I’ve been closely following the programme ‘Back In Time For Dinner’ where a family have spent a week at a time living and eating the life of decades gone by. Their own house has been renovated to transport them through the fifties, sixties, seventies and so on and as well as having new clothes, hair styles and hobbies they have had to prepare and eat typical food from the times they are investigating.

It’s so interesting to see how food revolutions transformed the lives of women who in the fifties were bound to the kitchen with cleaning it after cooking bland uninteresting food. By the nineteen seventies they had realised convenience in fodder could send them out to work letting them experience their first real freedom and women’s equality it seems, came right from the oven! It’s been such an interesting programme and watching the episode from the eighties sent me back to my own childhood. In the seventies the family had experienced Vesta meals where freeze dried food was brought to the masses for the first time. I don’t remember Vesta meals but I do remember the Pot Noodle craze and not being allowed them very often in the late eighties.

I’m not sure I ever really liked a Pot Noodle but I liked the idea of them and I thought they were very glamorous which is strange as really they should be quite the opposite. I wouldn’t go out of my way to eat a Pot Noodle these days but as with everything shown in the programme, time creates growth and everything moves on a little with each year. So although Pot Noodles wouldn’t be my first choice, when Sainsbury’s sent me a selection of their new instant hot lunches, I was definitely interested to try them. Just add boiling water to their Beef Pho Rice Noodle Pot and a hot lunch is served!

If I’m honest then I’ll tell you I didn’t expect it to be good but hand on heart I really enjoyed it. Dried rice noodles in a spicy beef flavour sauce with dried red peppers, dried leek, dried mushrooms and dried mint and it tasted very like the Vietnamese Pho I have had before but without the meatiness. I liked it very much and the best bit is that it is under 300 calories making it quite a good diet lunch too! It was filling like any other Pho and I would definitely buy it again! So food and the way we eat has changed dramatically in the last 60 years and the convenience food from the seventies and eighties, these days, can even taste really great… Did you know there’s even a baby snack based on the ice cream they send into space for the astronauts, it’s freeze dried smoothies which Jimmy doesn’t like at all but I’m rather partial! I wonder what we’ll be eating in another 60 years time?!

I was sent a selection of the new lunch products for the purpose of an honest review.

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