10 Game-Changing Innovations in TV Dinners

The TV dinner could very well be the quintessential representation of American food culture. It’s affordable and practical— for the cost of one fancy coffee, you get a complete meal, including meat or poultry, potatoes, vegetables, and dessert. Its convenience factor is unmatched: you can simply grab one from the freezer and heat it all at once in a microwave or conventional oven. With minimal prep, it's the perfect solution for busy people. Plus, the tray is perfectly suited for eating while watching TV or working at your desk. No wonder Americans enjoy TV dinners an average of six times a month, spending a total of $7.9 billion annually on these frozen meals [sources: Caplan, Lempert].

The TV dinner has become such an iconic American tradition that during the Apollo 8 mission in December 1968, the astronauts, returning from lunar orbit, famously announced on the radio that they were celebrating Christmas with TV dinners delivered by Santa [source: United Press International].

While it might be tempting to think the Pilgrims brought TV dinners on the Mayflower, the truth is that this convenient meal is a more recent invention. In 1926, Clarence Birdseye developed an efficient method to freeze food, and by the mid-1950s, frozen dinners were marketed on a large scale [source: Library of Congress]. Like many things in American culture, the TV dinner has undergone considerable transformation over the years. Here’s a look at 10 innovations that have shaped this beloved meal.

10: The Segmented Meal Tray

A hallmark of the traditional TV dinner is its segmented tray, carefully dividing the different meal components. This design prevents the foods from blending together and creating an unappetizing mess when reheated. The earliest version of such a tray was created in 1937 for use on United Airlines, as part of the first-ever in-flight kitchen.

In 1945, Maxson Food Systems introduced the first frozen three-course meal packaged in a similar tray. These meals were initially supplied to Pan American Airways, along with a specially designed convection oven for airplane use [source: Smith].

The origin story of TV dinners takes a more complicated turn after this. In 1946, Maxson launched a consumer-friendly version of its airline tray meal, called the Strato Meal, in a New Jersey grocery store. The tray was made of cardboard and divided into compartments [source: Nickerson]. A few years later, entrepreneurs Albert and Meyer Bernstein in Pittsburgh introduced a comparable product in an aluminum tray. Though only sold in Pittsburgh, the meal proved to be a big hit, moving 400,000 units by 1950. The Bernsteins later went on to establish Quaker State Food Corp. [source: Bortner].

Both of these earlier manufacturers fell behind in 1954, when C.A. Swanson & Sons, a poultry processor based in Nebraska, introduced their version of the meal-in-a-tray. Some stories suggest that Swanson sales executive Gerry Thomas had the idea after flying with Pan Am and noticing their airline trays. One of Swanson's most brilliant moves was branding their product as a 'TV Dinner' and packaging it to resemble a TV set, tapping into the growing fascination with television. By 1956, Swanson had become the undisputed leader in the TV dinner market, selling 13 million meals annually, thanks to an aggressive TV marketing campaign and a more affordable product (20 cents per meal, compared to Quaker State's 98 cents). Today, one of Swanson's original trays is part of the Smithsonian's collection [source: Bortner].

9: Exploring New Entrees Beyond Turkey

When Swanson launched the TV dinner in 1954, it began with a single variety featuring sliced turkey. According to Andrew F. Smith's "The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink," Swanson chose turkey because of an excess in supply—due to their policy of guaranteeing a fixed purchase price for all turkeys raised by farmers. Swanson executive Gerry Thomas explained that this policy was initially set up to avoid shortages during the Thanksgiving season, but by the 1950s, farmers were producing so many turkeys that Swanson was transporting thousands of pounds of frozen meat across the country via refrigerated railcars, simply because the company lacked enough cold storage facilities [source: Smith].

The story about the refrigerated railcars has since been questioned. In a 2003 interview, Thomas referred to it as a 'metaphor' [source: Rivenberg]. However, what’s undeniable is that after the success of the turkey TV dinner, Swanson quickly introduced additional options like fried chicken and beef pot roast, served with peas, buttered corn, potatoes, and gravy [sources: Pittsburgh Press, Youngstown Vindicator].

A large part of Swanson's early recipes were created by Betty Cronin, a young employee who, surprisingly, was a bacteriologist rather than a chef. But her background worked in her favor, as her main challenge was ensuring that the food could survive freezing, storage, and reheating. For instance, she dedicated a great deal of time and effort to perfecting a fried chicken recipe that would keep its breading intact after freezing, not become greasy upon reheating, and still taste delicious—all while maintaining the same cooking time as its accompanying sides [source: Gladstone]. Quite an achievement.

8: The Collapsible TV Tray

In the 1950s, not everyone had their own TV, so it was common for groups of about ten people to gather around a single television. So, how did they manage to enjoy their TV dinners? The early frozen meals came in aluminum trays, a material that conducts heat very efficiently. This made it impossible to place them directly on one's lap without risking a painful burn.

Luckily, the perfect solution was already available. Folding tables had been around for some time, but in 1946, a Los Angeles inventor named Henry V. Gaudette patented a new version with rotating legs that could be securely locked into an X shape beneath the tray. This design not only provided greater stability than previous folding tables, but it also allowed the table to collapse into a completely flat shape, making it easy to store [source: Gaudette].

Gaudette's creation was the perfect solution for dining while watching TV, and by the early 1950s—before Swanson even introduced its TV dinner—affordable metal versions of the folding tray table were already being promoted in newspapers. A 1955 advertisement in the St. Petersburg Times featured a TV snack table, offered for the unbeatable price of $1.67. This table was said to be "ideal for your TV guests" and boasted a stain-resistant enameled surface, available in three attractive decorative patterns [source: St. Petersburg Times].

7: Dessert Makes Its Debut

At first, TV dinners only contained the basics—meat, potatoes, and vegetables. Though these ready-to-eat meals were quite a novel concept in their early days, those with a sweet tooth couldn't help but feel that something was missing: dessert.

The issue was that desserts often needed separate preparation. This posed a problem, because, as neuroscientists later discovered, when TV-dinner-loving Americans settled down with their aluminum trays in front of the TV, the alpha brain waves triggered by the programming put them in a passive, reduced-consciousness state [source: Potter]. This likely made it harder for them to get up for a serving of pudding or a slice of pie, even if they were craving something sweet.

Initially, Swanson attempted to market a frozen fruit pie product that could be baked while heating a TV dinner [source: Schenectady Gazette]. However, in the early 1960s, the company eventually added a fourth compartment in the TV dinner tray, which was filled with a serving of apple or cherry cobbler or a chocolate brownie [sources: Rosenberg, Andrews]. These desserts could be heated in the oven at the same temperature of 425 degrees F (218 C) for 25 minutes as the main meal without drying out or burning.

6: TV Breakfasts

Given that Americans quickly embraced the convenience of TV dinners, it seemed inevitable that the demand for "ready meals" for other times of the day would follow. Breakfast was an obvious opportunity. In the 1940s, pre-sweetened breakfast cereals were introduced, followed by Pop-Tarts, the first toaster pastry, in 1964 [source: Smith].

Frozen breakfast foods might have started with the Dorsa brothers, three entrepreneurs from San Jose, Calif., who invented a waffle-making machine in the 1930s and went on to market what became the Eggo brand of frozen waffles in 1953 [sources: National Archives, Stephey]. Eggo is now owned by the Kellogg Co.

In 1969, Swanson, which had by then been acquired by Campbell Soup, introduced the first full-fledged multi-item frozen breakfast. The line included three varieties: pancakes with sausage patties, scrambled eggs with a sausage patty and fried potatoes, and French toast served with, you guessed it, sausage patties. Their marketing emphasized that these TV breakfasts were here to restore "the forgotten meal," which housewives had long neglected to prepare for their families [source: Dougherty].

5:Dinners for Dieters

Casually eating a fried chicken TV dinner while watching "Two and a Half Men" may fill you up easily, but it’s not exactly waistline-friendly. This issue grew worse in the 1970s when TV dinner manufacturers began offering oversized meals to cater to large male appetites, with some meals packing over 1,000 calories and as much as 70 percent of the daily recommended fat intake in a single serving [source: Men's Health].

Dieters found relief in the mid-1980s when ConAgra chairman Charles M. Harper suffered a heart attack and was forced to reevaluate his lifestyle. After recovering, Harper made drastic changes to his diet, giving up his beloved roast beef and hot fudge sundaes. Realizing that his health-conscious shift could resonate with consumers, he launched the Healthy Choice line, offering low-fat, low-salt, low-calorie frozen dinners.

Although not the first of their kind, these products became the first to succeed. By the early 1990s, Healthy Choice had garnered over $350 million in annual sales, capturing 10 percent of the frozen dinner market — a share they maintain to this day. Another brand, Lean Cuisine, became a leader in the single-serve frozen dinner market, holding 20.7 percent of the market share by 2012 [sources: Hall, Newman].

4:Microwavable Plastic Trays

In the beginning, TV dinners were certainly more convenient than cooking from scratch, but they still took around 25 minutes to reheat in the oven. That changed with the development of the magnetron during World War II, a device that enhanced radar technology to detect Nazi aircraft.

Percy LeBaron Spencer, a Raytheon engineer, was working on radar technology when he discovered that the microwaves from the magnetron had melted a candy bar in his pocket. In 1945, Raytheon patented a microwave cooking process and later licensed it to Tappan Stove Company. In 1955, Tappan introduced the first microwave oven for home use. However, it wasn’t until the 1970s, when these ovens became smaller and more affordable, that they truly took off. By 1986, a quarter of American households had a microwave, and today, 90 percent of homes own one [source: Ganapati].

Frozen dinner manufacturers quickly recognized the potential of microwave ovens. However, traditional aluminum trays posed a problem for microwaving because electric currents would pass through the metal, potentially sparking and causing a fire. In 1986, Campbell Soup's Frozen Food Division, which owned Swanson, replaced the aluminum tray across all 61 of its frozen dinner varieties with containers made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET), the same plastic used in soda bottles [source: Kircheimer].

Although some people worry about a possible link between plastic and cancer, Harvard Medical School reassures consumers. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulates the packaging of microwavable food, requiring manufacturers to ensure that the amount of plastic that leaches into the food is less than 1/100th of the level shown to harm lab animals over a lifetime [sources: Harvard Family Health Guide].

3: The Crisping Sleeve

Microwaves significantly reduced cooking times for TV dinners, cutting them to about five minutes, bringing convenience-seeking, always-in-a-hurry Americans closer to instant gratification. But diners still had to deal with the formality of using a knife and fork. But imagine being able to skip all that, experiencing dinner as if you were a modern-day caveman, gnawing on a chunk of roasted mastodon, with no worries at all.

This explains the huge success of portable frozen meals like Hot Pockets. The iconic "Hot Pocket" is a microwaveable turnover filled with meat and cheese, created in the early 1980s by Paul, David, and their father Andre Merage, an Iranian immigrant family who settled in southern California [sources: Hot Pockets, Massachusetts Institute of Technology]. Hot Pockets became so popular among men that Jimmy Fallon and his house band, The Roots, even performed a tribute called "We Love Hot Pockets" on his show in 2010 [source: Brion].

The success behind these frozen hand-held meals, including egg rolls, panini, enchiladas, and corn dogs, lies in their packaging. The paper or cardboard is lined with a metalized film known as a susceptor, which transforms microwave energy into radiant heat, allowing the food to crisp and brown [source: Inline Packaging]. The first patent for this so-called crisping sleeve was filed by Minneapolis inventor William A. Brastad in 1981 [source: Brastad].

2: Steam Cooking

While some TV dinner enthusiasts still devour a Salisbury steak with mashed potatoes and a brownie, throwing the green beans away, there's now a growing group of health-conscious consumers who enjoy digging into nutrient-packed vegetables. Interestingly, microwave cooking might help retain more nutrients (like vitamin C) than traditional stove-top boiling, because the microwave heats food more quickly, leading to shorter cooking times that preserve those nutrients [source: Ferrari]. The downside, however, is that microwaved vegetables can sometimes become dry and unappetizing.

This is why the microwave steaming technology, introduced in the mid-2000s and first marketed in the U.S. by Birdseye, quickly gained popularity [source: Horowitz]. In 2007, ConAgra launched Healthy Choice Café Steamers, the first ready-made meal line that could be cooked using steam. The product includes a Steam Cooker — a bowl containing sauce, along with a steamer basket for meat, vegetables, and pasta that sits atop the bowl. When microwaved, steam from the sauce cooks the ingredients in the basket. After microwaving, you simply mix everything together, and voilà! You have fresh vegetables with sauce and sliced meat [source: ConAgra].

While microwave-steamed vegetables aren’t necessarily healthier than those prepared using traditional microwaving, they tend to have a more appealing appearance. And if this results in people consuming more vegetables, that’s a win [source: Horowitz].

1: Gourmet and Ethnic Cuisine

By the 1980s, Americans were no longer satisfied with merely reheating TV dinners. They began to crave ready-to-eat meals that actually tasted good. In response, companies introduced "premium frozen meals" that offered more flavorful options, with brands like Banquet Foods' Light and Elegant and Stouffer's Lean Cuisine leading the way. Restaurants as diverse as P.F. Chang's and Boston Market also began offering frozen versions of their dishes. By 2009, U.S. consumers were spending nearly $900 million annually on these "premium" frozen meals, according to one market study [source: Marketresearch.com]. Of that, about a third was spent on ethnic cuisines such as Thai and Indian [source: Marder].

The evolution of TV dinners towards more flavorful and diverse options involves more than simply altering ingredients. New freezing and reheating techniques are designed to preserve the bold and sometimes fragile flavors of ethnic cuisines. For instance, Vijay Vij, a Canadian producer of frozen Indian meals, suggests reheating them in a water-filled saucepan. Another company, Virginia-based Cuisine Solutions, offers gourmet frozen meals prepared using a method called sous vide, where the food is both cooked and reheated in a carefully controlled water bath. Interestingly, this method takes about 30 minutes to heat the food, effectively bringing it back to the original reheating time of traditional TV dinners [source: Ashford].