Are Ready-Made Meals a Danger?

A lot of people eat ready-made microwave and oven meals out of convenience with it, not surprisingly, being the biggest sector of the country's £70 billion annual retail food budget.

Ready-made meals are everywhere and due to their convenient nature are popular as ever with people choosing to consume them over freshly made meals. However, they are actually significantly worse for our bodies than the more obvious bad food options of fast food and take aways.

The bad E numbers that are found in processed foods are something which is already known to us. Ingredients such as carboxymethylcellulose or diacetyl tartaric esters of fatty acid diglycerides are ones that need to be avoided. Food manufacturers, the companies that supply ready meals to supermarkets, carry out little or no preparation of raw ingredients. Many of the ingredients such as meat, vegetables and fish have been transported and stored while frozen. These ingredients are usually kept at sub-zero temperatures for months, even years, but when it is thawed and cooked, it can be marketed as 'fresh'.

The food manufacturers usually buy treated ingredients, mainly frozen or dried, from a range of other companies and cook them. An example of a recent TV watchdog investigation found that the Irish authorities were equally shocked to discover that a pizza bearing the label 'country of origin Ireland' in fact contained 35 ingredients that had passed through 60 countries during preparation and packaging.

It is the uncertainty of things like these which cause us to question what they are actually doing to our bodies. As with fast food and take aways, we are fully aware that in order to have the healthiest and fittest body you are capable of achieving, foods that are bad for us or even simply questionable have to be removed from our diets in order to ensure we don't undo all of the good work and progress already made.

With revelations like these, it's no wonder that more and more people are steering clear of the health minefield that is the ready-made food industry and making more time to prepare fresh home-made meals for themselves and their loved ones.

The growing health and fitness market is also having a large impact on the food industry with more people than ever leaning towards 'organic' produce and fresh ingredients.

It might be easier when you come home tired after a long day to pick up a ready meal and whack it in the microwave but it's extremely detrimental to all of your hard work training and dieting by doing this. Get in the habit of preparing quick and easy meals that you can use as a go to for those moments when you don't have the energy or time available to prepare a more elaborate meal. Also, memorise the ingredients of those recipes and make sure you have the ingredients at home ready for you to make as soon as you get in.

A good diet is the fundamental part of your fitness goals and everything you wish to achieve can be make-or-break on the quality of your diet. Spend time reading about different types of foods and recipes and find local shops and even online shops where you can get the food required to properly fuel your body.

The Lounge on the LA Muscle website is a great place to find articles on nutrition, diet plans and recipes that you can follow to create the perfect diet based on your goals and requirements.

To help with cravings in between meals we recommend Skinny Drops which is an amazing new proprietary weight loss and appetite control formula that works instantly. There is also Fat Stripper, one of our best selling fat burners and a powerful yet natural appetite suppressant.