Anyone who has had to organize lunches for work or meals for camping trips has probably considered shelf-stable Indian meals. These meals, contained in single-serving pouches, have really taken off and can be found in most supermarkets now, from Whole Foods and Traders Joe’s to the Grocery Outlet, Aldi, and Lidl.

Why do I think they could save the world? Well, because most of them are built around legumes such as chickpeas, lentils, and split peas. As described in the seminal paper by Poore and Nemecek (2018), the environmental footprints of legumes are 50 to 100 times smaller than those of beef. Besides mitigating our major environmental threats, a legume-rich diet also addresses major social issues such as food security for a growing population.

On this basis, products that bring affordable and craveable legumes to a larger population deserve credit for helping save the planet. I’m reviewing a few brands on the GSP’s sister site, Ethical Bargains, looking at flavor and nutrition but also awarding Green Stars ratings for social and environmental impact. I’ll provide links to those reviews as they are published, but here I want to stick to a general overview.

Ethical arguments for shelf-stable meals

It’s crazy that in all this time, I’ve never written about fast food joints like McDonald’s and Burger King (I will!). I’m sympathetic to the fact that many gravitate towards these options on account of a tight budget. Cooking is the solution, of course, and there are lots of great legume-based one-pot meals that are easy to make. But not everyone has the time.

Shelf-stable Indian meals have filled a niche for low-budget, convenient food that’s also planet-friendly. In a way, they are the antithesis to fast food burgers – meals produced from plants in the Global South. For sure, there are other easy ways to consume legumes – high-protein pasta and edamame are two of my favorites. There’s almost nothing easier than ready-to-eat Indian meals… but should we worry about the packaging?

Legumes in a pouch – is the packaging justified?

You could argue that the plastic packaging is the major downside of shelf-stable meals. Not only because plastic persists in nature but also because of the plastic industry’s growing carbon footprint. I believe the best practical approach to dealing with plastic in our lives is to set a personal budget – a limit on how much landfill waste you generate each month. I find it pretty easy to stay within my low-waste budget, even if I throw away a few pouches from Indian meals over the month.

More importantly, when a person who might ordinarily buy a burger instead opts for a legume-based meal, then the packaging becomes a minuscule factor, compared to the social and environmental benefits of legumes over red meat.

I also want to mention two environmental benefits that are specific to shelf-stable packaging:

First, the extended shelf life offered by aseptic packaging (such as these pouches) has been demonstrated to reduce food waste. As you probably know, reducing food waste ranks pretty high in actions to address climate change and other planetary boundaries.

Second, this kind of packaging does not require refrigeration – a significant contributor to climate change due to its use of energy and refrigerants, most of which are potent greenhouse gases. See my recent post on Tetra Pak packaging for further discussion of this topic.

Indian meals: quality, flavor, nutrition

I’ll post individual product reviews on Ethical Bargains, together with Green Stars ratings for social and environmental impact. But I want to discuss nutrition a little bit here, so consider this a preview 🙂

On Ethical Bargains, I focus on items I bought at the Grocery Outlet in part because it’s popular with people on a budget and/or moving towards plant-based diets. And I want to show that an ethical lifestyle is within reach for everyone. There are quite a few shelf-stable Indian meals available at the Grocery Outlet at the moment so I tried products from four different companies. To enable a better comparison, I picked meals that all featured chickpeas.

What I’m mostly looking for in these meals is that they contain a substantial amount of legumes, as demonstrated by decent levels of protein and iron. One thing that we have to look out for when transitioning to more plant-based diets is that we eat plenty of actual plants. Meals made from legumes can be essential to making sure we get enough iron in our diet, for example.

Here’s a table that compares the most important nutrition facts across the four brands.

Review of four shelf-stable Indian meals

Here are my quick thoughts on these four products:

Hocco

The Hocco chana masala was a favorite in terms of flavor. It’s a bit spicier than the others, so it suits my palate better. Also, a little goes a long way because it’s so high in fat. However, when I researched the product for Ethical Bargains, I discovered issues with the fat content (it seems likely that partially hydrogenated oils are being used but not disclosed on the ingredient list) and as a result I’m not buying Hocco products again, unless this is resolved.

Tasty Bite

The Tasty Bite Chickpea Tikka Masala is mellower than the Hocco product but also flavorful. I added some freshly chopped green chilies to spice it up a little. It’s much lower in fat than the Hocco chickpeas and I’m more likely to eat the whole pack in one go, as a result. That would provide 340 calories, 12 g of protein, and 30% of my iron needs. Actually, make that 60% of my iron needs since I don’t have a monthly period. Menstruating women need about twice as much iron as men – something to look out for when adopting plant-based diets.

Patak’s

This is the most familiar brand to me, having lived in the UK and Ireland. The korma is quite mild so I recommend topping it with some chopped raw jalapeno if you want to spice it up. It’s a little bit less nutrient-dense than Tasty Bite, providing 9 g of protein and 40% of my iron in the single-serving pouch. Still, not bad, especially with most of the fat coming from coconut milk (rich in medium-chain triglycerides).

Geeta’s

This product, being a rice pulao (pilaf) is not as indulgent as the other three products. While I served the other three with rice, this pilaf was a stand-alone meal and I ate the whole package (two servings) in one go. It’s not super-high in protein (10 g per pack) but is surprisingly high in iron (70% of my daily needs in one pack). I’m wondering how it contains so much iron – is it because it was cooked in cast-iron cookware? It’s the lowest in fat and salt among the four.

Notes and conclusions

Overall, I think shelf-stable Indian meals are a good deal, all round. They are nutritious for vegetarians and vegans seeking tasty sources of protein and iron that are not overly processed. They also serve as good sources of fiber and many phytonutrients that are found in legumes. The benefits that shelf-stable packaging brings – mitigating food-waste and the need for refrigeration – more than offset the downside of its disposability.

They’re all quite high in sodium so I wouldn’t eat them every day. However, you can moderate the sodium and also make them go further: simply add unseasoned veggies like a chopped zucchini or some mushrooms. I approach instant noodles the same way (I reviewed A-Sha and Momofuku noodles on Ethical Bargains) as they’re also high in sodium.

Tasty Bite is the only product of the four that uses organic ingredients. I just discovered that Tasty Bite is now owned by Mars, Inc., so I’ll address that in the review on EB. It has also been suggested that Tasty Bite probably makes the Indian Fare meals sold by Trader Joe’s (although they are not organic). This makes sense – I find the Trader Joe’s Indian meals to be on par with Tasty Bite, flavor-wise.

I’ll write individual reviews of most of these products on Ethical Bargains, so check out that blog if you’d like more detail. Meanwhile – do you have any opinions on shelf-stable Indian meals that you’d like to share? Comment below!

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