The Rise and Fall of the TV Dinner - Cheddar Explains 

In the ‘70’s when we were kids, it was a treat to get a “TV” dinner. It was summer and we were out of school and our grandmother would say hey how about a frozen dinner? We would be so excited! We ran to the corner store and each got to pick what we wanted. We would put it on mamaow’s “tab”. Yep! Corner store credit! We were on top of the world! My sister always got Mexican, my cousin meatloaf and me, chicken! Lol! Happy memories!!

The 5% growth of frozen meal sales in 2019 was due entirely to my parents.

"They were worried about wasting food" God I wish that were still true of companies today.

How many more years until they make them taste good?

They forgot to mention that at the time microwaves were the number one gift for married couples, that impacted the use of TV dinners

Personally I think the “frozen dinner” is declining because of the rise of delivery. Why reheat when you have UberEats and all?

I would like to thank this video for solving a long gamer mystery I have had for years. Why do you get aluminum from TV dinner trays in Fallout 4? I tend to think of TV dinners as things you microwave. But at their beginning, they were metal trays you baked. It all makes sense now!!!

IMO the decline is less to do with pricing and healthiness more to do with the quality of the food. There are some diamonds in the rough, but for the most part most frozen dinners are edible at best and just plan nasty at worst. Who wants to pay a load for something that sucks that is bad for you. Fast food is priced competitive enough that it's going to be what most people go for in the time sensitive convenience niche, especially with near omnipresent delivery services in most communities. If frozen dinners want to stay profitable and selling, they need to really increase in quality while also staying priced at 5$ or below per head. And for God's sake, if something doesn't work well frozen (eg:breads, some veggies, etc) stop adding it to meals.

I just don’t understand how every frozen meal has like 40% of your daily sodium but still manages to be completely flavorless.

TV dinners didn't make people stop interacting with each other; they just gave people a _reason_ not to. The desire to not interact with others was already there.

cooking has also become more popular as an activity in itself, the kitchen has become a social area as well as the living room

Very thought-provoking video. I'm 69 now and I remember eating those "dinners". There are many controversies: convenience vs from scratch; expensive vs from scratch (cheaper); healthy vs junk food; frozen vs fresh, etc. This is a debate that continues, at least for me. I can no longer literally stand for hours in the kitchen, my legs give out on me. I cook for me and my wife only and I want to give us the best food I can but I need convenience, my body is breaking down on me. This brings in so many questions as to how do I conveniently make us the best food I can without spending all day in the kitchen? Thank you for this video. I watched it a second time with my wife. It is thought-provoking indeed.

I don't watch TV anymore. I watch RU-vid while eating.

1950s : TV dinner 2019 : youtube dinner

*Because of frozen foods, I no longer need to wake up every morning and* _”make my strawberries from SCRATCH!”_ *-Such a timesaver! Thank you frozen foods!!* 😆❤️

I loved them, especially Swanson's in the beginning. I ate a lot of these growing up and I didn't mind them at all. Later on, Hungry Man's with the bigger portions were even better.

*With the rise of internet and streaming in 20-30 years we will be watching "the rise and fall of TV" on youtube*

They failed to mention that with the invention of the microwave it made these thing soooo fast to cook unlike the 45 minutes it took to cook the ones in the aluminum foil packages.

It's so fascinating seeing this perspective on it. In the UK we have whole supermarkets dedicated to frozen and fresh ready meals (notably Iceland and Marks & Spencer, with every supermarket offering their own range in some form). These are typically, but not always, made for the microwave and they're pretty palatable. They're still seen by many as cheap and unhealthy, yet despite that they're still popular and there are many "luxury" or "deluxe" ranges available. Plus you can buy them with microwavable vegetables that count towards you intake (Morrisons have one that's 2 of your 5 a day). But they're also seen as a bedroom meal eaten by students, or served on a plate with side dishes (usually chips, let's be honest). I'm curious to know how other countries have theirs and how different they are to TV Dinners. Do they have similar ready meals? How are they eaten? Do they empty them out from the trays and eat them on plates?

My family and I definitely used frozen food as a supplement to a dinner rather than the full meal. Especially now that I live on my own, keeping a few bags of frozen vegetables in freezer is a must. Still healthy, versatile and you can use it when you’re ready. Cuts down on food waste.

It's funner to imagine that that train is still going back and forth

i'm convinced my family is the only thing keeping the frozen meal market afloat

You guys remember Kid Cuisine? I do and I will never forget it.

That was my mother, in 1954, pushing that Hoover across the kitchen floor...all fancied up in hose and heels and cocktail dress. The Hi-Fi was on playing dance party favourites. My father would be home soon to make the martinis that he and my mum would drink along with a few of the neighbours that might drop in.

Who needs t.v. dinner when you can have the t.v. for dinner

Back in the 1970s when I was a kid, it was so much fun watching television at night while eating a TV dinner. Today, I prepare my own dinners. Walmart sells the Disposable Aluminum 4 Compartment T.V Dinner Trays with Lid. You get ten for $17. I keep my chest freezer full of them and eat them year-round.

The reality too, is that they essentially took all of their favorite meals off the market around 2013 or so. Case in point, Mary Callenders herb roasted chicken, one of their most popular meals. They used to have something like 15 varieties including the above. Now it's around 8. Same goes for Hungry Man, used to be 12, now it's down to about 7. They downgraded on the quality as well, you're lucky if you can get recognizable chicken parts in their fried chicken line. Banquet is the only one still carrying most of their line, due to the lower prices, but the portion sizes have shrunk, and again, other than what you can get in the bag, no fried chicken. And yeah, I remember even through the 70s and early 80s, before microwave ovens became ubiquitous, they still had aluminum foil trays, still had the larger assortment, but I think the health concerns regarding the amount of sodium in all the above brands is what largely contributed to their demise, as well as the sudden prevalence of fast food probably contributed to that. Why wait 5 minutes per meal in a microwave or 45 minutes in a conventional oven, when you could spend 5 minutes in a drive thru to feed the whole family? This especially has an impact considering how in many cases of two parent families (or even couples) needing two incomes to keep afloat, there's not a lot of time to spend on prepping dinner.

“Eating in front of the TV is more enjoyable than eating with family members.” Well yeah. Have dinner watching Parks and Recreation or listening to whining, complaining, bickering, criticism or side eye jabs. I see the appeal.

I never thought I would be watching a documentary on frozen foods.

A good mother always prepares home-cooked meals for her family!!

7:17 What do you mean unchanged. How about moving from foil packed oven cooked to plastic packed microwave cooked. Most people today don't even know they were originally cooked in the stove and took upwards of a half hour .

I think the decline also is that more people cook now, not just the woman anymore. Cooking is fun and creative.

Just last week I tried to explain to my GenZ kids what a "TV dinner" was, and that it was a huge treat when Mom served them. Then it struck me how freaking stupid we were, because I'd kill to have my mom's meatloaf, mashed potatoes and bread pudding tonight.

I was born in 1969, and went to elementary school in the 70s in a very small rural school. The ancient lady who did the lunches called these "Satellite lunches," the only person I ever heard calling them that. I brown bagged it almost every day I ever went to school, so it was a moot point. Growing up in the rural south, many mothers didn't want to deal with these as cooking meals was a real source of pride for many. I don't recall us having these very often, and can only recall the turkey slice with some kind of fruit pie in one corner. I wouldn't eat the rest as I've always been a picky eater

Honestly a decline in popularity would be pretty good in my opinion. I work at a store and the older clientele buy so many of these and I can't help but think about how damaging it is to older people to have such a large part of their diet be so low quality and unhealthy.

I'm 60, born in the last few months of the 1950s, and I gotta say, as a kid in the 60s I LOVED TV dinner night. Did it taste like shit? Sure it did. But somehow it was still special and a treat.

I really wish they would do a limited edition anniversary TV dinner that looks like it did when the products first came out

For middle class kids growing up in the mid-1960's, the frozen TV dinner was what the family got when Mom had an especially busy day and didn't have the time to make a proper dinner. Each so-called meal was put in a superheated oven for at least an hour, and I was always amazed at just how HOT the aluminum foil cooking trays were when they finally came out of the oven. Oh what fun it was to take the lid off the tray to reveal the bubbling, gloppy 'food' that was inside! These 'meals' were so complete that some of them included a hot dessert---and I do mean a HOT dessert! I once had one of the dinners that had a brownie for the dessert, and when I took the lid off, the brownie was on fire! It burned up before I could eat it!

Thanks for sharing this. I appreciate the reference to research at the end of a quite interesting video. Frozen foods may predate me, but it's a modern convenience I never take for granted. People living just a century ago would marvel at the notion of being able to enjoy strawberries and other summer fruit in January. They would be floored by the notion of being able to easily cook a complete dinner 5 minutes after removing it from the freezer. It still delights me that frozen breakfast sandwiches, soft pretzels and the like exist. Thank goodness for the workers who make this all possible. :)

Makes a video about TV dinner Doesn't mention how the microwave affected the market

EVERYTIME I use a TV table+ Tv dinner I feel just like the Family in Matilda 😅

The quality of food back in the 60s when I grew up with these vs. now, it’s like comparing high school JV football to the NFL. What we had was really good

Our family saved the aluminum trays to make our own TV dinners. After Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, we'd set up an assembly line and fill those trays up. It was great to be able to have another Thanksgiving dinner in March instead of just eating leftovers for a week.

For $4 bucks you get 12 pieces of corn, a rubbery piece of beef or a soggy breaded piece of chicken, watery see through mashed potatoes and a slot where the "brownie" is supposed to be but no one ever eats it because it ends up hard as a rock. lol Absolute classics though lol

When I’m hungry and have nothing around to eat, I just go to sleep and it’s all better.

TV dinners were never very big here, but I remember my mom giving me one when I was young and her feeling guilty about not having made dinner herself and me not minding at all, since it tasted just fine.

I was in my negatives when TV dinners were existent. All of my grandparents were alive amid that time, but they were not in the USA. TV dinner meals were popular as part of vintage purely American culture.

My mom was such a bad cook, that we loved them.

I live in the Netherlands, my grandparents had the first TV in the town, they had a lot of visitors

I’ve been on a “healthy choice”, “lean cuisine” rut for my work lunches. It has veggies, easy and quicker than ramen

I remember it took a long time for those to cook. I would take it out of the oven, starving, it looked ready, but was still frozen on the inside (I was a kid). The desert was good.

"The rise and fall?" There was never a fall, not a significant one at least. And the end of the video admits that they're getting popular again... Still an interesting video though.

I'm telling you. Those 5% are these starving College Students

Lockers in the school, TV Dinners, Prom Dances, Treehouses. Things a lot of us only saw on TV/Movies and never IRL.

I never had a TV dinner or microwave meal as a kid but I remember I saw TV dinner’s in Matilda and I was jealous they got to eat dinner in front of the TV.

Legend has it that the train is still going back and forth

Wow, so Airlines actually had real food back in the day?!

I am from Spain, and here it would be unthinkable. Here we cook everyday the food we are going to eat and waching TV during dinner is almost seen as tabú.

Fried chicken and mashed potatoes TV dinner in the 1960s - yum! Ate a lot of them, and loved them.

I think when TV dinners first came out they were genuinely trying to replicate a good home cooked meal, like if mom took her leftovers and froze them. Now they are processed gloop that are insanely high in sodium and ingredients that you would never find in a housewives kitchen. To make them more palatable yet affordable they add a ton of reconstituted food products, hydrogenated oils, glycerides, trans-fats, additives like TBHQ and BHT, MSG and the aforementioned sodium at over 50% of the recommended daily sodium intake. Disgusting and a sure recipe for heart disease. 😝

They've changed the Hungry-man dinners Don't taste the same

Yes it was a treat! I bought my last one in the eighties. Package on front said it was microwavable too. It was alright. Directions inside said to thaw out each individual food item and then place in a microwave dish. Wish I still had at least that crazy box! Lol!

It really was iconic branding on Swanson’s part. I’m 40 and my parents always called a frozen meal a “TV Dinner,” even in the 80’s when I grew up. My dad still does. Swanson didn’t even call them “TV Dinners” by that point and my parents weren’t even born yet in ‘54, but the name remains.

As a German, i must say that the „German Style“ TV Dinnner looks revolting

Frozen produce solves a lot of issues with waste.

My recollection from eating these in the 70s and 80s is that you had two cooking options: 1. Cook the entree properly and accept that you burned the desert to blackened dust or 2. Cook the desert properly and accept that your turkey is still half frozen!

Meanwhile, in Japan, we just buy delicatessen or bento meals when we have no time to cook dinner. Possibly at a convenience store. No need to re-heat. :)

Call it "RU-vid Dinner" and you'll be the first quadreillionare

I can still taste those aluminium trays from the sixties.

When a RU-vid video is called “the rise and fall” you know it’ll be good

When I was a kid in the 1960's, the TV dinner was something that my mother and I had on Friday nights when my father called to say that he would be home late that night.

The title should be “The rise and slight dip of the TV dinner”

Ah, I remember in the 80's settling down at my grandma's house on a Sunday morning eating a turkey TV dinner and watching All Star Wrestling. They gave you a ton of food back then and it tasted good - much better than the tasteless turkey with the watery gravy that they give you today. I'm almost tempted to try making my own TV dinners from scratch and putting them in metal trays to bake in the oven...

Some of y'all can be quite negative on the TV dinners but the one thing I will say the evolution of the TV dinners I will be internally grateful because they kept me full on a lot of days

I still like these...and they bring back memories lol

I think frozen meals have died "the death of a thousand cuts", i.e.: by striving to keep the cost down, manufacturers have been successively cutting corners and we're at a point where the taste simply is no longer there. Even though, in the EU, manufacturers can get away with a lot less than US-based ones, I have, previously, seriously looked into frozen meals as a way to ease pressure on myself in terms of work commitments and being a caretaker. Both are moot at this point, but I found none of them were any good. Other than some ok concepts for copycat recipes, I found even the ones from premium brands to be largely useless.

Very innovative. It's easy to take things like the Swanson's TV dinner concept for granted today. Japan has their cup noodles. America has TV dinners. Products people enjoy.

I grew up on these things and loved 'em - I like how the desert would always spill over into the vegetable -

I remember that when I first heard of TV Dinners I thought that you actually watched TV on the tray itself while you ate yeah I took things very literal as a kid.

"team effort" yeah sure. Another way of saying someone that wasn't high enough up the ladder had the idea and they can't have him or her take credit and possibly financial compensation for it.

I dont eat them just because I can think of like 10 other things I can make for less than $4...

Frozen Dinners were a Special Treat in Our Family…When Dad worked “Night Watch” as a Volunteer Fireman we would spend time at the Fire Department and have Dinner with Him…Usually a Frozen Dinner….It was a Very Special and Wonderful Family together Time….My Brother and I miss Mom and Dad every Day……

I grew up on a farm, so I never really got into the whole TV dinner thing as a kid. In the military though, I stocked my barracks fridge and freezer full of the things. Cheap, and tasted better than the galley. Man, how times have changed...I was paying $1.50 per hungry man meal, and 50 cents per regular. And that was back in the early 2000s!

Describing k rations as being "considered palletable" is a very accurate way to describe them

Who needs TV dinners when you can just have water for dinner?

My grandparents and parents, came from Oklahoma. When I was young everything was made from scratch. Usually from our garden , our chicken farm..yet when we were kids and tv dinners came out , we thought it was such a treat 😹😁😄. Wish I had some of those chicken and dumplings, biscuits and gravy now.😊🐱

1:32 "That were considered palatable" Steve1989: "What do you mean *were* ?"

Wife: "I'm late .... " Husband "But dinner wont be eh? Heh heh" Wife "No dude im pregnant" Husband "Oh.......um.....ok......you got dinner too right ?"

So apparently they stopped calling them "TV dinners" in the early 1960s, but I remember them being called that still in the 1980s.

I'm not American, so I never experienced TV dinners. I want to have the original TV dinner once.

I watch videos and movies while I'm eating as more of a coping mechanism than entertainment value. I struggle with eating food in general, so trying to finish a meal is insanely difficult. But watching something allows me to focus on something else while I eat. Which allows me to get food down easier.

"you're more likely to eat while watching TV" *Me half way through an entire large little Cesar's pizza* *Swallows slowly* welp

Only if they tasted better and less pricey, I would still buy them.

When I was a child in the 80s, my dad installed a TV in the Kitchen (and later Dining Room) and we watched the evening news and Wheel of Fortune at the Dinner Table. But then my dad also worked part time at a TV Repair Shop that also sold TVs and rented Videos.

As a kid, my mom would often buy Swanson frozen dishes for me for supper whenever she worked late. I though it was so salty and tasteless I learnt how to cook by myself by the age of 10.

They need to release a product called “RU-vid Dinner” 🥘 🍴

“You mean a *woman* can open it...?” Lol.

Ah, memories of late night horror movies and T.V. dinners. That was a kind of special treat.

I’m eating my dinner alone while watching this

Is it just me or those old TV dinners from the 80's tasted more like food, like more authentic, the ones today seem bland and processed