The importance of reading the Nutrition Information

One of our goals is to get people back into the kitchen, cooking their own meals from scratch. While many people eat convenience meals for lunch at the office, a fair number of our patients tell us that they regularly eat convenience meals at home for dinner, as well. They feel that it's easier and faster than cooking, but healthier than take-out. This seems to match the attitudes of those in the United Kingdom, where an article just published in the journal Appetite (2015;92:36-42) surveys the nutritional content of what they in the UK term "ready-meals."

"Ready-meals" are pre-prepared single- or multiple-serving main courses that are available either refrigerated or frozen. The vast majority of sales of these products are of supermarket brands, and there are typically several product lines ranging from "premium" or "luxury" lines to "value," "economy," or "healthier" lines. The study authors identified six single-serving meals that were available in the majority of supermarkets and product lines and were also popular from a sales standpoint. They then did the time-consuming legwork of visiting all of the branches of ten major supermarket chains in a Northern England city and recorded the package weight, price, and Nutrition Information of all of the specified meals in each product line in the store. This was done within the space of a week in order to avoid price variations across supermarket locations.

The researchers then analyzed the 166 resulting meals with respect to their product lines to see which product lines were most or least healthy, using the UK's guidelines for "traffic light" labeling on the front of the product. This labelling shows a red traffic light for high, yellow traffic light for medium, and green traffic light for low for the various levels of fat, saturated fat, sugar, and salt.

Generally speaking, all of the meals were high in saturated fat and salt, but low in sugar. Two out of three of the meals marketed as "healthier" got green light scores for all four criteria, but none of those marketed as "luxury" or "premium." Interestingly, those who got three green lights (of the possible four) cost the least, while those who got only one green light cost the most.

Keep in mind that the authors were not testing every single meal in every single product line, but limited themselves to only 6 varieties: macaroni and cheese, meat lasagna, cottage pie, fish pie, chicken tikka masala, and sweet and sour chicken. While macaroni and cheese tended to score poorly no matter which product line it was from (luxury or healthier), other varieties received different traffic light scores for many of the different product lines, even in the same supermarket brand.

What this means for you

If you're going to eat convenience meals of any kind, don't assume that a particular brand, product line, or type of meal is necessarily going to be better for you. It's critical to read the Nutrition Information for yourself.

First posted: July 15, 2015