Frozen fries or canned ravioli? The Germans prefer to eat this “ready-to-eat food”.

convenience foods? Any bet: Even if you don’t know what that term means, you’ve definitely eaten it. Because behind this English word creation (convenience = convenience, foods = food) hide pre-processed by the food industry Food. This is particularly convenient for consumers because the manufacturers relieve them of some or all of the necessary work steps, which speeds up preparation.

The term convenience food includes pre-treated foods Food and meal components as well as complete ready-made meals – such as prepared vegetables or salad, instant soups, ready-made sauces, frozen pizza or chips, fish fingers, complete microwave meals, etc. According to the manufacturers, convenience products are basically classified into different categories depending on the degree of their processing:

• Ready to cook: Food that needs to be prepared before cooking (e.g.) vegetables, fruit, cut meat
• Ready to cook: Food that only needs to be cooked (e.g. vegetables, marinated meat)
• Ready for infusion/mixing: Foods that can only be infused with hot water or milk (e.g. mashed potatoes, packet soups)
• Ready to prepare: Food that is prepared and cooked and only needs to be heated or mixed (e.g. canned food such as canned ravioli, frozen ready meals, microwave menus)
• Ready to eat: Food that can be consumed immediately (e.g. fruit yoghurt, baked goods, canned fish, ice cream)

Particularly popular: frozen fries and fish fingers

Convenience food forms an essential part of our daily diet. At least that’s what the data from the Statista Content Special Food & Nutrition suggest. For the survey, almost 1,000 people were asked about their shopping and eating habits with regard to convenience foods. Frozen ready meals such as French fries or fish fingers are particularly popular with the survey participants, which more than half of the people surveyed in Germany regularly eat or buy (see Statista chart above). On the other hand, ready meals from the can, such as the “culinary” classic canned ravioli, are apparently consumed much less frequently. Ready-made frozen meals such as pizza or lasagne are roughly on a par with canned tomatoes or fish.

No wonder, then, that in the food trade sold frozen fries come together. So does the sales statistics for frozen products from the German Frozen Institute for the year 2020 around 200,000 tons sold out frozen fries.

Big advantage: hot air fryer tested by Stiftung Warentest

Potatoes are basically a low-fat food. Frozen fries, on the other hand, are pre-fried and therefore contain a certain amount of fat. But it only gets really fat when you prepare your frozen fries in the classic fryer. Because then they also soak up a lot of fat. On the other hand, the finished frozen fries contain significantly less fat if you prepare them in the oven or in a hot air fryer. In contrast to the usual fryer, with the latter you save the additional fat, so that the fat content is “only” about six percent in the end. Another advantage: the lack of odor nuisance!

With a good hot air fryer, however, you can not only prepare tasty fries – for example, muffins, chicken or vegetables are also on the menu. The Stiftung Warentest therefore tested a total of 13 hot air models in 2019. We have summarized the results of the test for you in this article. In the following table we show you recommended products from the test in compact form: