Why instant foods aren't the time-savers we think they are

Most people use prepackaged convenience foods to save time. But new research shows these fat- and sodium-laden foods aren't the time-savers you think they are.

While it's true that a frozen lasagna dish is usually faster to make than homemade lasagna, researchers from the University of California-Los Angeles wanted to find out how convenience foods are used in the real world. After they videotaped family cooking habits, the researchers saw that convenience foods weren't used as a time-saving substitute for the same dish made from scratch. Instead packaged foods offered a way for families to eat more elaborate meals than they would normally have time to prepare.

When families did cook from scratch, they ate simpler fare -- like one-pot meals or stir-fry. In the end, dinner took about a half-hour to an hour to prepare, whether it was made from scratch or with convenience foods, according to the research, which was published in the July issue of the British Food Journal and funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a nonprofit group that funds science, economic and other research.

Says anthropology researcher Margaret Beck from the Center on Everyday Lives of Families at UCLA, "When people use convenience foods, they are ramping up expectations for how elaborate a dinner should be."

The study is important because convenience foods tend to be high in preservatives, unhealthy fats and sodium. Nutritionists say parents often justify using the less-healthful convenience foods because they feel the time saved in cooking can be used to help kids with homework or play at the end of a busy day. But the discovery that a high use of convenience foods doesn't really put dinner on the table any faster should persuade families to opt for simpler, healthier fare, say health experts.

"The best piece of advice I give for eating healthy is to plan -- get the ingredients in your house that will help you build something very simple," says New Orleans physician Timothy Harlan, a former chef and creator of www.drgourmet.com. A list of "cupboard essentials" needed to whip up a quick, healthful meal can be found at www.drgourmet.com/ingredients/index.shtml.

The UCLA researchers videotaped the cooking habits of 32 middle-class Los Angeles families with two working parents. The parents knew they were part of a study, but they didn't know use of convenience foods would be monitored.

The study showed that meals with little or no convenience foods took 26 to 93 minutes to prepare. Meals that used a lot of convenience foods took 25 to 73 minutes to prepare. While convenience foods were time-savers on very elaborate meals, overall, there was no statistically significant difference in total preparation time.

One difference that emerged was "hands on" time -- the amount of time people spent slicing, dicing and stirring foods. Using convenience foods shaved about 10 minutes of hands-on time, but it didn't make any difference in how quickly the food got to the table.

The study authors noted that the biggest time savings of convenience foods may be at the grocery store, where it's faster to grab a frozen entree than to collect six separate ingredients to make the same dish from scratch. Grocery-shopping time wasn't measured in the study. The average American spends about 22 minutes in the grocery store and shops about twice a week, according to the Food Marketing Institute.

Convenience foods also helped cooks offer a greater variety of dishes; cooks who made dinner from scratch offered three or fewer dishes. One family made a simple meal of sandwiches and edamame, using bread, cheese, greens and salmon and tomatoes. That meal took about a half-hour to prepare. Another family had a six-dish convenience-food meal of microwave barbecued ribs, macaroni and cheese, prebagged salad, bagged dinner rolls and a cookies and ice cream dessert. That meal also took a half-hour.

"People should give themselves a break," says Dr. Beck. "It's OK to put a simple meal on the table."