The nutrient composition of European ready meals

Autor(en)
Sonja Kanzler, Martin Manschein, Guido Lammer, Karl-Heinz Wagner
Abstrakt

Despite the increasing social importance of ready meals, only few studies have been conducted on their nutrient composition. Therefore, 32 chilled, frozen and heat-treated ready meals (only main dishes) from the continental European market were analysed for protein, fat, total carbohydrate and energy. Half of the meals were nutritionally imbalanced by providing elevated fat (>30% of energy) and low carbohydrate levels (<50% of energy). Protein was generally above recommendations and ranged from 8.0 to 47.2 g per serving. The inter-package variation was high, reaching 19.04 ± 2.90 g/package for fat. After proposing understandable guidelines to improve nutritional quality for the food industry, seven "nutritionally optimised" ready meals were created at the European level and analysed, however success was limited. If product labelling is to be useful for consumers, our results also indicate a need for better quality control to reduce the differences between content and labelling.

Organisation(en)
Department für Ernährungswissenschaften
Journal
Food Chemistry
Band
172
Seiten
190-196
Anzahl der Seiten
7
ISSN
0308-8146
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2014.09.075
Publikationsdatum
09-2014
Peer-reviewed
Ja
ÖFOS 2012
303009 Ernährungswissenschaften
Schlagwörter
ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete
Food Science, Analytical Chemistry
Link zum Portal
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/the-nutrient-composition-of-european-ready-meals(f893c1cd-eaf7-48b3-b89f-f2c3e1509a58).html