Ready meals should be substituted for home-made food
Do you want to help trim yours and your family’s waistlines? The average UK family could save over a month’s worth of calories every year by ditching ready meals and instead taking a DIY approach to making common foods.
The research by etailer AppliancesDirect found that the average family stands to save 240,000 calories – the equivalent of 32 days’ recommended calorie intake for a family of four – by home-making meals, instead of relying on shop prepared versions.
The statistics indicate Britain is a nation of false foodies which, despite being obsessed with cookery shows like the Great British Bake Off and Masterchef, has the highest ready meal consumption in Europe.
Nik Litwinenko-Jones, Lifestyle Nutritionist at Quality for Life Fitness adds, “Obesity rates have never been higher and that is largely due to our lifestyles. Our grandparents were brought up on single-ingredient whole foods and we should eat more like them.
“Yet now it's too easy to opt for ready-meals packed with long lists of ingredients - as a rule the longer the list the more you should avoid. These meals have best before dates of many weeks, meaning they are packed with salt, sugar and preservatives, increasing your risk of life-threatening illnesses such as Coronary Heart Disease and Type II Diabetes.”
More than 65% of Brits admit to eating ready meals five times per week, while 57% buy readymade fruit juices or smoothies three or more times per week.
But not only are these pre-prepared products often laden with excessive sugar, salt and fat, statistics indicate they are also much more expensive.
By swapping to home-prepared foods instead, the statistics show that average family could save almost £2,000 per year – the cost of the average family holiday.
However, almost two thirds believe it would actually cost more to make foods like juices, frozen yogurt and Spaghetti Bolognese at home, when in fact if they did, they would stand to save around 10% of the average UK disposable income.
Comparisons
Smoothies: An Innocent Pure Fruit Smoothie has an RRP per glass of £1.19, contains 137 calories, 26g of sugar and 0.5g fat. In comparison, a homemade smoothie containing the same ingredients costs just 32p per portion has far fewer calories with 90 per serving and 6g less sugar.
Spaghetti Bolognese: The Sainsbury’s Italian Spaghetti Bolognese (400g) has an RRP of £2.00, a whopping 631 calories, 27.7g of fat and 9.5g of sugars.
But cooking the same meal in a halogen oven more than halves the calories and sugar with 336 and 5.65g respectively, and the fat content is reduced by nearly two thirds, to 3.8g per portion.
Vegetable Crisps: Tyrrell’s Beetroot, Parsnip & Carrot Crisps (150g) have an RRP per 160g of £2.99, and have 185 calories, 8.4g of sugars and 13.2g of fat per quarter of a bag (37g). The same amount made from scratch in a dehydrator has only 77 calories, 5.3g of sugars and 1.75g of fat, and costs only 51p.
Mark Kelly, Marketing Manager at Appliances Direct said: “With obesity on the rise and the average UK person consuming 10% more calories than they need each day, what and how we eat has never been more important. It’s really important that people think about what they are eating and how that product has been made.
“Home preparing food is one of the easiest ways to cut out excess calories, it saves money, and there are a wealth of new appliances on the market, such as halogen ovens, food dehydrators and juicers, which can make this even easier and quicker and are both easy to use and increasingly affordable. We are seeing consistent increases in sales of these appliances, so the message does seem to be gradually sinking in.”