Too busy to cook? Try frozen food

Priya is a fitness freak who is always on the lookout for healthy food items that can be prepared with minimum effort. However, as a working woman, she has a busy schedule and so she ends up consuming a lot of junk food. One day, she opened up to one of her colleagues about how she has been gaining weight due to her unhealthy diet. Her colleague made a great suggestion of purchasing affordable frozen food items which can be both healthy and easy to prepare.

So, Priya decided to check what frozen food options are available in Bangladesh. Unfortunately, she found that although there are many varieties available globally, not many can be found in Bangladesh. The three product categories she found in the frozen food market were: ready-to-eat, ready-to-cook and ready-to-drink. These could be further categorised into five product types: frozen fruits and vegetables, frozen meat and fish, frozen-cooked ready meals, frozen desserts, and frozen snacks.

The most popular frozen food items in the Bangladeshi market that she found included parathas, shredded mozzarella cheese, spring rolls, samosas, singaras, wontons, dal puri, nuggets, sausages, meatballs, burger patties, marinated chicken, french fries, etc. Of course, her eyes were set on the healthy options, such as the frozen brown rice. She prefers brown rice over white, but regular brown rice takes much longer to cook. Fortunately, frozen brown rice can be cooked in minutes.

Priya had also thought of buying raw ingredients in bulk and meal-prepping for the week so that she had ready-to-cook meals. However, due to limited kitchen space, that would've been a huge hassle. Frozen food items are therefore convenient for her in various ways.

As a mindful consumer, she started gathering more information about frozen food like how it is manufactured, its nutritional value and its storage process. She found that frozen food companies prepare frozen foods in three stages: pre-treatment, freezing, and frozen storage. Depending on the food items, the process differs.

She further found that, she needs a properly functioning refrigerator to stabilise the frozen foods, or else the nutritional value of the food will decline. Freezer burn is one of the reasons behind the dropping of the quality of frozen foods. Although companies provide expiry dates, if the packaging of frozen food is not maintained, its taste and nutritional value will drop even before expiring. Before storing frozen food, she has to wrap the food properly with the wrapper or use a covered container if the package is torn. Otherwise, moisture will be lost and odours will be absorbed by the food, which may result in loss of taste and nutritional value.

As the working population grows and our lives become increasingly more hectic, the demand for easy to prepare frozen food will be on the rise. There has already been a shift in food consumption patterns towards frozen foods, leading to recent growth in the market. In the near future, we can expect to see even more frozen food options to adjust to our busy lifestyles.