It always reminds me of the food on the ferry to the Uk we saw a few times.
Lasagne (fine), with fries (to go with pasta ?!?!?), and add garlic bread for a pound. 
Surely one source of carbs is enough, but who in their right mind would pay extra for a third ?
Guilty 
Nothing wrong with tge garlic bread (if good that is), but chips??? Even free that is wrong⌠was there an option to take salad instead of the chips?
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When I was growing up, kids in the UK ate nothing but chips, fish fingers and baked beans for at least 2 meals a day and a super sugary breakfast cereal in the morning. All punctuated by sweats from the corner shop and some form of fizzy drink. Day in day out. My mum was horrified by the nutritional care given to other kids. So it comes as little shock that this has come back to bite the population.
Iâm okay with a sugar tax. People should be encouraged to moderate their intake in the same way as people should be encouraged to not smoke. Neither are illegal and nothing stops people doing either but a nudge isnât a bad thing. Other carbs are a little bit more difficult. After all, they play a role in a healthy balanced diet and the balance of them will depend on how sedentary someoneâs lifestyle is. I donât believe that âif you canât solve it all you should do nothingâ. Starting with unrefined sugars in confectionary is a good way to make a start. And by doing so, youâre not telling people what they should and shouldnât eat. They are still free to make bad choices. But the incentive to make other choices comes earlier and is felt in the wallet rather than later after a heart attack or having a foot amputated.
Nothing wrong with it in principle, but as an accompaniment to pasta?
I donât recall a salad option, but it was a few years ago. I might have forgotten. We havenât seen that particular dish being on the menu recently.
I often feel a bit hard done by if I decide to have the salad instead of chips when eating out as the salad is often pretty small/poor and rarely fills you up. I usually do choose a salad when itâs available though.
I get that.
You can order a salad as/with your meal in most/many places France or Spain ime and it usually tastes great. Plus you essentially get something worthy of a meal in its own right. Order a salad at most UK restaurants and a) it rarely tastes of much and b) if itâs a side it usually looks pretty pathetic too.
Some places actually serve a salad with fish and chips! This is an abomination and should be banned.
Salad is something restaurants put on the plate to take up space that should be occupied with proper food.
I think garlic bread is an excellent accompaniment to pasta - I wouldnât want to do that every day (but then I wouldnât want to have pasta every day, no matter how much I love it!). But Iâd want maybe salad with it to balance.
Yes, not a typical British âsaladâ serving!
Mushy peas will fill one up and are relatively healthy.
Well I wonder if the fad is ending as these things go in cycles⌠we picked up a large packet of tea bags today⌠30% extra for the same priceâŚ
Add Wigan to the list.
My grandson always requests salad with his chicken nuggets and fries.
Loves it.
Promotions happen from time to time, but that is not the same as packs etc returning to normal - and over decades of shrinkflation (it has happened long before tge recent epidemic), Iâve have yet to see a single reduced product size return to normal.
Could the bags be smaller with less tea in them?
Probably costs them pennies to produce though - one or two slices of tomato/cucumber, a bit of red onion and leaves by the looks of that. Equally as with most of the food pictures in McDonalds
would wonder if itâs more flattering than what you actually get?
I think I did have a salad there once and it wasnât as bad as I expected.
30% extra after 30% shrinkflation?
And what type of tea? I mean if it was PG Tips/Lipton Iâd expect them to pay me to drink it.
Salad ingredients cost way more than potatoes.
Yes, that did cross my mind, but still theyâll probably be getting the raw salad ingredients far cheaper than consumers. Itâd be interesting to know how many people actually have the salad option, Iâd be surprised if it was more than a few percent overall.
Oil and electricity to fry the chips might add a little to the cost but as with many packaged snacks I often wonder if the plastic/foil packaging is more expensive than the contents themselves.
Cultural differences too. I think the salad option in McDonalds etc. accounts for as much as 40% (guessing) in Japan. Salad is seen as a treat. Fresh uncooked veggies a luxury. When I left the UK, there was no such thing as a salad option.
Given the choice between cake and an apple, my kids would choose an apple (I certainly wouldnât). The value placed on fruit and veg being much higher.
Sure a salad isnât as filling as fries but I think thatâs also the point. Quality over quantity. If youâve got a pizza/lasagne/burger, you probably shouldnât supplement it with fried salty carbs, but with less calorific higher nutrition salad. Heck, youâre probably better off with two burgers than a burger and fries.
Saying that though, and back onto Shrinkflation, last New Yearâs, I was in Headington and got a fish n chips from a very good chippy in the area (Posh Fish if anyone is interested). Bit odd. Prices were way more expensive than I remembered⌠but portions were enormous. One fish n chips easily could feed four people. Iâd never seen anything like it. As a rare treat I think itâs okay. And they had certainly tipped the value scale in the customerâs favour. Sure it wasnât like Belgian chip quality but for the UK it was very good indeed.
