Supermarket ready meals

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Murt10

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I was in Tecso this morning. I was going to buy one of their ready prepared meals for lunch.

I picked up a container of Tesco Kung Po Chicken. The weight of the meal was 350 grams. It is a meal for one, normally you would cook rice to go with it.

I read the label which confirmed that the meal contained 4.5 grams of salt and also stated that this was 75% of your guideline daily salt intake.

I knew that ready made meals had a high salt content but this is ridiculous. A major supermarket is trying to poison its customers.

Having said that at least they put the content on the front of the packet. One wonders as to the content of some other prepared food.


Murt
 
I know you get the convenience with these meals (hence the name) but their very convenience is why they are so full of salt and preservatives. A simple stirfry often takes as little time to prepare/cook as a ready meals takes in the microwave and there is no comparison with taste! At least if you want to add sauce/salt/sugar to your meal you do so knowing exactly what you have added unlike the ready meal!!!
 
Its not just ready meals that have a high salt/sodium content as I've recently found out. One brand of spring water has about EIGHT times more sodium than most Irish brands.
 
I wonder could you tell us what brand it was? Was it from Lidl or Aldi for example (their bottled water is very cheap)?
 
Yep, it is from Lidl, you can buy it in a six pack for much cheaper than the Irish brands, the brand name is Beckerich.
 
On the other hand the sparkling water from Lidl and Aldi tends to have as low as or a lower sodium content than many Irish brands. There was a discussion on sodium in water on here before and someone linked to an article about this - must try and find it again because I never got to finish it.
 
Murt10 said:
I read the label which confirmed that the meal contained 4.5 grams of salt and also stated that this was 75% of your guideline daily salt intake.
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I thought that the important thing was the sodium content and this was not the same as the salt content? Did they list sodium content separately? For what it's worth [broken link removed] launched a campaign back in May to highlight the salt/sodium content of foods.

I knew that ready made meals had a high salt content but this is ridiculous. A major supermarket is trying to poison its customers.
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I guess they just cater to customer preferences. Caveat emptor.

Having said that at least they put the content on the front of the packet. One wonders as to the content of some other prepared food.
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Doesn't the relevant Irish/EU food labelling legislation oblige food manufacturers to put such information on the package?
 
Does anyone know whether the extra sodium content in the Lidl water is significant in the context of a person's average daily sodium intake? If the other water brands have very insigificant sodium levels, the proportionately higher levels of sodium in the Beckerich water may be still so small as to be irrelevant. I wonder if this is indeed the case?
 
ubiquitous said:
Does anyone know whether the extra sodium content in the Lidl water is significant in the context of a person's average daily sodium intake? If the other water brands have very insigificant sodium levels, the proportionately higher levels of sodium in the Beckerich water may be still so small as to be irrelevant. I wonder if this is indeed the case?
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Yep, I would be interested to find this out too ubiquitous. I just got a fright when this was pointed out to me as I have high blood pressure and therefore supposed to avoid excessive sodium where possible. I would be interested in knowing though if it is still considered as a very low level...
 
I couldn't find the thread I remember (- think it was on the old boards - maybe someone else might have more luck?) but this issue was discussed there too. I was drinking the Euroshopper water (SQ cheap brand), at least two litres a day and after two or three weeks I was very dehydrated. That had about 55 mg/l (think mg/l is how it's measured). When I switched to Evian, which is only about 5 mg/l, it took about two or three days but I felt much better, chapped lips gone etc. So now I tend to be careful and try, if buying bottled water to only get ones with low sodium levels. At that time just out of interest I rang the county council to ask what the level in tap water was. I was told at first nothing more than it was below EU guidelines, but they told me that EU guidelines are something that seemed really high (maybe 150 or 500? Can't remember now). After telling them for health reasons that I needed to know exactly they told me that periodic tests carried out set the level to be usually between 5 and 10 - this was when living in Stillorgan and talking to Dun Laoghaire county council.
 
Nope, that's not it. I think it grew out of a thread on weightwatchers and/or diets and healthy lifestyles although I couldn't be certain. The post with the link to the article may have been by Elderdog but again I'm really not certain and don't know why I think that may have been. I've searched the ezboard forums for water, sodium, weightwatchers and posts by me - I never was very successful with that search engine though! :)
 
The American Food and Nutrition Board recommend a level of not greater than 2400 mg / day. Say that you use 3 litres of water a day, between drinking the recommended amount of water, plus water absorbed in cooking, other drinks etc. For a "High Sodium" water with 150 mg/l, this gives you 450 mg at the very upper limits. I think that food rather than water sources are the things to examine if intending to reduce sodium levels.
 
ClubMan said:
I thought that the important thing was the sodium content and this was not the same as the salt content? Did they list sodium content separately? For what it's worth [broken link removed] launched a campaign back in May to highlight the salt/sodium content of foods.
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The salt is shown on the front of the carton. They list the sodium content on the back along with all the other stuff about fat content, monosaturates this and that etc.

Normally all this information is shown on the back in small writing. The salt content and the daily guidelines in this case was shown on the front in bigger writing and in a more prominent position


Needless to say I didn't putchase the offending meal.


Murt
 
ClubMan said:
Doesn't the relevant Irish/EU food labelling legislation oblige food manufacturers to put such information on the package?
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Thought so too.

But a readymeal I recently purchased in a local Spar (wife was away - immediately fell into bachelor tendencies!) had no ingredients other than "Beef, Carrots, Potato, Gravy" - it was lovely though - much better than those microwave dinners in cardboard packaging where each bit of food is in a separate compartment. Like a real home cooked meal. Well, better than I would have cooked it anyway!
 
Janet said:
Nope, that's not it. I think it grew out of a thread on weightwatchers and/or diets and healthy lifestyles although I couldn't be certain. The post with the link to the article may have been by Elderdog but again I'm really not certain and don't know why I think that may have been. I've searched the ezboard forums for water, sodium, weightwatchers and posts by me - I never was very successful with that search engine though! :)
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I don't recall this discussion on AAM, but I did post a question on this very topic on VHI's site some years back. Here's [broken link removed].
 
podgerodge said:
But a readymeal I recently purchased in a local Spar (wife was away - immediately fell into bachelor tendencies!) had no ingredients other than "Beef, Carrots, Potato, Gravy" - it was lovely though - much better than those microwave dinners in cardboard packaging where each bit of food is in a separate compartment. Like a real home cooked meal. Well, better than I would have cooked it anyway!
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I'm pretty sure that this would be in breach of the relevant in force in Ireland.
 
Not sure, it states in those regulations that "Nutritional labelling is compulsory only where a nutritional claim is made." so just giving the 'ordinary' ingredients may be all they had to do?
 
The OASIS summary of the food labelling guidelines also states...
Labels on pre-packaged food must display the:


  • Name of the food
  • Net quantity in metric units
  • A "best before"' date or, for highly perishable foodstuffs, a "use by"' date
  • List of ingredients
  • ...
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Just to revert to the earlier concern regarding salt content of mineral waters. On inspecting the Lidl water I note that it contains both sodium (Na) and chloride (Cl), about twice as much chloride as sodium. Ordinary table salt is sodium chloride so the chemical composition in the mineral water is different again? I'm not a chemist or nutritionist so I'm going to take the advice in the VHI link and assume that bottled water is safe to consume.
 
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