Convenience Foods Seldom Save Time for American Families

A study looking at the dinner habits of American families found that convenience food don't really save time. This study, conducted by UCLA's Center on Everyday Lives of Families and published in the August issue of the British Food Journal, was the first to track American families' dinner routines and found that the reliance of convenience foods such as Hamburger Helper has little to do with saving time.

"I really expected to see takeout used more often," said Margaret Beck, author of the study in a press release issued by UCLA. "People actually spend quite a fair amount of time cooking, but they're incorporating a lot of so-called convenience foods. Some people are just grabbing food kits off store shelves and adding water."

In the study, researchers video taped four complete days for 32 working families that lived in Los Angeles. Beck then noted what each family had for dinner, and where it came from. If a family ate in the home, she recorded if it was made from convenience foods or made from scratch and the time it took for preparation.

Beck observed that 70 percent of the meals were completely home cooked, including no take away products. And the study also observed that despite alarmist studies on the rise of fast food and takeout less than 15 percent of families ate a dinner only of takeout or fast food.

However most home cooked meals included one or more types of convenience foods. The most popular type of convenience foods were frozen entrees; however, using a frozen entrée didn't guarantee a quicker meal.

Beck estimated that meals took 52 minutes in total preparation time. When comparing meals using extensive use of convenience foods (meals that were composed of mostly convenience foods) versus lesser use of convenience foods, there was almost indistinguishable time savings.

The only time benefit was the amount of hands on time required to prepare the meal. Time savings for people who heavily used convenience foods were only ten minutes. The average amount of hands-on time for a home cooked meal was 34 minutes.

"People don't spend any less time overall on dinner when they use so-called convenience foods," Beck said in the press release. "Families seem to spend a certain amount of time cooking regardless. When commercial items are involved, they just ramp up how elaborate it gets."

Although Beck says that more research is required to determine why the average American family heavily relies on convenience foods, she does have several theories. She speculates that the family is often ruled by children who will only eat certain foods, causing one meal to be made for children, and another for adults.

She also suggests that the lack of grocery lists causes people to reach for prepackaged food kits that require few additional ingredients. And that changing tastes, shaped by the food industry, might also play a role.

SOURCES:

"Convenience foods save little time for working families at dinner," Eurekalert. URL:( http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-08/uoc--fs080707.php)