I eat lots of supermarket 'ready meals'. There seems to be an assumption that this is worse for my health that if I prepared and cooked the ingredients myself. Can someone point me to some concrete scientific evidence that that is true, or at least some convincing theories on why it might be true? (Ready meals are really convenient - if I'm going to motivate myself to give them up, I need some concrete evidence that they really are bad for me)
(1) Healthfulness of food is a continuum, not a boolean. (2) "Ready made" meals covers almost the full spectrum. (3) Achilles heel of the best (really, all) frozen meals (say, Gardenburger with side of broccoli, or vegetable-centric Amy's) is high sodium. (4) If you cook healthfully (say a reasonably faithful version of the Indian or Italian traditions), your meals will have a much better balance of nutrients and especially more micronutrients than the median frozen prepared meal. (5) Plain frozen vegetables (as opposed to frozen prepared dishes/"meals") are excellent food. (6) See Michael Pollan for more.
Pre-made meals aren't intrinsically bad for you; it's the preservatives and other questionable ingredients (and quantity of) that the manufacturers may add that is detrimental to your health.
To give a specific example: many preservatives and industrial techniques can alter the flavor of a dish in unpleasant ways, so industrialized food just covers up those flavors with salt. The worst examples would be the "flavor packet" that comes with ramen noodles: some of these deliver a full gram of sodium. But most frozen meals have unreasonably high levels of sodium as well. If you prepare your food from raw ingredients, you at least have the option of using less salt, to the betterment of your blood pressure.
I believe the parent post is referring to the "Meals For Two" that some grocery stores are offering these days. In my area, two chains--Market Street and Central Market, for reference--have hot food restaurants/delis in the store. They use the same stock that is sold in the store and prepare lunch and dinner servings prior to the store opening and then throughout the day. Those are then packaged in containers, placed into a paper bag, stapled closed and put into a refrigerated display case.
Functionally, these are no different from preparing food at home. They are naturally more expensive than cooking the food yourself, but I can't tell a big difference. There are even services around here now that prepare, freeze, and deliver fresh-cooked meals from a nearby commercial kitchen on a weekly basis.
If you think that stuff doesn't taste like total crap, you are kidding yourself. In the last two years my wife and I moved from Portland (where you can get healthy tasty restaurant food) to the Bay Area (where you can't) and so we started cooking at home all the time.
Anything that isn't a home cooked meal tastes like industrial crap to me (even most restaurants). Once you have tasted sauteed greens, rice and home-roasted chicken, all those prepared foods you thought were normal will reveal themselves to you as suddenly not even worth the category "food".
