The Hamburg consumer advice center compared the prices
But if you have the time to cook for yourself, you can do something good for your own health and your wallet: First of all, ready meals usually contain too few important vitamins and minerals, which can lead to malnutrition in the long run. At the same time, they are often fortified with salt, sugar, fat, flavorings and additives, which are also bad for your health in the long term – not to mention the amount of packaging waste that harms the environment.
Almost everyone knows that ready meals tend to be unhealthy. But many are not so aware that they are also bad for the wallet. The Hamburg consumer advice center tested 14 products to see how much more ready meals cost than their home-made counterparts.
On average, ready meals are almost 200 percent more expensive
Like the information platform EatSmarter! reported, the test result of the Hamburg Consumer Advice Center is shocking: the tested ready meals cost around 184 percent more than the same dishes if they were prepared by the consumer – on average. One of the tested ready meals was even 650 percent more expensive.
If you want to know exactly which ready meals are actually more expensive than the same meal if you prepare it yourself, you have to go to the nearest supermarket and compare the prices – after all, not all foods and ready meals cost the same everywhere. In addition, the cost of a home-cooked meal naturally depends heavily on your own recipe. On the whole, however, ready-made meals tend to be more expensive than home-cooked ones.
Editorial office finanzen.net
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