HALF of all Irish adults are eating ready meals at least once a week, despite knowing they are “unhealthy” and high in salt. A survey of consumer attitudes to convenience foods by Teagasc, a state-funded food research centre, found 50% of people consume them at least once a week, with a further 17% eating them twice or three times over the same period.
The Irish Heart Foundation reports approximately 75% of the salt consumed by the average Irish person comes from processed convenience foods.
“People don’t have time any more to be cooking dinners from scratch using fresh ingredients,” said Michelle Mitchell, lead researcher on the project. “They know ready meals aren’t healthy, but they are eating them anyway because they are perceived as convenient and tasty.”
The report found just under half (45%) of respondents were worried about the amount of salt they consume, but 58% said they never looked at sodium content levels on food labels, while 68% said such information would never affect their buying choices.
Three-quarters of those surveyed considered ready meals to be high in salt, and 80% categorised them as unhealthy, yet just one-third of people said they never ate them. In the study, published in the International Journal of Consumer Studies, 78% of consumers said they chose the meals for convenience.
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According to Bord Bia, the convenience-food market in Ireland in 2009 was worth €151m. Traditional meat-and-potato meals are the most popular, ahead of Italian and Indian dishes.
The Teagasc research analysed 67 Irish ready meals for salt content and 51 contained more than half the recommended dietary allowance (RDA), and eight were found to contain more than 100% in a single portion.
“High dietary sodium intake is a key factor in the rise in blood pressure with age in industrialised countries such as Ireland,” said Dr Nigel Brunton of Teagasc. “High blood pressure is the main cause of strokes and a major cause of heart attacks. In Ireland, cardiovascular disease, including heart disease, stroke and related diseases, account for 36% of all deaths.”
“I would only purchase a ready meal in emergency situations,” said Marie Concannon, a shopper who was purchasing a Weightwatchers pasta dish in Dunnes Stores in Rathmines on Friday.
Unlike many Irish shoppers, Concannon said she would always read the label first and would reject a meal if it did not seem healthy. “I’m only buying this today because I have the flu,” she said. “I always check for the fat, salt and calorie content. If they were high I wouldn’t buy it.”
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In the survey, 600 questionnaires were distributed randomly to consumers around the country and 357 responded.
The Food Safety Authority of Ireland currently recommends that Irish adults consume no more than 4g of salt per day, but the average Irish adult consumes 8g-10g daily, posing a risk to their health.
The survey revealed that 32% of consumers always add salt when cooking, regardless of the dish. Almost half said they always added extra table salt to their cooked food, and 42% of respondents, typically male and aged over 40, admitted they always added salt to their cooked food without tasting it first.
The study also highlighted a lack of awareness about the hidden salt in processed foods. When asked to rank a slice of bread, bag of crisps, 100g ready meal and bowl of cornflakes in order of increasing salt content, only four out of the 357 consumers surveyed put them in the correct order. A bowl of cornflakes has the most salt, then the ready meal, the crisps and finally the bread.
Some 42% mistakenly thought the majority of their salt intake came from what they added themselves rather than from factory-made processed foods, but according to the researchers, cutting out table salt would only reduce average intake by 1g-2g a day.
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“This emphasises the need for further reductions to be made to the salt content of foods worldwide,” the researchers said.