Practical - packaging considerations

Size/Proportions
Ready meals are traditionally made for 1 - 2 people. To make the use of packaging worth it I want to tailor my range for 2 people to cook the meal. This would be good with a healthy meal range as couples often encourage and spur each other on to eat better. Alternatively if 1 person buys the meal then they can cook the meal for themselves and have the leftovers the next day.
I need to allow space for 2 portions of meat (for meals including meat), enough space for accompanying potatoes/pasta/noodles etc, veg and sauces/spices. Therefore my cardboard box will need to be a bit bigger than traditional ready meals.  


Materials
Cardboard box 
Foil sachets/pouches
Hello Fresh uses big cardboard packing boxes to transport ingredients in, however since my meals will only be tailored for 2 people the box will have to be far smaller, yet still big enough to fit in ingredients/ spices for the meal.
I also need to consider that my box will be at a lower price point to a Hello Fresh box - the boxes are about £35 although they do average out at £5 per meal. I will need to market my ready meals to match this or alternatively a bit lower. I may need to design my box to reflect this and keep costs of materials down.


Longevity 
One of the biggest considerations in packaging food, specifically fresh ingredients, is how to keep the food fresh and chilled for extended periods of time.

Meat
I was struggling to find a method that would allow raw meats to keep fresher in ready meals - since the box is cardboard. As well as the insulation - I thought that meat could be packaged in "doypacks" - a mixture of plastic and aluminium foil in a bag/sachet form. The sachet is hermatically sealed using heat.

This stops juices from the meat contaminating the rest of the box. 

Alternatively the meat could be portioned into plastic trays and covered in a film - however the film could get pierced during transit and I want to keep the chicken fresh for longest. This could also go for vaccuum packed meat. However the aluminium foil sealed bag can have a design printed onto it so I think I will use that for meats.

Insulation
I think the ready meals will only be displayed 1 - 2 days in a chilled shelving unit, however if needed to keep extra chilled there are a few options to keep the contents cool. 

Woolcool

Woolcool is an insulating material - consisting of sheep wool liners packaged inside of recyclable plastic - degradable polyethylene liner. The wool absorbs any condensation whilst keeping the ingredients chilled. Maintains fresh ingredients below 5 degrees for at least 24 hours, lasts up to 72 hours.
This method is more environmentally sustainable - 

• Since 2009, many thousands of tonnes of non-biodegradable plastic packaging waste has been saved from landfill by UK customers switching to Woolcool.
• Just in the last year alone, Woolcool has prevented the equivalent of 75 Olympic sized swimming pools full of polystyrene from going to landfill.

However with this option you will still need an ice pack - blocks of dry ice could be used but this would make the boxes heavy - bad for transport.

Gel Packs
Gel packs can be used to keep the contents of the meal chilled. My concern about this method though is the impact the gel will have on the environment after it has been disposed. Hello Fresh uses environmentally friendly gel to keep their boxes chilled however their boxes are not kept in a chilled environment at the supermarket.

Practical - Name and brand

As proposed by me to my peer group and tutors, my practical project to accompany my essay will be on the subject is healthy eating and packaging relating to self identity. I have decided to create a range of "almost ready" meals - meals that have pre proportioned ingredients. These meals aim to encourage consumers to eat healthier with a minimised effort to prepare. Customers would head for the ready meal section and persuaded to choose a healthier option, with the difficulty of sourcing and preparing ingredients already taken care of.


The concept I have been describing my idea as is "almost ready" meals. I think this accurately describes my project and I want to keep this clever adaptation going in other aspects of the project.

Brand 
"Almost ready" meals aiming to encourage people to eat healthier. 

Competitors

Hello Fresh
Gousto
Cook
Charlie Bigham's
Genius
Slimming World

Brainstorm 

Ease
Convenience
Half way
Prepared
Meet in middle 
Almost ready
Minimal effort
Busy
Nurture

Name
hustle
enough on your plate - maybe not for the name but text as part of the packaging/label
swamped - off putting
easyeats
fast & fresh
naturally convenient
meal maker
fresh fix

Practical brief

Deadline
18/12/12

Brief

Create packaging for a range of “almost ready” meals, with the aim to encourage busy people to eat healthier.

Background/Considerations

"fresh fix" is a new brand which aims to encourage busy people to eat better, healthier meals. In 2016, over £3 billion was spent on ready meals in the UK alone. “fresh fix” understands that ready meals are sometimes the most convenient option and aims to make them healthier for consumers, by producing a range of “almost ready” meals with pre proportioned fresh ingredients. By taking the effort out of sourcing and preparing ingredients, along with recipes which are easy to follow, busy consumers may prefer the healthier option of a ready meal.

Consider existing competitors such as Gousto and Hello Fresh.

Price point - competitors are expensive, alienates people with a lower food budget. Make more suitable for students.

Longevity of food - need to consider materials and freshness of food (eg. meat, perishables)

POS - where will the boxes be sold? competitors use subscriptions for ease. 

Mandatory Requirements

A range of packaging designs for the meals

Physical prototypes 

Deliverables

Blogs documenting process

Finished products

6 x design boards

Practical - Competitor Research

https://www.independent.co.uk/extras/indybest/food-drink/subscription-boxes/best-recipe-box-delivery-delivery-uk-personalised-riverford-10364765.html

READY MEALS 

Cook

Cook is a brand which sells frozen ready meals "cooked exactly as you would at home". Sold from the brands own shops around the UK instead of in supermarkets, Cook keeps that homemade independent feel to the business.

Whilst the preparation method and ethos behind Cook's ready meals vary from standard ready meals you can find in supermarkets, the packaging for the ready meals don't vary much. The standard method of a plastic dish with film over to seal and a card band/sleeve over for content to be displayed is used, however the style of the label depends on type, using a handdrawn typeface to add to the homemade look.

Charlie Bigham's

Charlie Bigham is a cook who after a trip to India was inspired to create his own dishes to sell as ready meals. Charlie markets his meals for couples to share as a nice night in. His meals are stocked in Sainsburys, Waitrose, Ocado etc. and are reviewed as restaraunt quality food. The packaging is elegant, again adopting the standard method of plastic tray, film and sleeve, however the sleeve is beautifully designed - with illustrations by Emily Sutton which matches the illustrations on the website. 


MEAL SUBSCRIPTIONS

Hello Fresh

Hello Fresh is a subscription service which sends pre proportioned fresh ingredients to your front door for you to cook meals for yourself. The premise is that this saves you time and removes the hassle from shopping and deciding what to eat.
You can choose whether to recieve the family box, rapid box or classic box, with meals averaging out about £6 per meal. They take 20 - 50 minutes to cook

The recipes are varied and you are given a menu for the week. You can choose which meals you'd prefer from the selection and they are delivered to you on the next available day for your postcode. 

Hello Fresh pride themselves on sourcing fresh ingredients which are preportioned. Another feature of their service is the packaging - which keeps the food fresh for extended periods of time. 

Some of the ingredients for Hello Fresh come in plastic packages. This is not ideal considering the issue of plastic pollution at the moment however could be unavoidable when trying to make the food as fresh as possible for long periods of time. The box is simple with the green lime logo and white writing - the ingredients are accompanied by recipe cards to make the meals as easy to cook as possible.

images via Somewhere Jade

Reviews of Hello Fresh I have read 1, 2, 3 are positive and praise the brand for the following elements:

+ Colour coded ingredients for each meal card

+ Easy to follow, detailed instructions on how to cook the meal (makes it simple) 

+ Quirky branding and tone of voice

+ Fresh ingredients packaged for longevity

+ Good quality ingredients

I particulary love the branding and overall packaging design for the Hello Fresh boxes. Using the natural brown colour alongside green and white as the brand colours keeps inline with the "fresh" ethos and works together well. I also like the recipe cards and system with the corresponding packaging to make cooking the meal really easy and strightforward. 

Gousto

Gousto runs along the same premise as Hello Fresh, as a subscription service which sends fresh ingredients to your door so you can cook meals easily. 

In contrast to the Hello Fresh branding and design style which is distinctly more handmade and rustic looking, the Gousto boxes are printed red with a cleaner logo.

Practical - Ready Meals: how bad are they for your health?

The British Medical Journal conducted a study comparing the nutritional values of recipes from television chefs and supermarket ready meals. I have chosen to ignore the recipes as they are not relevant in this project.

In the table above you can see in the second column is the results for ready meals. Based on the nutritional guidelines given by the World Health Organisation, only 9 of the ready meals are within the range for the daily guidlines for protein, and only 4% meet the range for the guidelines for sodium. Ready meals are famously bad for having excessive amounts of salt. In 2003, the FSA, or Food Standards Agency conducted a study which found high salt levels in 83% of ready meals sold by supermarkets. In the survey by the FSA, all six products contained over 2.4 g of salt per portion, which represents 40% of the recommended daily allowance of salt. Since that study though, meals have been rethought and salt content lowered, according to this BMJ study. 

Also in this table and the traffic light system above you can see the macronutrients of an average ready meal based on the sample of 100 tested in the study. As you can see, the saturated fat is in a red colour - symbolising its unhealthiness. Next are fat and salt, which exceed the daily guidlines by a smaller amount, but are still unhealthy for you. The only green macronutrient was sugar.

These traffic light systems are required on food packaging by law in an effort to cut down on obesity and improve health. However, the unhealthiness of these meals go far beyond what is shown on the label.

Ready meal manufacturers are require to show macronutrients but aren't required to evidence the vitamins found in the meals. Due to the way these meals are prepared and cooked, vitamins can be lost in the process. Vitamins are easily lost eg. beetroot turns water purple - these are the vitamins being released into the water. When the water is disposed of so are the vitamins. We can prevent this at home by steaming and preparing the ingredients ourselves but the method of cooking is out of our control when eating a ready meal. Meals that do contain vitamins are pumped full of synthetic vitamins and minerals that our bodies cannot digest. Some meats also found in ready meals can contain carcinogens due to the way they are cooked. 

As well as synthetic minerals and vitamins, meals have additives and preservatives added to them to improve the longevity and taste of the meals. These additives can alther processes in your body and can even cause in extreme cases diseases and conditions which threaten lives.

Manufacturers can also replace ingredients with others to save cost. For example, olive oil which is used in traditional dishes and has health benefits against cardio vascular disease, is replaced with rapeseed oil which doesn't carry the same benefits. 

The meals are smaller but often more calorie dense than other meals. This means that you will not be eating as much and feeling less full than you would an average homecooked meal - but still consuming more calories.

Joanna Blythman is a food journalist and investigated ready meals. She found that food manufacturers, carry out little or no preparation of raw ingredients. Instead, they buy treated ingredients, mainly frozen or dried, from a range of other companies and cook them. Most of the meat, vegetables and fish in our convenience food has been transported and stored while frozen. Typically, it is kept at sub-zero temperatures for months, even years, but when it is thawed and cooked, it can be marketed as 'fresh'.

Nicky Taylor, a journalist for the Daily Mail undertook a challenge where she could only eat ready meals for a month for every meal. 
After the month was over she had lost 8lbs (due to the small portion sizes), but had a bad cold, mood and bowel problems. She was also deficient in Vitamin C, Iron and beta carotene and her levels of HDL (good cholesterol) had dropped 20% which put her at risk of cardio vascular problems.

Summary

Ready meals are unhealthy due to their excessive salt and fat content and their lack of vitamins and fresh ingredients. This is replaced by an excess of synthetic chemicals which can cause illnesses. There is also the labour side of the meals, as they are mass produced they are prepared in factories. To counteract all these bad elements of ready meals I need to create something focusing on well proportioned, fresh ingredients full of vitamins, and use recipes low in salt and fat. 

Practical - Ready Meals: an introduction

The ready meal industry is worth almost £2.6 bn in the UK alone.

Ready meals came about after extra turkey was leftover after Thanksgiving in the USA in 1953. A company called Swansons took this extra turkey and packaged it up into foil dishes with all other elements of a thanksgiving dinner to sell it onwards. These were a big hit as the foil dishes meant the food could be quickly cooked/heated from frozen in the dish as well as serving as a plate/dish on which to eat the meal from.

The packaged meal sold over 10 million in its first year partly due to the rise of television in American households - the meal was marketed as a 'TV dinner', as it was easy to prepare and eat whilst not having to abandon the program you were watching.

The rise in popularity of ready meals is also due to the changes in modern society - as women began to work more hours and spend less time at home, the appeal of convenient, quick to cook meals to feed the family grew and grew.
Ready meals were also marketed at men. Divorce rates had started to increase and this meant a lot of men now had to cook and fend for themselves. Ready meals were advertised towards newly single men, but this had problems as this was seen as a sign of social neglect. 

Around this time people began to question the quality of the ready meals they were consuming, as they were frozen and not fresh. However after Marks and Spencer released a chilled chicken kiev, people were all for ready meals again, preferring the fresher meal over the frozen ones.

"This met consumer demand for freshness and made people feel a step closer to the idea that they had made it themselves." - Alan Warde, professor of sociology at the University of Manchester and author of Consumption, Food and Taste.

The change from frozen to chilled meals came about at a time when people were beginning to become more concerned with health. This prompted a push towards premium ranges of ready meals with more expensive ingredients, as people were willing to pay more for a 'healthier' meal. Supermarkets adjusted their packaging to look more luxury with good quality photography which enticed you in. As a recession hit too, people preferred to stay in instead of dining out at a restaurant, saving a few pounds on a luxury meal to have a "luxury" ready meal as opposed to cooking.

However ready meals are still not nutritionally beneficial, with 0/100 supermarket ready meals meeting nutritional guidelines according to a study by the British Medical Journal.

The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life - Kenneth J. Gergen

Gergen, K. (1991). The Saturated Self. New York: Basic Books.

Page 6

But since the rise of the modernist world-view beginning in the early twentieth century, the romantic vocabulary has been threatened. For modernists the chief characteristics of the self reside not in the domain of depth, but rather in our ability to reason - in our beliefs, opinions and concious intentions.

Page 7

Under post modern conditions, persons exist in a state of continuous construction and reconstruction; it is a world where anything goes that can be negotiated. Each reality of self gives way to reflexive questioning, irony, and ultimately the playful probing of yet another reality.

Page 15

As we absorb the view, values and visions of others, and live out the multiple plots in which we are enmeshed, we enter a post modern consciousness. It is a world in which we no longer experience a secure sense of self, and in which doubt is increasingly placed on the very assumption of a bounded identity with palpable attributes.

Page 38

'In the social jungle of human existence there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity' - Erik H Erikson, Identity, Youth, and Crisis

Page 40

The immense attention devoted today to cognitive processes reveals a further dimension of the modernist view: mans essence is rational.

Horney proposed that people can rationally conduct their own self analysis 
(Reflexivity link to Giddens)

Page 41
Erik Erikson proposed that the major acheivement of normal development was a firm and fixed "sense of identity"

Page 44
Riesman Lonely Crowd (whole paragraph)

Page 71
In an important sense, as social saturation proceeds, we become pastiches, imitative assemblages of each other.

Page 73
Modern man is afflicted with a permanent identity crisis, a condition conductive to considerable nervousness. - peter berger, brigitte berger, and hansfried kellner, The Homeless Mind

Presentation

Feedback

Change the wording of the question. Doesn't include self identity/ lifestyle. Also restricts to people already set on eating healthier. Should be more broad to include other people who should be eating healthier too.

Consider audience. Who would be the most likely to buy ready meals? Students, busy people, mum

No need for consumerism. Self identity and lifestyle enough for the theoretical side, consumerism would be too much to look at and not as relevant.

Think about convenience. Initial thoughts were that the meals would be available in supermarkets but that isn't as convenient (consider subscription)

mob kitchen - research

social media.