Health foods and ready meals continue to grow

Putting a meal on the table has never been easier whether it’s dining solo, feeding the kids, or entertaining guests with good taste. Choose the supermarket, provedore, deli or the local fruiterer and you are sure to find the ingredients to prepare a perfect repast.

When it comes to regional locations that don’t host a Simon Johnson outlet or Fratelli Fresh, the local growers come into their own, supporting farmers markets and through selling arrangements with the local IGA supermarket or Coles and Woolworths.

The trend in meat continues to see supermarkets control the lion’s share of the market. And, within the supermarket meat cabinets across Australia, the market is steering towards more value adding and meal solutions. Premium cuts such as King Island Beef and Bruemar Pork have increased penetration over the past three years.

In order to create a meal without too much prep time, produce departments have sprouted new alternative to the old fashioned “peel and prepare” cooking of our parents. Rosemary potatoes are already peeled, seasoned and ready to roll off the shelf at Coles. Mediterranean vegetables for the microwave, sit alongside the well presented range of salads in bags and other meal solutions that use fresh vegetables.

A similar story applies at Woolworths where Jamie Oliver is the promotional face of eating well as the latest Woolworths ‘fresh ambassador’. As part of this push for healthy eating by Jamie Oliver, his recipes are designed to push thinking about choosing to eat well and how to achieve it on a budget. And they are not too complex to prepare whilst recommending ingredients from his growing range of products that Woolworths have signed up for.

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