Is it terrible to have pre-prepared meals in school? Parents may also learn how to prepare home-made meals

Recently, many people have been discussing the topic of "pre-prepared meals entering schools". Some parents strongly oppose it, believing that it is an incredibly bad thing and will seriously harm the health of children.

After reading some online discussions, parents mainly have the following concerns:

Even dishes cooked on site are not necessarily of reliable quality. We cannot even see the ingredients of pre-prepared dishes, so how can we trust them? What kind of meat and vegetables are used? Will there be any inferior ingredients?

Pre-prepared meals can be stored for such a long time, there must be "technology and hard work" involved, can they be healthy to eat?

Pre-prepared meals are made in advance and cannot be as fragrant as freshly made food, and the taste is relatively poor.

Pre-prepared meals are made in advance and need to be reheated when eaten. Will the nutrients be lost?

I asked some netizens what pre-prepared meals are, but they couldn't really explain it . Most people think that pre-prepared meals are those instant-eating food packages that are stored for a long time after being made, and the taste and nutrition are not good. Moreover, preservatives must be added if they are stored for such a long time.

Many people do not understand the country's plan to vigorously develop the pre-prepared food industry. They think, isn't it good to eat fresh food? Why should we make pre-prepared food?

In fact, the concept of pre-prepared meals is not a cooking package. Pre-prepared meals have long been part of modern people’s lives.

▼The frozen buns, dumplings, wontons and spring rolls in the supermarket are all pre-prepared foods.

▼The quick-frozen fish fillets, seasoned fish fillets, seasoned steaks, quick-frozen popcorn chicken, etc. in the supermarket are all pre-prepared foods.

▼The sausages, ham, and luncheon meat in supermarkets, and the chicken feet, duck necks, and roast chicken in snack bars are all pre-prepared foods.

▼The steamed buns, dumplings and flower rolls in the community kitchen are also pre-prepared foods.

▼The bun fillings, dumpling fillings, fermented dough, French fries, pizza dough, and soy milk powder in the chain store are all pre-made in the central kitchen.

They just vary in the degree and type of pre-preparation, from quick-preparation, to quick-cooking, to quick-heating, to ready-to-eat right out of the bag.

The pace of life in modern society is so fast that fewer and fewer people are willing to buy, pick, wash and cut vegetables from scratch, and the cost of home and small-scale cooking is getting higher and higher. Similarly, from the perspective of diners, they don’t have the patience to wait for the lengthy cooking process.

A few years ago, I started teaching netizens on Weibo how to meal prep , which means preparing meals at home .

For a family of one or two, you can make stew meat once and divide it into several small packages and freeze them quickly. Take out a package each time, heat it in a pot, add some vegetables such as potatoes, carrots, mushrooms, etc., and cook it together. It will be a good main dish.

Fry the shredded pork or sliced ​​pork until 70% to 80% cooked in advance, then freeze it in small packages. When using, stir-fry the vegetables first, then add the thawed pork and stir-fry for one or two minutes, and you have a portion of vegetable fried pork slices/shredded pork.

The prepared steamed buns, dumplings, and whole-wheat steamed buns can also be packaged and frozen quickly, and then steamed to be as fresh as before.

In fact, this is a home-made meal. It does not require any "technology and hard work", but it can make home cooking simple and convenient, save time, and increase the food diversity of three meals.

So, allowing pre-prepared meals into campus is not a terrible thing.

In fact, processing pre-prepared meals can improve the efficiency of catering food production .

It is difficult for a school to buy a set of vegetable washing and cutting lines and all the large cooking equipment, both in terms of economy and space. However, if prefabricated semi-finished products are centrally supplied, the operation difficulty of each school cafeteria can be greatly reduced and cooking efficiency can be improved.

At the same time, the central kitchen that processes pre-prepared food is more convenient for professional technical guidance and food safety management than the scattered school canteens because of its large production scale and high level of mechanization. With the guidance of professionals, the ingredients, temperature and time of each processing link can be more accurately controlled through research and testing, and the loss of nutrients can be minimized. This is something that ordinary families and small-scale canteens cannot do.

In fact, in many developed countries, a large part of the food in school canteens is processed from semi-finished products . Schools only need to simply heat them, such as baking, steaming, microwave heating, and plating. This operation will improve the sanitary environment, make cost management more transparent, and make the quality of food more stable.

Therefore, the introduction of pre-prepared meals into schools does not mean that children should be fed meal packs or canned foods every day.

What we need to do is to put aside our worries, follow the general trend of social development, and set high standards for nutrition and safety in the process of pre-prepared foods entering school canteens. We must urge companies to increase financial investment and expert guidance in nutritional value and safety management, and require relevant departments to supervise them more closely and provide various data and information .