“TV” dinners were, packaged in aluminum foil. Microwaves didn’t become prevalent until perhaps the mid 80s.
replyah, interesting. Ok, so TV dinners != microwave dinners, and maybe they're more healthy than microwaved dinners or food that comes in plastic.
replyI wouldn't exactly call TV dinners "healthy". In many ways it was much more heavily processed fatty carbs than what passes for microwave food today. It was loaded with salt and sugar.
replyThe main difference is that TV dinners were designed to be heated in an oven rather than a microwave, back when microwaves were less common.
My impression (as someone who was alive back then) is that the early TV dinners often weren't that different from something you'd cook yourself, but the industry has spend half a century optimising them into cheap chemical slop engineered for palatability.
replyAlso, not all ready meals are crap. You can buy premium frozen meals from restaurant suppliers but they aren't cheap.
One study (sorry, can't recall the source off the top of my head) claimed 20% of calories in the average U.S. diet was replaced by processed foods over that period. I'm over 50 years old, and it agrees with my own observations. Those "big gulp" beverages became popular in the 80s, and "low fat" foods just replaced fat with added sugar.
replyOne example: long ago I used to buy Bush's baked beans in a can. They had a vegetarian version which I assumed was healthier, and it even tasted better than the original. But one day I compared the labels and found the vegetarian version had more added sugar and more calories per serving.
We were fed a massive amount of misinformation about healthy foods in the 1980s. Hopefully things will improve from now on.