As the Spring Festival approaches, many businesses launch semi-finished New Year’s Eve meal packages. Consumers only need to spend two or three hundred yuan to get a 10-15 course new year’s Eve meal. There are even valuable ingredients such as lobster, abalone and sea cucumber, which can be served by simple heating. The convenience and quickness of semi-finished New Year’s Eve dinner has attracted many people’s hearts.
However, Zhongxin Jingwei noted that the shelf life of semi-finished New Year’s Eve meals is usually long, and some products are even as long as one year. Some netizens wondered: “the food I packed home from the hotel may be rancid the next day. Why can this semi-finished New Year’s Eve dinner be preserved for so long? Is it preservative? Can the new year’s Eve dinner with preservative still be eaten?”
What is the truth?
the shelf life of semi-finished New Year’s Eve meal is up to one year, and preservatives are added?
Recently, Zhongxin Jingwei searched for “semi-finished New Year’s Eve dinner” on an e-commerce platform. Among the top 10 products in terms of sales, four are sold in packages. A package generally contains 6-10 dishes, and the price is mostly between 200-500 yuan. Some businesses have also launched new year’s Eve meal items, such as eight treasure rice, pig tripe chicken hot pot, etc., with prices ranging from 9.8 to 88 yuan.
Zhongxin Jingwei combed and found that most semi-finished New Year’s Eve meals need to be frozen for storage. Many stores said that the shelf life of the products can reach one year under frozen conditions. When asked whether preservatives were added to the products, some businesses directly denied it, and others said that the products contained “basic food additives”.
The semi-finished New Year’s Eve meal launched by some well-known brands also has a long shelf life. Take a semi-finished New Year’s Eve meal recently launched by a time-honored brand in Beijing as an example. The product costs 439 yuan and contains six dishes and a staple food, including dry braised yellow croaker, pickled duck and sea cucumber braised tendons. The shelf life of dry braised yellow croaker and sea cucumber braised tendons is 12 months, the shelf life of Babao rice is 270 days and the rest is 8 months. The storage method is “frozen storage below – 18 ° C”.
Quality guarantee period of semi-finished New Year’s Eve meal of an old brand in Beijing, source: screenshot of commodity details page of the official mall
As for whether the product contains preservatives, its official customer service said, “we are quick-frozen food, no preservatives”.
Zhu danpeng, an analyst of China’s food industry, said in an interview with China Singapore Jingwei that at present, the food industry has relatively mature preservation technology and anti-corrosion technology. “The shelf life of high protein products such as milk can be more than one year, and there is no problem with semi-finished New Year’s Eve dinner.”
Ruan Guangfeng, director of science and Technology Communication Department of Kexin food and health information exchange center, also mentioned that without adding preservatives, relevant foods can also achieve a long shelf life by sterilizing after cooked, then sealing packaging, low-temperature transportation and storage.
The person in charge of an enterprise specializing in food additives in Henan introduced to Zhongxin Jingwei that citric acid and vitamin C in some product ingredients, including some food additives with antioxidant function, can play a role in anti-corrosion and efficiency enhancement. The salt, sugar and vinegar brought by the product itself also have a certain anti-corrosion effect.
In the product ingredient list of a semi-finished New Year’s Eve meal provided by a merchant, Zhongxin Jingwei saw the “compound antioxidant and color protector” composed of sodium citrate, sodium D-isoascorbate and glucose oxidase. In addition, antioxidants such as butyl hydroxyanisole and dibutyl hydroxytoluene appeared in the ingredient list, as well as citric acid Vitamin C.
Ingredient list of a semi-finished New Year’s Eve meal, source: Merchant
The person in charge of the above-mentioned enterprise introduced to Zhongxin Jingwei that even if some products are added with preservatives, they are safe as long as they are not added in excess according to the regulations.
According to the national food safety standard for the use of food additives (gb2760-2014), 26 kinds of preservatives are allowed to be used, including benzoic acid, propionic acid, monooctanoic acid glyceride, etc. the standard also specifies the application scope and amount of different preservatives in detail.
“In theory, as long as it is added within the scope of the national standard, there will be no safety problem. A lot of preservatives will be transformed into other things in the body and discharged from the body.” The person in charge of the above enterprise said.
Ruan Guangfeng also said that preservatives are allowed to be added to food. “Regular addition is safe and will not cause harm to the body.”
some institutions predict that the market scale can reach trillion. Do consumers pay?
It is reported that semi-finished New Year’s Eve dinner is a kind of prefabricated dishes.
Sealand Securities Co.Ltd(000750) the research report points out that prefabricated dishes are one of the fastest developing sub industries in the food processing industry in recent five years. From 2014, the takeout industry began to flourish. By 2020, the epidemic gave birth to family consumption demand. The industry presents a tree development path from a few categories such as quick-frozen rice noodles to a variety of dishes, from b-end to C-end consumers, from first tier cities to second, third tier and even offline cities. At present, the scale of the prefabricated vegetable industry exceeds 200 billion yuan, and there are more than 70000 related enterprises, which have poured into a large number of market participants in the past five years.
Zhongxin Jingwei noted that there are not only Suzhou Weizhixiang Food Co.Ltd(605089) , steaming and stewing, Cong kitchen and other professional prefabricated vegetable enterprises in the market, but also Fujian Sunner Development Co.Ltd(002299) , Zhanjiang Guolian Aquatic Products Co.Ltd(300094) , Longda food, Fu Jian Anjoy Foods Co.Ltd(603345) , Xibei, Haidilao, Meizhou Dongpo, HEMA workshop, dingdong shopping and other agricultural, animal husbandry and aquatic enterprises, traditional quick-frozen food enterprises, catering enterprises and retail enterprises.
On April 27, 2021, Suzhou Weizhixiang Food Co.Ltd(605089) was officially listed on the A-share main board, becoming the “first stock of prefabricated dishes”. According to public information, Suzhou Weizhixiang Food Co.Ltd(605089) has two brands ” Suzhou Weizhixiang Food Co.Ltd(605089) ” and “Cuiyu”. In the first three quarters of 2021, the company achieved a revenue of 570 million yuan and a net profit of 103 million yuan. It is reported that xianmeilai, another prefabricated vegetable enterprise, has also submitted an IPO prospectus to the CSRC and is sprinting to “the first share of prefabricated vegetables of aquatic products”.
Sealand Securities Co.Ltd(000750) pointed out that “reducing cost and improving efficiency at the B end and convenient and delicious at the C end” are the driving factors for the development of the prefabricated vegetable industry. For catering enterprises, the use of prefabricated dishes can reduce labor costs, reduce the back kitchen area, improve meal efficiency, ensure the stability of product taste and improve food safety and quality assurance. The penetration rate of prefabricated dishes in snacks, fast food chains, cost-effective takeout, rural kitchens, group canteens and other scenes has been increasing. For the C-end, as the “post-80s” and “post-90s” become the main group of family consumption, they are faced with pain points such as degradation of cooking ability, lack of time and energy, uneconomical and unhealthy dining out. Under the normalization of the epidemic, the number of dining scenes at home has increased, and the rise of new retail channels such as box horse and dingdong shopping has also accelerated the consumption and popularization of prefabricated dishes.
Sealand Securities Co.Ltd(000750) believes that the prefabricated vegetable industry is expected to usher in rapid development driven by the cost reduction and efficiency increase at the b-end and the change of consumption habits at the C-end. At present, the industry is still in the early stage of penetration and can still accelerate its growth in the future. It is estimated that the compound annual growth rate of the prefabricated vegetable industry will be 15% in the next five years, and the scale will exceed 400 billion yuan by 2026.
AI media consulting boldly predicts that the scale of China’s Prefabricated vegetable market will exceed trillion in five years. The Securities Times quoted AI media consulting data as saying that the scale of China’s Prefabricated vegetable market is expected to be 345.9 billion yuan in 2021 and 515.6 billion yuan in 2023. If the growth rate of China’s Prefabricated vegetable market remains stable at 20% in the future, the scale of China’s Prefabricated vegetable market will exceed trillion yuan in 2027.
However, not all consumers can accept prefabricated dishes. According to the survey data of HEMA, the biggest concern of 55% of respondents about prefabricated new year dishes is that “the ingredients are not fresh and there are too many additives and preservatives”.
Some consumers reported to Zhongxin Jingwei that the taste of prefabricated dishes is poor and not as good as advertising. “It takes a long time to thaw the dishes one by one. A new year’s Eve dinner takes at least 3 hours from thawing to serving, and they are thawed twice. Seafood dishes are not fresh. The taste is average as a whole, and the amount of dishes is small, which is not enough to eat.” Ms. Zhao in Beijing experienced a semi-finished meal during the Spring Festival last year and never wanted to try any prefabricated dishes again.
“The shelf life of prefabricated vegetables is so long that consumers have some doubts about food safety, freshness and taste, which is a major problem in the current prefabricated vegetable market. At present, the whole prefabricated vegetables are still in the stage of market introduction, and have not really entered the stage of ‘booming production and marketing’.” Zhu danpeng expressed to China Singapore longitude and latitude.
