Lean Cuisine: Product recall

According to some, the average time spent making an evening meal has slipped to just eight minutes compared with half-an-hour or so a couple of decades ago. I know a few people who don’t want to wait even that long.

Indeed, such is the pace of life that it is no surprise that many people rely on ready-meals such as Lean Cuisine for their daily sustenance, rather than learning to cook.

But there is a downside to the culture of microwave meals. Today in the U.S., Nestle wants to recall 879,565 pounds of Lean Cuisine products - read millions of dinners - containing chicken which may contain shards of hard plastic.

Newsite MSNBC reports roducts include the pesto chicken with bow tie pasta, chicken mediterranean and the chicken tuscan.

While this will not affect readers here in Stoke-on-Trent and the UK, a quick look at the Food Standards Agency site shows that Fray Bentos, Quaker Oats, Netto, Tesco, Dairy Crest and Seymours of Norfolk have all recalled products because of risks to their products in the past seven days.

Not all of these products have been removed because of contaminants, but it would appear that the processing and packaging introduces a risk which traditional cooking will not.

I for one have never been that bothered about stepping up to the stove after a hard day at work; in some ways it is quite therapeutic to chop the veg, skin the fish, prepare the sauce, particularly when you taste the quality of the finished product over a plastic-sealed microwave meal.