China News Service, Beijing, February 7 (Wei Xianghui intern Sun Yuan) The Spring Festival is approaching, and New Year’s Eve dinner is essential. Compared with previous years, this year major e-commerce platforms and supermarkets have launched a variety of pre-prepared dish products, and some restaurants have also launched pre-prepared dish products such as family banquet gift boxes... At the same time, the popularity of pre-prepared dishes Quality and health issues also worry some consumers.
The picture shows the hotel selling New Year gift boxes. Photo by China News Service reporter Wu Tao
Pre-prepared dishes come to the New Year’s Eve dinner table
As the Spring Festival is approaching, Sino-Singapore Health visited major supermarkets in Beijing and found that the shelves are filled with a variety of pre-made dishes, such as pickled fish, braised pork, braised pork with pickled vegetables, spicy crayfish, etc. There are many brands, attracting many consumers focus on. a salesperson revealed. "Recently, a batch of pre-made dishes have been put on the shelves for consumers to choose from as New Year's Eve dinner, and sales are gradually increasing."
Prepared dishes generally refer to finished or semi-finished products that are pre-processed with agricultural, livestock, poultry, and aquatic products as raw materials, supplemented with various auxiliary materials. Compared with freshly cooked dishes, pre-prepared dishes need to be processed in advance, but they are still "dishes" in essence. They are different from ordinary processed foods in that they have a shorter shelf life and fresh ingredients.
On January 29, China News Network launched a poll on Weibo on the topic "Do you accept pre-made dishes for New Year's Eve dinner?" and 66% of netizens said they would not accept it. Some netizens left a message and said, "It saves time, but the taste is not as good as the homemade ones, and it doesn't have the New Year flavor!" However, some netizens said, "I accept it or not, most of the hotels should be prepared in advance. It’s time to cook, otherwise how could I be so busy?”
Most people don't approve of "prepared dishes". On the one hand, they are worried about food safety issues. In order to keep the prepared dishes fresh, the processing factory will put some food additives; on the other hand, considering that the raw materials of the prepared dishes have been heated once and need to be reheated after they are purchased, the taste may not be as good as the freshly cooked dishes.
Data map: Customers purchase pre-made dishes for "New Year's Eve dinner". Photo by Zhang Lang
Prepared dishes have become a big trend
In recent years, my country's prepared vegetable industry has developed rapidly. According to data from third-party institutions, China's prepared vegetable market will reach 419.6 billion yuan in 2022, a year-on-year increase of 21.3%. It is expected that China's prepared vegetable market will maintain a high growth rate in the future, and the scale of the prepared vegetable market will reach 1.072 billion yuan in 2026.
In the past year of 2023, prepared dishes will have their highlight moment. The "Opinions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council on Comprehensively Promoting Key Works of Rural Revitalization in 2023" mentioned "improving the standardization and normalization level of clean vegetables, central kitchens and other industries, and cultivating and developing the prepared vegetable industry."
In addition, most of my country's catering industries also use pre-prepared dishes. Statistics show that more than 85% of the sales channels in my country's prepared food industry are for merchants, concentrated in snack and fast food restaurants, chain restaurants, restaurants specializing in takeaways, group meals and other scenarios.
There are three main reasons why it dominates the catering market: first, low cost, second, fast food delivery, and third, uniform taste. A report on China's chain catering industry mentioned that prepared dishes can reduce labor costs by 45%. At the same time, a smaller kitchen area brings more reception area and reception manpower, and shortened production time also means a higher table turnover rate. Large-scale restaurants and chain stores need consistency in taste, and dishes processed by assembly lines and instruments can also ensure uniformity in taste to a certain extent.
Data picture: The finished product of black truffle cheese king crab legs after simple processing of pre-made dishes.
How to choose safe prepared dishes?
"We may be eating some prepared foods every day, such as steamed buns, pies, etc. from street shops. We encourage everyone to cook by themselves, but when there is no time to cook, prepared dishes are also an acceptable choice and should be Give it a forgiving attitude.”
Regarding the controversy over prepared dishes, Shen Qun, a professor at the School of Food Science and Nutritional Engineering at China Agricultural University, said in an interview with Sino-Singapore Health that from a nutritional perspective, under normal circumstances, there will be more or less nutritional losses during the cooking process. This is not a problem unique to prepared dishes.
She mentioned that prepared vegetable products currently have problems such as high oil and salt, which merchants need to pay attention to when developing dishes. Consumers can reasonably combine staple foods, meat and vegetable dishes according to their personal tastes and nutritional needs to ensure a balanced diet.
Shen Qun also reminded that consumers should choose brands with good reputation and legal qualifications to purchase through formal channels; choose products that comply with national food safety standards, and the packaging must have a QS (or SC) food safety license mark; choose products with clean ingredients For pre-made food products, we give priority to dishes with fresh vegetables, lean meat, high-quality seafood, etc. as the main raw materials. (over)