Simple, fresh food is ultimate convenience

I love cooking with fresh ingredients. They're better in every way than pre-packaged foods, even when it comes to convenience.

The Wall Street Journal published an interesting column this week by Tara Parker-Pope: "The Myth of Convenience: Why Instant Foods Don't Save Time."

"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," she wrote. "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."

Since pre-packaged convenience foods tend to be high in unhealthy fats, preservatives and sodium, it makes sense to cook simpler food from scratch, with fewer -- and fresh-- ingredients.
Parker-Pope writes that UCLA researchers videotaped the cooking habits of 32 families with two working parents. "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."

The study 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. " People who cooked from scratch offered fewer items per meal; "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."

Not difficult to determine which meal would be healthier, and in my view, more appetizing. The key for working families who want to serve dinners from scratch is a little planning, and keeping things simple.