Cheap supermarket meal deals could be as unhealthy an option as a large Big Mac and fries, a new study has found.
Researchers at the University of Birmingham found that budget meal deals, which cost around £3.50, often contain well over the 600 calories recommended for people to consume at lunchtime.
The deals, which are hugely popular at Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Boots, include a main, snack and drink, and vary from sandwiches and baguettes to salads and pasta.
According to the study, one in five combinations sold at major supermarkets and high street chains exceed the calorie limit, with the average lunch containing 10 per cent more than advised.
We’ve given the anal retentives enough power to recommend whether we have 600, or 660, calories for lunch now, have we?
Lions with lasers is no longer an option. The Carthaginian solution is all that is left.
One of the key messages in this campaign was 400-600-600 guidance, which recommended that adults consume 400 calories for breakfast, and 600 each for lunch and dinner, with two 200-calorie snacks.
Back up the trucks to load up with that salt, we’re going to have to make this territory entirely uninhabitable.
One of the key messages in this campaign was 400-600-600 guidance, which recommended that adults consume 400 calories for breakfast, and 600 each for lunch and dinner, with two 200-calorie snacks.
What happened to king, prince, pauper in those numbers. Or is that only on a Tuesday?
And I thought the latest advice was for restricted eating periods? Give the body a chance to clean out the crap (which it perhaps doesn’t do as well if continually stuffing one’s face etc?). But yes, in any case – lions, salt, nukes, the bloody lot.
I can only presume the limit is set at at what spaghetti armed, man bunned university researchers need to eat. A geezer on a building site doing heavy manual work would need two of those meals as an appetiser. When I was doing that sort of thing, I was packing away over 5000 calories a day just to stay skinny.
How the hell can you recommended food intake? Everybody needs are different. If you’re a desk bound land whale, the recommendation should be to skip lunch altogether. And probably breakfast as well.
Do these idiots think we’re incapable of making adjustments? I had a large lunch yesterday, meeting friends in a pub, so I only ate a small amount in the evening.
There’s also the fact that calories are measured by burning food in a calorimeter, which is nothing like human digestion.
A reminder that wartime rationing allowed for 3000 Kcal per day.
@bloke in spain – February 3, 2023 at 8:40 am
When I was doing that sort of thing, I was packing away over 5000 calories a day just to stay skinny.
Amateur! 🙂
Some years ago I had a friendship with a ballerina who was a member of one of the major companies, she used to eat upwards of 6000 calories a day and was almost permanently 3 – 4 kilos underweight. It amazed me, you tend to think of things like navvying as being very physical but it never occurs that something as aesthetic and apparently delicate as ballet could be such bloody hard work.
Do these idiots think we’re incapable of making adjustments? I had a large lunch yesterday, meeting friends in a pub, so I only ate a small amount in the evening.
This.
I did a lot of physical work yesterday, quite a bit more than the usual relatively high amount. When it came to eat in the evening, Mrs Drakon made some delicious pasta sauce meatballs combination, which I hoovered up like I hadn’t eaten in weeks. The second helping also went quite quickly. It’s almost like my body realised there was a calorie deficit and reacted accordingly.
On other occasions when I’ve had a quiet day, I’ll barely eat anything.
The fact they think we need to be told how much to eat shows their opinion of us, like we’re children/just that stupid and need to be told what to do. Or that they have some God given right to boss us around.
Some loser in ivory tower wants to be recognised. So he phones up a newspaper.
Instead of saying “Fuck off you wanker” the hack spots a supermarket bashing angle, runs the story.
This might – just might – have an impact on meal deal sales of 1-2%, for about a week.
I can quite believe that, Noble Baron. I had a girlfriend who was at ballet school in Central London. Just listening to the pops & cracks her body emitted in the process of getting up of a morning was painful. She’d do half an hour of stretching exercises just to be able to walk. And you’re right. They’re continually shovelling food in. And all of them chain smoked all day.
Researchers with nothing to research are unemployed. Can’t blame them for taking grants that are offered and vomiting up the papers that are necessary to gain the next round of grants.
Who we can blame is the people offering grants for this wibble.
I know my calorie burn average is about 3,200 per day because 3,000 is my daily minimum target which I haven’t missed for at least 6 months. I also know my calorie intake is roughly 3,200 per day, because my weight varies +/- 0.5Kg per week. I eat more than the recommended 5 per day plus a fair balance of meat and fish.
I’m happy and my doctor is happy, so they can fuck off.
Kind of impressed that you can get “well over” 600 calories for £3.50.
a la Noel C, 400+600+600 plus the two 200 snacks gives 2,000. Soviet POWs got fed how much by the Hun? Then there’s Minnesota experiment, as well.
600 calories was once the standard City lunch: 3 x pints bitter, a packet of crisps and 5 x ciggies.
“This might – just might – have an impact on meal deal sales of 1-2%, for about a week.”
I thought the same when they were whining about sugar in soft drinks, and now there isn’t any. These buggers are relentless. They won’t give up until we’re all as miserable as they are.
I thought the same when they were whining about sugar in soft drinks, and now there isn’t any. These buggers are relentless. They won’t give up until we’re all as miserable as they are.
One of my favourite quotes deals with that:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
― C. S. Lewis
“We’ve given the anal retentives enough power to recommend”
No, WE haven’t – they’ve simply given themselves authority to hector us, and this will continue to happen until someone in government tells them to STFU*
* Wishful thinking, I know…
BiND, and there are classic, time-honoured ways to get rid of the Robber Baron…
BiND is right about Robber Barons versus Busybodies. I cite the history of Bury St Edmunds:
In 1327, the Great Riot occurred, in which the local populace led an armed revolt against the abbey. … However, in 1381 during the Great Uprising, the abbey was sacked and looted again. This time, the prior was executed; his severed head was placed on a pike in the Great Market.
How the hell can you recommended food intake? You can’t. These people are morons, their organisations ought to be disbanded, the staff hanged, the buildings torn down and the earth salted.
Re the recommended calories, I saw a chart which seemed to indicate a 200 lb person would burn nearly 2000 calories just by existing for 24 hours.
Also, how unhealthy would it actually be to live on supermarket meal deals or McDonalds (not that anyone does this)? You’d certainly get bored and probably constipated but even Maccy Ds sells salad and carrot sticks.
Super Size Me: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390521/
(Your call if the film maker has his own agenda and is not presenting the whole facts…)
@ MC
Some supermarket meal deals include a salad as one part of it. Mrs77 frequently buys a “healthy” meal deal from Morrisons when we walk to the market in the next-town-but-one because it’s past her lunch time before we get home [for the avoidance of doubt she burns up more than 600 calories on the walk there and back].
Back to the original post: since I don’t eat between meals, or breakfast, these evil monsters would limit me to 1200 calories per day, less than half (quite a lot less than half) my average burn. Their spokeswoman is a lecturer in marketing which suggests that she knows no more about nutrition than I (possibly less).
BiW,
Various scientists have tried to reproduce Super Size Me, and it seems none of them could repeat it.
https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/2022/03/supersize-me-failed-replication-well-sort-of/
Also, how unhealthy would it actually be to live on supermarket meal deals or McDonalds
One could certainly live on Big Macs. Why not? One contains all the food groups that are recommended.* Protein, carbohydrates, fresh salad. In roughly the right proportions. Freshly cooked. They’re actually healthier than what a lot of people eat at home. And in a lot of “better” restaurants. One’s not obliged to drink half a gallon of sugary cola.
*At least I’d say that about most countries other than the UK. A lot of UK McD’s certainly don’t come up to the international McD standards. Particularly around London.
Quoting a poster here a couple of years ago:
A couple of pints of real ale and a plate of chips contain 95% of your nutritional needs. The rest you’ll pick up unless you’ve got weird eating habits.
Mine’s the one with the side order of burnt crunchy bits.
If the people whinging about too many calories in food got their way, then the’d be right back claiming that now poor people couldn’t afford to feed themselves.
I thought there were lots of people forced to use food banks. Why shouldn’t they have cheap food to help them? Maybe not everyone can afford to have breakfast, lunch, dinner, and two snacks.
We don’t actually burn calories, of course. We generate energy from food via a biochemical process. And the one doesn’t map onto the other. Knowing how many calories a meal has does not inform in any way how much energy the body can derive from it and how potentially fattening it is.
Most protein is used to build the body rather than for energy, so you can discount that from the energy equation. Some fat is used similarly, so should be discounted. And plant fibre passes right through and should be discounted.
Mixing fats and carbs is inherently fattening. Where a given number of ‘calories’ (sic) in one or the other form may not be fattening, the same number consumed as a mix of fats and carbs would be.
Then there’s the broader hormonal response to different foods, meaning that a given intake of ‘calories’ may make you fat (and sick) or keep you slim, energetic, satiated and healthy. Indeed, if you switch to an appropriate human diet you may find you can increase your ‘calorie’ input, do absolutely no exercise, whilst becoming slim and with higher energy levels.
Also, those polyunsaturated seed-oils such as canola – found in almost all processed food – are inherently obesogenic (and appear to be pretty disastrous for long-term health.)
So, no. Calories-in, calories-out is a completely invalid and worthless metric when considering weight-management and body composition. A higher-calorie healthy meal – for example red meat and eggs, cooked in butter – will keep you slim, energetic, satiated and healthy whilst a lower-calorie ready-meal will make you fat, sick and soon hungry again.
@ wat dabney
Calories-in, calories-out is by no means comprehensive, let alone perfect, but is a useful short-hand when thinking about weight-gain/loss. To call it invalid and worthless is not only wrong but stupid because it makes you sound like an ignoramus.
The Flat Earth theory is by no means comprehensive, let alone perfect, but is a useful short-hand.
@ wat dabney
Stop eating long enough and you will die emaciated but I shall never fall off the edge of the earth however long I keep walking/sailing in the same direction.
If the earth was flat the horizon would be the end of the earth but since I can walk to beyond the horizon (the one that applies at the start of my walk), Flat Earth theory is neither useful nor plausible.
john77
When building a house, or ploughing a field, you don’t take account of the curvature of the earth. Even when building a road you just assume it’s flat, even though it might go over the horizon.
Flat Earth theory is perfectly adequate when dealing with things on a human scale.
By way of an example.
“recommended that adults consume 400 calories for breakfast…”
A breakfast of 400 calories of doughnuts – or chip butties – will contribute to girth. They are inherently obesogenic.
A breakfast of 400 calories of steak and eggs won’t.
They are both 400 calories, yet one makes you fat and the other doesn’t.
So, as this fact demonstrates, it’s not about the calories. It’s about eating the right stuff. Nobody on a carnivore diet for example – and remember you evolved to be a hyper-carnivore – ever has to consider calories, even whilst eating their fill and staying slim and healthy.