Ready meals
Some of Britain's most popular ready meals contain over 4 times as much salt, almost 5 times more fat and nearly 6 times more saturates, per 100g, than others.
Some of Britain's most popular ready meals contain over 4 times as much salt, almost 5 times more fat and nearly 6 times more saturates, per 100g, than others.
Seven in every 10 people buy ready meals, and nearly a third of consumers do so every week. This means over 14 million ready meals are eaten each week in Britain, more than any other country.
Dr Oetker Ristorante Pizza Mozzarella has over 5 times the fat of the Weight Watchers pizza
But if you’re buying prepared meals, trying to make a healthier choice is far from easy. Which? research shows that apparently similar products contain hugely varying levels of fat, saturated fat and salt per 100g, although it won't always be obvious from the front of the pack.
The fat and salt content can differ a lot between brands, but also between products from the same manufacturer. And you don’t have to choose a ‘diet’ pizza to get a lot less fat.
For example, Dr Oetker Ristorante Pizza Mozzarella has over 5 times as much fat as the Weight Watchers Pizza Oval Cheese and Cherry Tomato, but Co-op's Truly Irresistable Stonebaked Margherita Pizza and Pizza Express Margherita Pizzas had less than half the amount.
Morrisons’ The Best Margherita Pizza had almost twice as much fat per 100g as its Thin and Crispy Cheese and Tomato Pizza . And surprisingly, Sainsbury’s Be Good to Yourself Roasted Tomato and Mozzarella Pizza had a similar amount of fat per 100g to its standard Deep Pan 4 Cheese Pizza.
You could be eating 5 times as much fat and more than 3 times the amount of salt, depending on which brand of lasagne you buy.
It’s not always the case that the products marketed as premium ranges have more fat. Morrisons’ standard Beef Lasagne had more fat per 100g than its premium version and Tesco’s Italian Lasagne and its Finest Beef Lasagne both had similar amounts of fat per 100g.
Perhaps even more surprisingly, Waitrose’s Perfectly Balanced Lasagne was higher in salt per portion than its standard version.
Sainsbury’s Chicken Tikka Masala has over 3 times the saturated fat of the Iceland Indian Takeaway equivalent
Your curry could have 3.5 times the amount of saturated fat, or more than 4 times the amount of salt, depending on which you choose.
It’s not easy to choose an all-round healthy option though. Sainsbury’s Chicken Tikka Masala had almost twice the fat of Asda’s Indian Takeaway Hot Chicken Tikka Masala per 100g, but the Asda meal had around 4 times more salt than Morrisons’ Chicken Tikka Masala.
Compared with when we looked at ready meals in 2004 some manufacturers had made significant reductions in fats and salt. It’s clearly possible to produce healthier ready meals, so why aren’t manufacturers doing this throughout their ranges?
Products branded as ‘healthy’ options were generally better nutritionally than standard and premium products, but you’re not always getting what you might expect. For example Asda’s frozen Good For You Beef Lasagne was high in saturates with a similar amount per portion to its standard beef lasagne.
Very often products which are lower in fats may be higher in salt, so in many cases there isn’t a simple ‘healthiest option’. To allow people to make choices which balance their diets as a whole, they need to be able to see the levels of salt and fats in a food at a glance.
All manufacturers need to display clear traffic light labels on the front of food packaging, as recommended by the Food Standards Agency to help shoppers make healthy choices more easily. Until then, our traffic light labels food shopping guide will help you.
Variations in the levels of fat, saturated fat and salt in cheese and tomato pizza, chicken tikka masala and beef lasagne.
Recipe for disaster (PDF: 232Kb)01 May 2004Exposes the variations in fat and salt in some of the country's most popular ready-made foods.
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