Sitting down to enjoy a freshly
cooked meal with your family is now less common in the United
States
than ever before. Longer work hours reduce the time available for home
cooking, and prepared meals are a quick and easy solution to the time
crunch. Prepared meals can also help with dieting for weight loss.
However, there are health dangers associated with relying primarily or
solely on prepared meals for your dietary needs.History
The
history of the prepared meal diet is closely tied to the development of
the microwave oven. Wage erosion in relation to the cost of living has
required many adults to work multiple jobs or more hours, leaving less
time for home cooking. A microwaveable prepared meal can be ready to eat
within two or three minutes, a great time saving for busy dieters.
Frozen meals first gained mass popularity in the years after World War
II. In the late 20th century and into the 21st, frozen food
manufacturers and retailers began to offer home delivery of prepared
meal diets.
Types
Prepared
meal diets are available for supermarket purchase or home delivery.
Home delivery options are typically more expensive. Supermarket frozen
meals are sold in the United States under brand names including Weight
Watchers, Healthy Choice, Smart Ones and Lean Cuisine. These frozen
meals are typically available in small individual portions with limited
fat and calorific values. Prepared meals delivered to your home
typically balance food in a ratio of 40 percent carbohydrate, 30 percent
"good" fats and 30 percent protein, according to the website Medical
News Today. Vegetarian options are available in supermarket or delivered
prepared meals.
Benefits
One
of the main benefits of a prepared meal diet is that portion control is
taken care of for you. For those who struggle to control portions when
cooking fresh food, prepared meals limit the quantity of food you can
eat at each meal. Eating smaller portions of food limits overall calorie
intake and therefore aids weight loss. Also, the calorie and
nutritional content of food combinations is calculated precisely in a
prepared food diet, whereas it can be difficult to accurately estimate
the calorific content of food you prepare at home from diverse
ingredients.
Considerations
A
prepared meal diet is usually more costly than it would be to prepare
the same meals yourself. You will pay a premium for someone else to
prepare the meals for you, and may also pay shipping or delivery costs.
For cash-rich, time-poor people, the time saved by not preparing food at
home may be worth the financial cost the prepared meals. One
nutritional drawback to a prepared meal plan is that the food is
pre-cooked and packaged, therefore containing fewer vitamins than food
prepared fresh. Additionally, the sodium content of prepared food is
typically higher than fresh food, and a high salt intake via prepared
foods may be unhealthy.
Warning
Even
when dieting for weight loss, it is important to maintain a sufficient
daily intake of calories and nutrients including protein, fats, fiber,
vitamins and carbohydrates. The BMI Calculator website recommends
consuming between 75 and 80 percent of your daily calorie needs when
dieting for weight loss. For most people, this means a daily calorie
reduction of 500 to 1,000 calories below the needed level. It is not
advisable for a female to reduce daily calorie intake below 1,200, or a
male to reduce intake below 1,800 calories, according to the American
College of Sports Medicine.
