As of: March 28, 2024, 12:55 p.m
By: Pauline Wyderka
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Ready-made meals are not considered particularly healthy, yet many of us rely on them on a regular basis. Are there healthy options and if so, which ones?
Sometimes things just have to happen quickly. Frozen products and other ready meals can be a real lifesaver. But what do you have to pay attention to if you still want to live a healthy life? Are there quick meals that can also be healthy? HEIDELBERG24 does the ready meal check.
Can ready meals be healthy?
Fast food is unhealthy, some more than others - at least that applies to many dishes that you get in fast food restaurants. But what about fast food at home? How unhealthy or even healthy are the dishes that can simply be warmed up briefly in the microwave or oven? Basically, in most cases, ready-made meals are never as healthy as their freshly prepared alternative.
The ready meal should always look, smell, taste the same and ideally only be able to be warmed up quickly. For this to be possible, a high level of processing is required, which makes the food less nutritious. Most of the time, the contents are heated up and frozen; sometimes preservatives, flavor enhancers and other unhealthy additives are added. Often without even knowing their long-term consequences for health.
What are the best ready meals?
But there are a few things you can pay attention to in order to maintain a reasonably healthy diet even when cooking quickly. It's always worth taking a look at the contents. Just by looking at the length of the list, you can get a sense of how well the meal is processed. And the nutritional information should not be neglected either. How much fat, sugar and salt are in it? Storage is also an indication.
Popular canned foods in particular are rather unfavorable in terms of basic requirements. Not least because, as Öko-Test found with canned tomatoes, the toxic substance bisphenol A from the cans often ends up in the food. Dishes that come in dried bags? Also highly processed and durable. Frozen products, on the other hand, are better. The following explains why these foods are among the healthiest ready meals:
Frozen vegetable dishes for the microwave, oven or pan
Vegetarian frozen pizza
Soup dishes with vegetables from the jar
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How healthy are frozen ready meals?
Of course, as mentioned at the beginning, fresh vegetables or homemade pizza are always the better choice. But if it's a ready meal, then frozen isn't a bad idea. Fruit and vegetables that are frozen immediately after harvest not only contain the majority of their nutrients, as the Techniker Krankenkasse explains, but sometimes even more than those that end up on the supermarket shelf unfrozen.
In some cases, frozen foods are slightly heated and then frozen - still better than extremely high temperature manufacturing processes. This means frozen meals can be a healthier alternative to other ready meals. Here too, however, you have to take a closer look.
Which frozen meals are healthy?
Even with frozen food, fewer processing steps are a sign that it is healthier. A short, understandable list of ingredients indicates that there are few additives. There should be as few flavor enhancers and sugar as possible. However, both are often hidden behind other names, such as “yeast extract” or “dextrin”. Instead of palm oil, choose dishes with healthy oils, such as olive or rapeseed oil.
Frozen food that is not breaded is also healthier: Breaded dishes are usually pre-fried - this creates harmful substances, as in the fish fingers that were tested by Stiftung Warentest. In addition, everything that is prepared in the oven instead of in the pan is healthier. Plant-based frozen meals also contain more vitamins and fewer calories. (paw)