New Analysis Shows Frozen Entrees and Side Dishes Have Comparable Nutrition to Popular Recipes
Today’s frozen food category offers many benefits: easy-to-prepare dishes, less food waste thanks to a longer shelf life, and quality meals captured through flash-freezing.
Frozen food also has nearly similar nutrition to non-frozen counterparts. For example, research reveals that frozen fruits and vegetables are just as nutritious – or even more nutritious – than fresh. This is due to freezing just-harvested produce at the peak of ripeness and locking in the nutrition.
A new analysis confirms that popular frozen entrees and side dishes also have comparable nutrition to their homemade equivalents.
How Frozen Meals Measure Up
In an analysis conducted by the American Frozen Food Institute (AFFI), food experts calculated the nutritional value per serving of five popular frozen foods – meat lasagna, pepperoni pizza, cheese pizza, macaroni and cheese, and broccoli with cheese sauce – and compared the dishes to their home-cooked versions.
The results may be surprising.
Data revealed that the frozen foods are comparable to homemade equivalents in fat, saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium. In fact, all of the frozen foods studied fell within a 5% Daily Value range of the non-frozen versions.
Additional data from the analysis reinforced other benefits of frozen food:
- Time and Convenience: Most frozen meals require zero or minimal preparation time, compared to an average of twenty minutes needed to prepare scratch meals at home. Additionally, scratch meals require, on average, 35 more minutes of cooking time than frozen meals.
- Cost Equivalency: Frozen meals stack up when compared to home-cooked meals. The analysis found that frozen meals and dishes are comparable in cost per serving to their homemade equivalents, with the frozen products on average falling within 5% of the cost to buy the ingredients and make the same food at home.
Click here to view the full methodology from the analysis.
Hitting the Pause Button with Freezing
Food makers use freezing to “hit the pause button” to lock in quality and freshness. For example, freezing protects protein, vitamins A and D and other nutrients, and preserves macro- and micronutrients in prepared foods. The nutritional comparability is also attributed to the fact that frozen food is real food. Frozen prepared foods use similar ingredients to those you would use in your kitchen at home. A white paper by AFFI explores the journey from farm to freezer, explaining how makers of prepared meals and side dishes can capture the nutrition, texture and taste of food by the great advances in freezing. By rapidly lowering the temperature in a matter of minutes, frozen food makers can maintain the quality meal that consumers expect.
Feel Good about Frozen
There are many reasons to feel good about frozen: less food waste, year-round access to fruits and vegetables, an easy to prepare meal, and a dish that is comparable to homemade. Families can confidently turn to frozen food and feel good about their choice.