Meals For One

It came to my attention yesterday, whilst I was doing my supermarket shopping, that you can buy packs of food 'For One'. I was horrified.

I mean, you don't get meals 'For Two', 'For Three', 'For Four' etc., do you? True, it will say in small print how many people it serves ("serves four"), but they are not marketed on the basis of how many people can eat them. It's outrageous.

They may as well have labels saying 'You Are Sad', or go one step further & have an entire section for single people, e.g. 'Meat', 'Fish', 'Breakfast Cereals', 'Household', & 'MEALS FOR SINGLE PEOPLE, & IN CASE THIS ISN'T CLEAR ENOUGH, WE MEAN PEOPLE WHO LIVE ALONE AND DON'T HAVE A PARTNER - THIS MEANS YOU!'.

Who made them the food police? When I put a pack of non-single-person food into my basket I felt really greedy, & ended up putting two packs of 'For One' into my basket. What??? It's bonkers. If I choose to eat three times as much as a single person should (or at least 'should' as dictated by Mr Asda, Mr Sainsbury or Mr Tesco) then that's my choice.

Quite apart from the above connotations, it's insulting: frankly I am quite capable of putting together a meal just for myself; I'm not about to mistakenly cook myself a whole packet of eight sausages because I've failed to work out that this pack was meant for a family & not just one person.

Perhaps it's meant to reflect the fact that there are far more single people today than ever before. According to The Times:

"There will soon be more single people than married ones in Britain. The number of single households is set to rise by 53% over the next 20 years to 9.9m, according to a report by Alliance & Leicester Mortgages. In the same period, married households are set to fall from 9.6m to 8.8m. "

Or - & I haven't actually done the research as yet, so I could be wrong - it could be that buying two 'For One's will work out more expensive (& thus bring in even more money to supermarket chains) than buying a normal size packet & eating it over two (or three) days. But maybe I'm just being cynical.