Prepared foods covers composite dishes assembled from multiple ingredients: pizza, burgers, burritos, sushi rolls, mac and cheese, fried chicken, lasagna, sandwiches. This category also picks up popular fast-food items when USDA Branded has an entry. Values reflect the typical restaurant or packaged version — home-cooked variants can score very differently.
Prepared foods are where portion size and overall diet quality collide. A fast-food burger is not ruinous in isolation, but a burger-fries-soda combination stacks calories, sodium, and saturated fat in a single meal. The USDA DGA does not ban any food but recommends these items be occasional rather than daily.
Bean burritos, sushi rolls with rice and vegetables, and lean chicken sandwiches typically score in the 40-55 range. Cheese pizza and mac and cheese sit around 35-45. Fried chicken, cheeseburgers, and loaded breakfast sandwiches fall below 35 because of combined saturated fat, sodium, and NOVA classification. Portion size — which FoodScore does not directly penalize — compounds the effect.