Are you familiar with “Ready-Made Meals”?
In old Japanese TV dramas, families used to dine together at a table and happenings usually occur when they are there. The styles of tables have changed from round-shaped flat tables to rectangular dining as the time goes by, especially after the period of high economic growth, though.
Nowadays, the number of single household is increasing more rapidly than nuclear families.
There are various styles of families now a days and the number of separately-living married couple is increasing. It is different from “solo transfer” – a new family style.
Furthermore, women’s empowerment or children’s cram school activities provide less opportunities for families to sit at a dining table together.
By the way, do you know the word “ready-made food” that is considered between “eating out” and “eating in”?
“Ready-made food” is to eat cooked meals at home.
For example, take away food, delivered meals and catering are categorized ready-made meals. I think these words especially “take away” sound familiar to you and have made you understand what ready-made meals are.
Buying ready-made meals is less expensive than eating out and if you purchase a few of them, you need less effort to cook delicious
Are ready-made meals enemy of diet?
When choosing ready-made meals, people tend to pick up what they feel like eating. Of course, the diet will be ill-balanced.
To tell you the truth, it happens. But don’t take it so easy!
Because there is a catch to the frequent use of ready-made meals and eating out meals.
First, they are often heavily seasoned to keep them tasty even cold. Their presentation is good but they tend to have a thick taste.
In addition, meat contains some fat, and deep-fried foods have thicker butter. When meat have a good amount of fat, its texture is soft and delicious. When deep-fried foods are not coated by an appropriate amount of butter, they don’t look nice. Well, it totally depends on where you purchase these foods but they have such tendencies.
Lastly, bento-boxes or set meals usually contain a lot of rice, but little vegetables.
This happens because the rice is filling and the feeling of satisfaction will increase when eating the meal. Also, from the point of sellers’ view, it’s financially safer to use rice more than vegetables because the cost of the rice is more stable than that of the vegetables. The sellers can avoid the risk of changing market prices by using a lot of rice.
Of course, you can find various healthy take away meals that are low in fat and abundant of vegetables, but as you expect, they are high in price. It’s a bit difficult to purchase them so often.
Pay attention to the ingredients used to cook ready-made meals
“Well, maybe I should cook healthy meals by myself to lose weight, then. But, no, no. I don’t have time for that!”
To those who live in this busy modern age, cooking all the meals by ourselves is quite hard. I believe that “Eat regularly, Eat deliciously” is a key to keep ourselves healthy. Even though you only want to eat self-made meals but don’t have time to cook, don’t skip the meal.
Then, I’m going to tell you a key to use ready-made meals in your daily diet.
The key is the ingredients used. Choose meals in which the original shapes or colors of ingredients still remain.
For example, choose green salad or vegetable sticks for vegetables. Choose grilled or steamed dishes for meat. For fish, row fish is good. Boiled eggs and soybeans, and natto are also good.
On the other hand, processed foods such as potato salad, deep-fried vegetable shreds, hamburger, deep-fried chicken, seasoned and boiled fish and so on are not recommended. In addition, omelet, fried rice, curry and rice, gratin, and pastries are categorized as processed foods.
See? We are surrounded by many processed foods like the above.
Choosing what ready-made meals you eat matters a lot. I hope you find this article helpful.
I have written many diet-related articles in my blog. You may have interests in “I love eating out but want to lose weight! Recommended menus for you”.
Please check it out!
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