sobbing and running to the window to waft fresh air in my eyes! But my boyfriend doesn't suffer so much so I usually get him to do it. If I was a very busy person, say with kids, I would probably be tempted by the tear-free method of prepared onion.

For apples etc remember they might be too big for very small kids. Though these days they do sell like baby bananas and so on. When I was little my mum would tend to give me half of something and eat the other half herself. Different issue, but I don't like when parents have "us" and "them" food, rather than eating the same as their children.



Now this discussion is all very well but right now I have to go and chop some garlic and other things for dinner!

ETA While chopping my garlic it occured to me that though I was doing that and my other veg myself, I'll be using minced beef and sliced bread!! Hmmm....

Last edited by Typhani (03-17-2010 16:55)

Expired wrote:

Well since I'm not a mother with a full time job, three hungry children and an hungry husband I don't think my opinion matters that much. Those types of foods are obviously not aimed at me.
Looking at the attitudes of the boys around me though by the time I have kids men will still believe it's the woman's job to cook, clean etc. So maybe if I have a moment in between all that peeling I'll get back to you on this.

Don't forget the labours of egg boiling, fruit slicing and cheese grating while you're doing all that baby-making and whatnot- cor what a a life .

Honestly most of our grandparents grew up in an age where the women did do all of the child raising, house cleaning, shopping & cooking, yet i'm sure many would still be shocked at all the lazy foods at our disposal. A great deal of these lazys foods substitute food preparation that only takes minutes at most, yet at a greater financial cost and reduced nutrition & taste quality.
And the impression that i get is that a lot of these foods are not aimed at the mothers with loads of kids or grannies with artheritus-stricken joints, but rather young "cash-rich time-poor" professionals.

Last edited by Tokis (03-17-2010 17:14)

My mum buys all her veggietables from people who sell them round our village. She says you have to give trade to everyone So she peels stuff and that.

Personally, I don't see anything wrong with making life easier if that's what you want to do. Everyone is so much more stressed now than back 50 years ago, sometimes it makes me wonder if a household would be better off with a housewife/husband.

We don't buy them often because my parents can't afford to waste so much money. My mum will occasionally buy mixed veg in summer, when the kitchen is filled with salad stuff, or the new potatoes with the butter and herbs if we have people round since they are really nice.

ahh yes and I forgot to add that I do love my baby carrots (all cut and washed, perfect for dipping)

And what I call fakos (boxed mashed potatoes) I dont' eat them all the time and its definitley not cuz I'm lazy I just love the taste of the butter and her ones.... mmm....

I see nothing wrong with pre-cut fruits or vegetables.  Not everyone has the time to spend more than 10 minutes on preparing meals.  My mother is a stay at home mom and even she had her hands full with watching us kids and taking care of the house and meal preparations (my dad did nothing but work)!  We had a...nanny/maid? to help with anything my mom needed when I was quite young and still living in Japan and China.

Personally, I hate cooking (and am bad at it, haha).  I'd rather spend my time doing something else, but I'm not used to living off of frozen dinners (since my mother's an amazing cook and I grew up with fresh everythings) so I like to buy pre-cut stuff sometimes if I have to cook.

I usually slice myself open when I peel or grate anything.

But I still try to do it often. I peel and grate and chop things most days. Unless I have too many plasters or peeled nails, in which case I'll blend it or I will buy the ready done stuff. I prefer fresh though, it has more flavour

But whenever I make something that needs stock, I use fresh stock. I make it myself. I love ham and pea soup made with ham stock, and boiled ham is just so lovely. And whenever we have chicken for dinner I boil down the carcass for stock.

Just last week I cut the palm of my hand peeling a potato and caught and ripped my nail when grating carrots. My friend was staying over and rushed in to the kitchen to see what I was squealing at. Let's not even mention what I very almost did trying to wrestle a knife through a swede. She liked the soup though

Tokis wrote:

BeautyXRush wrote:

Whats wrong with buying chopped carrots?

Lazy food is food you get from a fast food place. I cant have a problem with people who go buy pre cut vegetables and fruit. So silly that people are making this out to be a huge problem.

Buying a whole meal from a takeaway or fast food joint is IMO technically less lazy than buying stuff like pre-cut veg, as by buying a whole meal you really are saving significant time. Of course most takeaway food is less healthy than making the food yourself, but unhealthy food & lazy food are regularly 2 different things.

To me lazy food is food that has been pre-prepared to some extent but which would only take minutes (if that) to prepare it oneself.

Personally i find it very hard to believe that people don't have the time to do something like slice an apple or grate some cheese. IMO unless you are one of the few that truly does have a valid reason (for example painful artheritus inflicted joints that make even opening a can painful), then lazy food really is just a lazy option.

When my mother was raising me & my brother, she cooked home meals for all of us (including my father), cleaned the house, managed the garden, did the food shopping etc, and still had time on top of it all to go to her art classes or chill out with my father with a glass of wine at the end of the day- and she never used any of these lazy foods.


And yes, its not an innocent absolutely-nothing-wrong-with-it issue.

All of these pre-prepared foods also come in packaging. Instead of fruit coming in its own environmentally-friendly packaging (its skin) it now comes in plastic bags or containers. It also clocks up extra food miles as after being harvested and cleaned, it now has to be extra chopped up/skinned/sliced etc and then dowsed with preservatives etc. And then its sent off to a packaging plant to be wrapped up, before being sent on its merry way again to the supermarket etc.

Its all bad for the environment, polluting it and filling up landfill sites etc. And its almost all unnecessary pollution, largely driven simply by millions of people's self-centeredness and lazyness.

And then you have the kids. If enough kids these days don't even know what a whole tomato plant looks like or could draw what a cow & bull look like, will kids in the future not even know what a whole mango or watermelon looks like (because they have only eaten such food pre-prepared or seen their mommy opening up packets when it comes to cooking time)?
Sounds crazy i know, but stuff like this is already happening and its shocking the amount of kids who are crazily disconnected from the environment and where their food comes from.

And if you think there's no negative consequences to this then i think you should think deeper about this.

I get what youre trying to say, and it could be a problem if children actually grow up thinking fruits and vegetables come in cans, or come pre-cut. I do slice and cut my own fruits and vegetables, but every now and then I do purchase carrots or celery that is packaged and fresh. Most raw carrots I buy dont look as fresh, so it seems better to just buy something that looks more fresh, even though it probably isnt. I'm also pretty bad with knives, ive cut my hands more times than I can count. Which still isnt a big enough reason for me to go and buy pre-cut vegetables. I just didnt think of it as lazy food, but now that you have explained it more thoroughly I can understand why it may become a problem.

i admit i do you some frozen vegies eg) frozen peas and carrots only because they last longer and are there when i need them. my bf works and as im a full time uni student im hardly home and some nights i dont get home till 9:30pm by that time of night im so tired i just grab anything and have often thought about buying lazy food like lasanga (sp?) where i could just throw it in the oven. I have thought about putting a slow cooker on in the morning and have it ready to eat when i get home at night, but still i would use frozen veg and pre diced meat

i did grow up whereby my mum and nanna cook everything fresh and taught me how too cook so im not stupid its just the time factor that makes me sometimes reach for that prepared salad thats just ready to eat.

I don't see the need for things like pre-grated cheese and pre-fried onions unless, as has been said, you're arthritic or something. Plus, with frozen veg/bagged salad they just taste different to me. The salad's much more bitter and frozen veg just tastes bland to me.

Until I was around 9 my mother was a stay at home mum. She cooked good home-made food, cleaned the house, did the garden, did the shopping, looked after a very sick child (moi) and home schooled me until she went to work when I was well enough to go to school. Similar to the experience that Tokis described. I can't believe for a second that a mother who doesn't work would ever need pre-grated cheese or pre-cut apple. What do people do all day?

I'm out of the house a lot, what with studying and working, but I still manage to cook every night with my partner. Sure, there are those odd days where you're knackered and you just bung a veggie burger in the oven and mix up some smash, but cooking's a useful life skill and there are so many kids that I imagine aren't learning this because their parents are simply too lazy to take a couple minutes a day to cook.

I mean, my SIL has an extremely over-hyper kid who's always at her ankles. She also works several nights a week (where the boy goes to his gran's), but she finds the time to keep her house clean and cook her boy good, healthy food every night. He's got a bunch of serious food allergies as well, so it's not easy to cook for him but she manages it well, and with ease.


As I said, if there's a genuine health reason for it, or if it's only once in a while, I can understand. With the bagged salad I can understand too, as it's hard to use a whole lettuce before it goes off, but for most people, it's sheer laziness and there's no need for it. It takes less than a minute to grate cheese