Ready meals’ and dinner meal deals’ contribution to overconsumption: Using social marketing and the intervention ladder models to examine actions

The UK government’s One You campaign informed people to consume 400-600-600 calories for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, respectively. Simultaneously, they encouraged companies to reduce calories in their products and intend to ban volume promotions of high fat, sugar, and salt products. Ready meals are a commonly consumed product in the UK, with 79% of people having purchased them, and dinner meal deals are becoming increasingly popular. This research aims to examine whether chilled ready meals and dinner meal deals meet the government 600kcal recommendation and how the concept of upstream marketing can be combined with the intervention ladder models to encourage the reduction of calorie intake. A census of chilled ready meals and dinner meal deal components was taken in five stores to examine whether they met the UK government’s 600kcal guideline. It was found that 17% of all chilled ready meals exceeded the 600kcal guideline, with up to 32% exceeding it in one store. The highest calorie content for a meal was 838kcal. Overall, 93.8% of dinner meal deals exceeded 600kcal, with 99.7% exceeding the guideline in one store. The research examines how the intervention ladders can be combined with the concept of social marketing to determine how various government interventions for reducing calorie intake aimed at companies affect their freedom and indirectly the freedom of consumers further downstream.