Note on pre-cooked, microwave, etc. foods. Check the ingredients for MSG, a sure sign you are being fooled on quality, freshness, etc.

I can give you some tips but beware: you ought to use your brains every now and then, not only to regurgitate what's been thoughtlessly learned at school or at work, but to look at things in an open, intelligent way and make experiments.

You can buy loads packs of pasta, you can even find wholemeal pasta, now that's your staple, full-of-complex carbohydreds(long term energy). Now I would avoid ready sauces and can suggest you buy the following: onions, garlic, parsley, basil, olive or rapeseed oil (you can even add cellery and carrots for an additional hint of taste). With these you'll have the basis for a number of soups which will differ every day, and most imporantly it's stuff that lasts relatively long. Now you can focus on what to make the sauce with, you can either simply chop some fresh tomatoes, and add any meat and/or vegetables you like. To make a simple sauce you simply chop some garlic or onion (depending on the experiments you make and the tastes you associate with different ingredients) and brown it gently, then add the chopped tomatoes together with any of the ingredients you may try, everys day a different one or different mixes. You can have a lot of fun and the best meals ever!

Option 2: rice and potatoes. You can simply boil some rice together with some chopped tomatoes, and there you go, you've got a meal! Furthermore, you can then add any of the other ingredients to make pasta to try different experiments.

The trick here is not the cooking, rather the good, basic ingredients and their intelligent use!!!

An Italian

Yes, but no.

I think the point that some were trying to raise here is that just because it does not taste like "shit" does not mean that it is not "shit" for you system. Foods that are processed to keep longer or survive freezing, generally have to go through processes that make them much unhealthier for our systems than the natural alternative.

Allow me to propose one of the most basic examples for you. Milk that has been homogenised has been pushed through a very fine filter to make sure that the fats are equally distributed through the "body" of milk that is leaving the farm (i.e. everybody gets and equal share of the fat in two tonnes of milk).

The problem with this process is that it is now thought by some schools that this process breaks the molecules in the fat chains down a bit (because they are forced through these very fine filters) and when they are broken down like this, the human body is much more capable of storing them instead of using or discarding them, thus meaning that with harmonised milk, your body naturally stores the fats, rather than examining them and deciding if it needs them and then using or discarding them.

Please note that this is just my 2p worth.

Is that not what cooking is about??? Your grandmother would beat you all the way to the kitchen for trying to separate the two!!!

__________________
Living it up in Gersau.

(my emphasis)
Did you ever bother to check the ingredients? Do you ever wonder why they make such a fuss about handling fresh poultry, yet the ready meals have surprisingly long shelf lives? How come, if you cut veggies at home, the cuts will go brown / soft / mouldy after a while in the fridge, yet the microvaweable stuff all looks fresh as a daisy?

Not to mention that fresh milk tastes so much better and has much more nutrients than the ultra-homogenized milk in the supermarkets.

As a matter of fact, I did check the ingredients. I'm careful about what I put into my body and don't like to put a lot of junk in.

The veggies were....veggies. Nothing more, nothing less. No added water, salt, etc. Little baby carrots, baby corn, mange tout, fresh peas, spinach. Shelf life of about 3 days.

The ingredient list on the chicken was basically: chicken breast, parma ham, rosemary, olive oil, cheese, spinach. Fresh, refrigerated (not frozen). Shelf life of about 4 days. In other words, the same as a normal chicken breast.

That's exactly why I liked the meals so much. They were a genuine, healthy alternative that was quick to prepare. Most ready meals are, as you point out, full of additives, sugar, salt, and chemicals that would never find their way into a domestic kitchen. The range of meals that I refer to didn't have any of that -- they were prepared with exactly the same ingredients I would have used if I prepared the meal myself.