Skip Derra, Skip.Derra@asu.edu
(480) 965-4823
December 11, 2003

Nutrition researchers gauge the true costs of convenience meals

In a hurry and don't want to spend a lot of time preparing dinner? Before you reach into the freezer for the frozen entrees, you might want to consider the cost of convenience.

"When you choose convenience, it comes with a price," says Linda Vaughan, chair of the Department of Nutrition. "That price can be in the higher costs of prepared or frozen foods, or it can be in the quality or nutritional value of the foods."

In order to get a good handle on the additional costs of convenience foods, Vaughan and her students performed a systematic study of the time it took to prepare dishes traditionally and to prepare their convenience counterparts. They then determined the cost-per-hour equivalent the consumer pays for the convenience determined by the actual cost difference between the convenience and traditional foods.

The products they worked with ranged from fruits and vegetables, to cheeses and on up the food chain to frozen entrees and boxed dinners. The study, performed at the request of the The Arizona Republic, compared 20 products and was done over a two-month period. It was repeated several times to factor out differences in the student's cooking abilities.

Vaughan's group found that some convenience foods, like frozen pancakes, stacked up well when compared to pancakes made from scratch.

Salad mixes in a bag and some processed vegetables, like pre-cut broccoli, also compared well.

"I think bagged lettuce and salad mixes were a good bargain because the quality of the food was still high," she says.

But with other foods, like sliced apples, celery, cheese sticks or shredded cheese, the high cost couldn't justify the time savings.

"I think the sliced apples and celery were sort of a waste," Vaughan says. "They were anywhere from two- to two-and-a-half times more expensive and the quality was not as good as whole apples cut up by the consumer. Cheese sticks were three times more expensive than a block of cheese and it took only seconds to cut the cheese."

The group determined that the consumer was paying the equivalent of $80 per hour for the convenience of buying shredded cheese, $75 per hour for sliced gala apples, and nearly $50 per hour for pre-cut celery.

"If you are going to buy prepared foods, be selective because in some cases, like with shredded cheeses, they are greatly overpriced compared to just buying a block of cheese and shredding it yourself," Vaughan says. "But other foods, if you don't take food quality into account, and that's a very big if, they are very similar in terms of just raw costs."

According to Vaughan, the processing of the frozen foods has much to do with the final product and the processing has a large effect on the nutritional value of your meal. Prepared dinners can be high in fat content and they typically are high in sodium content.

Vaughan said the quality for many of the prepared dinners was rated as pretty low, and sometimes the convenience was questionable. For example, a frozen teriyaki dinner took 20 minutes to prepare and a teriyaki dinner from scratch took 30 minutes to prepare

The lesson learned is that the consumer must consider each food or dish individually. But, Vaughan says, to go through and judge foods item by item in the grocery store is not always practical. What needs to change is the consumer's philosophy about convenience.

"I think the best way in terms of nutrition and health is to simply prepare meals using basic foods that are quick to prepare," she says. "Rather than selecting bulk or frozen dinners that are supposedly convenient, use raw foods like chicken breasts, or loin of pork that are inherently quick and easy to prepare.

"Just look at all the food stuffs available at the market and organize your meal around those 'quick to cook' foods, and save labor intensive meals for those one or two days each week when you have time to spend 20 minutes preparing food and letting it cook for an hour," she adds.

"You can get a meal on the table in 15 minutes using real foods, but you have to plan ahead and have the foods that are, by their nature, very basic," Vaughan adds. "An example might be grilled protein (meat, fish, poultry) and a couple of side dishes, or a meat-free meal based on legumes, rice or pasta. You will lower the fat and the sodium levels compared to what is found in convenience foods and you get higher quality."

Derra, with Media Relations & Public Information, can be reached at (480) 965-4823 or (skip.derra@asu.edu).

This article appeared in the December 5, 2003 issue of ASU Insight.