Top UK supermarket chain Tesco has announced that it is giving a ‘Kitchen Cupboard Guarantee’ on its range of ready meals, meaning that they will only contain ingredients found in a kitchen cupboard at home.
“Our guaranteed ‘kitchen cupboard’ ready meals are ideal for those shoppers who lead busy lives – and would love to be able to prepare a fresh, nutritious meal from scratch, but might not have the time,” said food buying director Carolyn Bradley. “Customers value the time saving element of ready-meals, but tell us it can be easy to worry about what is going into any dish if you are not making it yourself.”
“We have come up with a simple guarantee – we won’t put in any ingredient that could not be found in your kitchen at home – or on your Tesco shopping list,” she said. “Tesco has always worked hard to minimise the use of any artificial ingredients but with our new guarantee we’ve taken this on to the next level.”
The industry leading range is being rolled out in stores nationwide and by February 2006, customers will have a choice of over 450 new and improved dishes.
Under the new guarantee Tesco will ensure artificial ingredients like emulsifiers, stabilisers and hydrogenated fats are not added to ready-meals, it said. The very best quality ingredients are being used to bring out the flavour in dishes, for example, wine, balsamic vinegar, honey, herbs and spices.
