'Meal kits' hit home

Meal kits are not only simple to put together, but they are less expensive than restaurant takeout. Sales in the US have risen steadily over the past few years. More than 64 million all-in-one meal kits were sold for the one-year period ending May 17, a 14.6 percent increase from the previous year, according to ACNielsen, which tracks supermarket sales data.

Betty Crocker's line of Complete Meals is representative of the category. The line includes chicken and buttermilk biscuits, lasagna and meat sauce, and ham and au gratin potatoes, among other meals.

The kits, which are "shelf stable" and are enclosed in a paperboard box, contain two cans of Progresso meat and vegetables in sauce; a pouch of biscuits, pasta, or potatoes; and seasoning packets.

Preparation requires mixing the meat, vegetables, and sauce with the seasoning, and spreading the separate biscuits on top. Skillet-ready pasta-and-meat meals, sold frozen in bags, offer even easier preparation - but may reduce the process a little too much.

Superfluous labor may seem out of place in a culture that prizes convenience. But food manufacturers have been designing their products similarly for more than 50 years.

"Every era has had its version of this sort of story," says Ms. Haber.

In the 1950s, for example, the first cake mixes available in supermarkets just required women to add water, mix, and pop the cake in the oven. Manufacturers soon realized that women felt the recipe did not allow them to participate enough in the baking, so they left eggs out of the mix.

In the 1980s, microwave manufacturers published several series of cookbooks intended to promote the device as a quick way to cook quality food.

But Americans never adopted it as a primary tool for cooking, says Haber, partly because of their impression that it wasn't as legitimate as oven-based cooking.

"Women's responsibility has continually been an issue, and some solutions are more successful than others in answering this dilemma," says Haber.

But meal manufacturers are finding new ways to make low-maintenance cooking more palatable.

New flexible cans and pouches better absorb heat, cooking the food inside more evenly.

Packaging experts have also found ways to make cans and plastic packages that do not alter the taste of subtly seasoned foods. (Credit such advances, in large part, to the trickle-down of military technology.)

"Five years ago, it was less possible to get such extremely sensitive food products into these packages," says Ben Miyares, a spokesman for the Packaging Machinery Manufacturers Institute.

Despite the leaps in technology, experts say Americans will probably never abandon traditional forms of cooking altogether. But buying fresh ingredients and cooking several dishes in one meal might become more of a leisure exercise - perhaps something to save for the weekend.

"The desire to have 'involvement' will especially occur when cooking becomes recreational," says Mr. Balzer.

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