Preparation Time Does Not Reflect Nutrition and Varies Based on Level of Processing

Convenience is one of the top 3 drivers of food choice. The choice to consume nutrient-dense foods may rely, in part, on how much effort is required to obtain and prepare them for consumption.

The objective of this study was to compare the time required to prepare 15 sets of meals with similar foods and nutrient content but different levels of processing, defined according to the Nova system.

Each menu [the more- and less-processed Western menus (LPW and MPW)] was divided into meal components and/or recipes. Two research staffers independently tracked the amount of time kitchen technicians used to make each step of each menu. Times were recorded to the centisecond and mean times between the 2 timers were utilized as the final times for analysis.

For each day, the total time required to make the LPW exceeded the MPW by amounts ranging from ∼90 min (day 5) to 9 h (day 1). The LPW had a 203% longer preparation time than the MPW (βˆ = 3.0323; 95% confidence interval: 1.86483, 4.93065; P = 0.0002). When only active preparation time was considered, the differences in time needed to make the LPW and MPW ranged from less than a minute (day 3) to over 2 h (day 1).

The time required to prepare food is not a reflection of its nutrient value. Foods that require more time to prepare such as homemade bread and dried beans may be considered less processed on the Nova scale but provide similar nutrition to "ultra-processed" options such as bread purchased ready-to-eat and canned beans.