Are ready meals healthy?
Image by Angelo Rosa from Pixabay
Ready meals can be a convenient option when you are running low on time but are they any good? Let’s find out…..
We all live in a time-poor world, where cooking a home cooked meal night after night, isn’t always feasible - enter the Ready Meal. However, while ready (or frozen) meals can be a quick and easy option when we are short on time, some can be high on price and low on vegetables, fibre, protein and portion size!
Image by Harald Dona from Pixabay
As these convenient meals are prepared by a food manufacturer, rather than from scratch at home, some meals may contain more saturated fat, salt, sugar and energy than what you might typically make at home. In fact, some of the meals we reviewed contained nearly ALL an adults’ daily requirements of salt or saturated fat!
Being a manufactured processed meal, ready meals may also contain ingredients that you might not usually use at home either. Therefore, it is helpful to look at the food labels and read the ingredients list so that you really know what is in your food.
As a rule of thumb, less is best of 3Ss - saturated fat, salt (sodium) and sugar per 100g.
How large are the portions of a ready meal?
It’s important to pay attention to your body’s hunger and fullness levels, rather than the pre-determined portion size of the Ready Meal. This may mean that the meal portion may either leave you wanting more, or feeling full halfway through.
In the ready meals reviewed on Eat Well For Less New Zealand, their portion sizes varied greatly! Some were large enough to feed an active man while others, were barely big enough to touch the sides. The protein portion (e.g legumes, meat, chicken or fish) of the meal was also often on the small size. For example, a typical serve of meat for an average adult is around 100g of cooked meat or chicken. This is significantly more than the 60g of raw chicken found in the Teriyaki Chicken meal we reviewed on the Show.
If a meal is too low in protein and fibre it is unlikely to fill you up and may leave you wanting more!
Most of the meals we looked at also tended to be heavier on the carbohydrate component (rice, pasta, starchy carbohydrates) and lighter on vegetables than what is recommended by health authorities, such as the Heart Foundation and Diabetes New Zealand.
Source: Diabetes New Zealand
The perfect plate - vege up!
Vegetables provide us with a range of beneficial vitamins and minerals, as well as fibre to help fill us up. Unfortunately many meals that were reviewed on Eat Well For Less New Zealand were lacking in the vegetable department. Ideally we should aim to have 1/2 the plate (or at least 2 cupped handfuls) filled with lots of different coloured non-starchy vegetables. This can be done by serving a side salad or cooked, frozen vegetables alongside your favourite ready meal.
Aim for carbohydrates (rice, pasta, bread or starchy vegetables) and protein foods (legumes, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy or lean meat) to be only about 1/4 or your plate each.
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Context matters
As with most things in life, context matters. Ready meals can have a place within a varied and nutritious diet. However, if they form a staple part of your diet, look for meals which contain the least amount of saturated fat, sodium and sugar and bulk them up with plenty of vegetables too!