When did ready meals become commonplace?

dandy-candy

With all the stories in the news about what we should and shouldn't be eating, and hidden fats, sugars, salt etc; I'm wondering when ready meals took off?
I was born in 1973 and we already had a local Bejam (like Iceland) back then. We probably had made from scratch meals like lasagne, spag Bol and a roast for half the week, and ready meals like fish fingers, findus crispy pancakes and ready made pies for the other half. I would say ready meals were already popular in the seventies, and yet people weren't so unhealthy back then (except from heavy smoking!)
Can any of the older ladies remember when these meals took off? Did people's health take a nose dive at the same time?

RAS

Read up on WW2 meal-times. With women working and a lot of people on shifts, pre-prepared foods were promoted by TPB.

tanith

The first ready meal I remember using were Vesta meals, we thought they were very exotic , prawn curry was our favourite I think that was in the 60's.

Blackbeard_of_Perranporth

What!


I had one last year in digs. The owners dog ate it!


Now brewing on our stove is a week of chilli. It will remain on the stove until Monday. The only thing it could possibly kill, is the cat, Raffles, should he be tempted to dip his paw!


That is about as ready as a meal will be in our house!

trailingspouse

I was born in 1960.

I don't remember ready meals when I was very young - we would get fish and chips occasionally, and we had things like tins of beans and spaghetti hoops, but that's all. By the time I was in my early teens, we had Vesta packet meals (dead exotic!!). I can also remember using Green's cheesecake mix. I remember being give Smash mashed potato at Guide camp and thinking it was totally disgusting.

But I don't think these can really be described as ready meals - you still had to cook them/mix them. They certainly weren't referred to as ready meals, but as 'convenience foods' - and my mother mostly preferred to cook 'properly', so there may have been other stuff available that I don't remember.

PlymouthMaid

I was born in 1962 and apart from Vesta curries when I was camping as a girl scout there were few ready meals. I vaguely remember when I was around 12-13 that I was fond of Birds Eyes Beef stew and dumpling when I was left home alone as parents were working. The nearest we got to prepared food as a family was a Fray Bentos pie which was a regular dinner but served with spuds and veggies. Most of our meals were home cooked even though Mum worked full time - shepherds pie, stew, chops,etc. As a student in 1985 I definitely don't remember buying ready meals. I think the reliance upon them in many families is a fairly recent and depressing development.

honeythewitch

trailingspouse wrote: »

I was born in 1960.

I don't remember ready meals when I was very young - we would get fish and chips occasionally, and we had things like tins of beans and spaghetti hoops, but that's all. By the time I was in my early teens, we had Vesta packet meals (dead exotic!!). I can also remember using Green's cheesecake mix. I remember being give Smash mashed potato at Guide camp and thinking it was totally disgusting.

But I don't think these can really be described as ready meals - you still had to cook them/mix them. They certainly weren't referred to as ready meals, but as 'convenience foods' - and my mother mostly preferred to cook 'properly', so there may have been other stuff available that I don't remember.

I was born in the same year. I remember in 1969, a sort of ready meal that was in tinfoil, with the mash, carrots and roast beef all in individual compartments. I think they were called "TV Dinners" rather than ready meals.
We used to get whole chickens and cakes in cans too.

honeythewitch

PlymouthMaid wrote: »

I was born in 1962 and apart from Vesta curries when I was camping as a girl scout there were few ready meals. I vaguely remember when I was around 12-13 that I was fond of Birds Eyes Beef stew and dumpling when I was left home alone as parents were working. The nearest we got to prepared food as a family was a Fray Bentos pie which was a regular dinner but served with spuds and veggies. Most of our meals were home cooked even though Mum worked full time - shepherds pie, stew, chops,etc. As a student in 1985 I definitely don't remember buying ready meals. I think the reliance upon them in many families is a fairly recent and depressing development.

I suppose the "ready" meals were not much quicker until we all had microwaves.
I remember a boil in the bag curry and rice in separate bags. Were these vesta? Or was vesta dried?

Linda32

I was born in 1971 and the first ready meal I remember was the Vesta Curries. I seem to remember they took ages to make compared to the ready meals of today. I remember having to fry those curly things (not sure what they are called) to go on the top of the meal.


My Mum didn't like the Frey Bentos pies so we never had them. I only remember these as Grandad ash tray


They other two things I remember as ready meals are the slices beef in gravy and boil in the bag cod in parsley sauce.

lostinrates

I'd replace commonplace with 'default'.


On the basis that I see a lot of doctors and food often comes up, avoiding certain things, and knowing what's in there, and people always say when I say, ' no
, no, I 'm not using anything that aggravates that' they remind me I have to read the back of packets. Its taken for granted that some portion of ready made food or junk food is part of people's normal /regular diet.

Doctors/dietitians are quite shocked when I explain I actually COOK what we eat in the main so that reading the very occasional packet of say....crackers (I have a thing about charcoal crackers ATM, and everyone in the house likes different crackers for cheese: I'm happy to buy things like that as a matter of course..particularly as I eat only a very small percentage of the small number of things purchased! (, but have been known to make them) is no real chore. If you put say, two packets in a trolley ( say some crackers and for arguments sake a jar of antipasti of some sort) its not much extra shopping time or difficult to keep tabs on.

In the last few months I have eaten much more purchased food as part of a trial of diet on my health, (it was awful) the diet sheet given to me only listed purchased foods. While it was ok to make own recipes it occurred to me many struggling to cook from scratch with less expereince or confidence about to
Of contents would really have resorted pretty much solely on prepped food.

sillyvixen

i remeber ready meals in the 80's as a veggie kid due to allergies in a meat eating family, once we had a microwave my muim could cook for everyone else and provide a quick option for me!! my taste buds had the time of their life and i learned that a veggie diet had more flavours than beans on toast, cheese and potato pie and a plate of veggies minus the meat. on leaving home many moons ago, i learned to cook the ready meals i had been fed in my teenage years, from scratch, without the chilled ready meals provided in my teenage years my diet mat have been much more bland - my parents diet is more varied as a result of ready meals as they tried meat versions and mum decied to try and cook her own versions.