Red Lodge, Montana based, The Healthy Pantry, provides "meal kits" for healthy meals that can be prepared in less than 10 minutes

Thirty years ago, the average family spent about two hours preparing meals.

These days, it’s closer to about 20 minutes, said Keith Lauver, and, that’s if there’s any preparation at all. More families than ever are either eating from boxes and cans or eating out.

The trouble there is that it’s expensive and the food generally isn’t very good for you.

Lauver runs The Healthy Pantry, a company that creates tasty and nutritious “meal kits” that can be prepared in less than 10 minutes.

“Rather than convince people to change their busy lifestyles, we decided to work within this time constraint and give them kits for making delicious meals at home,” said Lauver.

So, for about the price of a cheeseburger combo, and one-fifth the calories, you can have whole grain apple cinnamon pancakes or blackened chicken with calypso rice.

In the last year, the company has introduced more than 30 of these meal kits and served more than 40,000 people.

The Red Lodge company can be reached at 406-322-3727 or through its Web site, http://www.thehealthypantry.com. Lauver is also working with several Billings-area and national grocery stores to carry his meal kits.

Full Story: http://www.billingsgazette.com/business/article_bea2db80-f800-11de-947a-001cc4c03286.html