Many households in Norway have a microwave oven in the kitchen, but not many of them use the oven to actually make the dinner. Most use it for thawing, reheating leftovers or small operations where rapid heating is an advantage. Big, efficient industrial microwave tunnels on the other hand are thin on the ground on a global basis, but in recent years a few producers in Norway and Sweden have started to use microwave ovens.
For both private households and the food industry, the trend is towards more different packaging materials and more technically complicated processes. Designing microwave ovens and packaging for products intended for the ready meals market could be a contributory factor to the increased use of the microwave oven to prepare whole dinners. Microwaves often give uneven heating and so the documentation of heat treatment has been chosen as a main theme for research projects at Nofima Mat in Stavanger.
With current developments in specially designed packaging for microwave heating it is possible to prepare healthy and nutritious meals in a few minutes. The food can now be steamed inside a sealed pack, with the aid of a pressure valve. This technology will also reduce the problem of uneven heating, which is often associated with microwave ovens.
