This new awareness has food companies scrambling to come up with products that require little time and skill while still evoking the aura of home cooking. Pillsbury Co. calls its contribution the Green Giant Complete Skillet Meal, and boasts that its preparation requires 10 minutes of skillet jiggling. At kraft, the giant food unit of Philip Morris Co., the Hamburger helper model has been applied to the oven with Stove Top oven Classics. The same dishes could probably be whipped up in the microwave. But food-industry market researchers say the microwave chef is left with little sense of accomplishment.
Psychology is almost as important as flavor.
Now it is cooking. But now the competitition is turning up the heat, and the effect already is apparent. Only the company's huge breakfast-cereal portfolio accounts for more of its profits than helper. Lean Times general Mills vows to defend its brand, which has so far demonstrated remarkable resilience. It was such an immediate hit that for a couple of years the company couldn't keep up with consumer demand.