Most ready meals in the UK are high in salt, fat, and calories, with vegan options offering the healthiest profiles, while budget-friendly products surprisingly contain lower fat, salt, and calorie levels than premium ones, a new research from Action on Salt, based at Queen Mary University of London, has claimed.
All ready meals produced by Wasabi, Jamie Oliver and Kitchen Joy were high in salt, followed by 91 per cent of Charlie Bigham’s ready meals, and 89 per cent of Royal and Saputo Dairy UK.
Saputo Dairy, Jamie Oliver, Charlie Bigham’s, Royal and Bakkavor have a notably high proportion of their ready meals high in fat, saturated fat and/or salt, with 100 per cent of Jamie Oliver’s and Saputo Dairy UK’s ready meals also low in fibre.
The Gym Kitchen and Weight Watchers were the only two companies with no reported ready meals high in fat, saturated fat or salt.
Of the companies with five or more products, Saputo Dairy UK had the greatest number of ready meals exceeding the maximum calorie guideline (78 per cent) followed by Royal (67 per cent), Bakkavor (60 per cent) and General Mills (57 per cent). Nine companies had 100 per cent compliance to the calorie guidelines.
Of the companies with five or more products in their portfolio, Royal had the greatest number of ready meals exceeding the salt target (56 per cent), followed by Kitchen Joy (33 per cent) and Wasabi (30 per cent), states the report.
Ready meals from Royal had the highest proportion of products classed as HFSS (44 per cent), followed by Strathmore Foods (43 per cent) and Saputo Dairy UK (33 per cent).
The manufacturer with the greatest number of ready meals - Charlie Bigham’s - had one in five of its ready meals (22 per cent) classed as HFSS.
The vast majority of ready meals available in major supermarkets were meat-based, with only a limited selection of vegan options.
Ready meals with a combination of proteins also contained the highest average salt, followed by red meat and poultry. Vegan ready meals had a more favourable nutrition profile, averaging the lowest energy, fat, saturated fat and salt content, and the highest fibre content per serve.
The report also highlighted insufficient fibre content in many ready meals, with 71 per cent considered low in fibre. One solution to this would be incorporating more vegetables and legumes into ready meals.
Most of the ready meals surveyed cost between £3.01 and £4.50 per serving.
Premium products, i.e. those that cost £4.51 or more, contained, on average, higher levels of energy, fat, saturated fat and salt per serve than those that cost less. Interestingly, the ready meals with the lowest price point (≤£1.50) contained the lowest levels of energy, fat, saturated fat and salt per serve, on average.
According to the report, Nomad Foods' new range of next generation healthy, veg-rich frozen prepared meals under their Birds Eye Steamfresh sub-brand is:
- 100 per cent non-HFSS
- 100 per cent compliant with maximum UK salt targets
- 100 per cent compliant with calorie reduction guidelines
- Delivers 1 or 2 of a consumer’s 5-a-Day in each portion
- Provides 6.4 - 9.6g fibre per portion
