At the Market, a Long List of Shortcuts

Supermarkets of old, like today's supermarkets, carried lots of things you could turn into meals.

But in today's time-crunched society, the most modern markets are making it a lot easier, and a lot quicker, to pull that meal together. A 2007 survey found that 91 percent of grocery stores offer freshly prepared ready-to-eat or ready-to-heat foods, according to the Food Marketing Institute (FMI). That's way up from five years ago, when just 63 percent were doing so.

Food-preparation shortcuts have taken off, too. Partly prepared foods, from marinated meats to cut-and-cleaned vegetables, can slash meal-making time.

Get the ingredients

Then there's the ready-to-make-you-a-chef trend. Today, 37 percent of markets have an area where you can quickly pick up all the ingredients for tonight's dinner in one place, the FMI says. The complete-meal service includes recipe cards and, in some stores, a chef to show you how to do it.

"People are willing to trade time for money," says John Stanton, Ph.D., professor of food marketing at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia. "But at the same time, people don't want to just simply push a button and nuke their dinner."

The first instant cake mixes, Dr. Stanton notes, just required adding water. Those products failed. "When you asked women to add an egg, however, they could take credit for making that cake, and the cakes have been successful ever since," he says. "The same model is true for the entire meal."

Grocers have a number of motives. "Supermarkets are competing with fast-food outlets and trying to suggest they can offer a more healthful alternative to a fast-food meal," says FMI spokesman Bill Greer. They're also competing with more upscale restaurants, where Dr. Stanton says takeout is often the fastest-growing sector. Finally, Dr. Stanton adds, supermarkets are trying to set themselves apart from big retailers and drugstores. Those stores offer a growing range of groceries.

What does it all mean for cooks who want to make healthy meals? To find out, we went with dietitian Althea Zanecosky, R.D., to a new suburban Philadelphia supermarket, one of the chains that offer a lot of meal shortcuts.

Healthier foods

As with other food purchases, Zanecosky noted, it's up to you to make healthier choices.

For example, at the market's café, a French dip beef sandwich with portobello mushrooms or a salmon BLT with fresh greens would be healthier than a corned beef Reuben. Likewise, side dishes such as broccoli rabe with pan-roasted garlic or sautéed mushrooms make more sense than macaroni and cheese. Like the latter? View it as a treat once in a while, she says.

At the fish counter, Zanecosky found salmon and tilapia variously dressed in peach salsa, pesto, horseradish, herbs, pistachios, pecans, hazelnuts, and macadamia nuts. "This is a great way for you to try a new idea and, if you like it, figure out how to do it yourself," she said. "And the nut coatings are a great way to get some good monounsaturated fats into your diet."

New approaches were also in use at the meat counter. Ready-to-bake chicken breasts were stuffed with artichoke bruschetta and sun-dried tomatoes.

Produce shortcuts included packages of green and yellow pattypan squash, cubed butternut squash, and mirepoix (cleaned and cut onions, carrots, and celery, the base for many soup stocks).

At the demonstration station, the week's featured meal was a gingered beef and broccoli stir-fry. Zanecosky was pleased to find she could sample it, courtesy of in-store chef Catie Hughes, so she knew how it would taste. The nutritional values had all been calculated.

So she put the ingredients in her cart. The list included prepackaged and proportioned sliced sirloin, sliced broccoli crowns, snow peas, shiitake mushrooms, a red bell pepper, ginger root, and stir-fry sauce.

A quick meal

Armed with a recipe card and the market's Menu magazine, she made the meal the next evening in 30 minutes (10 minutes more than the recipe indicated). The results were delicious, she says.

"The recipe, and all the others in their Menu magazine, really makes eating more vegetables easy and flavorful," Zanecosky says. "One of my daughters, who is a very picky eater, was willing to taste, and she then dug right in."

Such food might cost more than you normally spend. Washed, cut, and sometimes mixed vegetables might cost more per ounce than bags of onions and carrots and a head of celery, for instance. But the packages provide just what you need, so there's little waste or leftovers that might go bad before you use them.

"You're paying for convenience," Zanecosky says. "But if you realize that a few extra dollars brings both great taste and nutrition, maybe you'll be willing to buy less of the non-nutritious items and save your money for the good stuff."