Nutritional content of supermarket ready meals and recipes by television chefs in the United Kingdom: cross sectional study
BMJ 2012; 345 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.e7607 (Published 17 December 2012) Cite this as: BMJ 2012;345:e7607- Simon Howard, specialty registrar in public health1,
- Jean Adams, senior lecturer in public health2,
- Martin White, professor of public health2
- 1NHS Tees, Stockton on Tees TS17 6SG, UK
- 2Fuse, UKCRC Centre for Translational Research in Public Health, Institute of Health and Society, Newcastle University, UK
- Correspondence to: S Howard simonhoward{at}nhs.net
- Accepted 31 October 2012
Abstract
Objectives To compare the energy and macronutrient content of main meals created by television chefs with ready meals sold by supermarkets, and to compare both with nutritional guidelines published by the World Health Organization and UK Food Standards Agency.
Design Cross sectional study.
Setting Three supermarkets with the largest share of the grocery market in the United Kingdom, 2010.
Samples 100 main meal recipes from five bestselling cookery books by UK television chefs and 100 own brand ready meals from the three leading UK supermarkets.
Main outcome measures Number of meals for which the nutritional content complied with WHO recommendations, and the proportion of nutrients classified as red, amber, or green using the UK FSA’s “traffic light” system for labelling food.
Results No recipe or ready meal fully complied with the WHO recommendations. The ready meals were more likely to comply with the recommended proportions of energy derived from carbohydrate (18% v 6%, P=0.01) and sugars (83% v 81%, P=0.05) and fibre density (56% v 14% P<0.01). The recipes were more likely to comply with the recommended sodium density (36% v 4%, P<0.01), although salt used for seasoning was not assessed. The distributions of traffic light colours under the FSA’s food labelling recommendations differed: the modal traffic light was red for the recipes (47%) and green for ready meals (42%). Overall, the recipes contained significantly more energy (2530 kJ v 2067 kJ), protein (37.5 g v 27.9 g), fat (27.1 g v 17.2 g), and saturated fat (9.2 g v 6.8 g; P<0.01 for all) and significantly less fibre (3.3 g v 6.5 g, P<0.01) per portion than the ready meals.
Conclusions Neither recipes created by television chefs nor ready meals sold by three of the leading UK supermarkets complied with WHO recommendations. Recipes were less healthy than ready meals, containing significantly more energy, protein, fat, and saturated fat, and less fibre per portion than the ready meals.
Footnotes
This research was undertaken by SH (supervised by JA and MW) in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the MSc in Public Health and Health Services Research at Newcastle University (degree awarded December 2011).
Contributors: SH conceived the study, collected and analysed the data, and drafted the manuscript. All authors contributed to the study design and interpretation of results and commented on successive drafts of the manuscript, and will act as guarantors.
Funding: At the time this research was done, MW was partly and JA fully supported by Fuse, the Centre for Translational Research in Public Health, a UK Clinical Research Collaboration (UKCRC) Public Health Research Centre of Excellence. Fuse receives funding from the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Economic and Social Research Council (No RES-590-38-0003), Medical Research Council, and the National Institute for Health Research, under the auspices of UKCRC. Views expressed do not necessarily represent those of the funders.
Competing interests: All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form at www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf (available on request from the corresponding author) and declare: no support from any companies for the submitted work; no relationships with any companies that might have an interest in the submitted work in the previous three years; and no non-financial interests that may be relevant to the submitted work.
Ethical approval: Not required.
Data sharing: The full dataset is available from the corresponding author at simonhoward@nhs.net.
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