The nutrient composition of European ready meals: protein, fat, total carbohydrates and energy.

Despite the increasing social importance of ready meals, only few studies have been conducted on their nutrient composition. Therefore, 32 chilled, frozen and heat-treated ready meals (only main dishes) from the continental European market were analysed for protein, fat, total carbohydrate and energy. Half of the meals were nutritionally imbalanced by providing elevated fat (>30% of energy) and low carbohydrate levels (<50% of energy). Protein was generally above recommendations and ranged from 8.0 to 47.2g per serving. The inter-package variation was high, reaching 19.04 ± 2.90 g/package for fat. After proposing understandable guidelines to improve nutritional quality for the food industry, seven "nutritionally optimised" ready meals were created at the European level and analysed, however success was limited. If product labelling is to be useful for consumers, our results also indicate a need for better quality control to reduce the differences between content and labelling.