FitSugar

Food Review: Five-Cheese Rigatoni by Lean Cuisine

FitSugar — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 11:00:00 -0700

Though I sometimes eat Lean Cuisine products in a pinch, I'm not usually a fan of processed frozen food. A few Lean Cuisine meals arrived at the office the other day, and since I was hungry and strapped for time I thought I would try one with the words "no preservatives" stamped prominently on the box. I chose Five-Cheese Rigatoni, although I don't regularly eat pasta at lunch. The photo on the box looked appealing, like comfort food.

To see if the rigatoni met my expectations, just read more.

The five-cheese rigatoni was actually filling, but two and a half hours a later I was suddenly hungry. The taste was fine, if a little on the sweet side, and the meal was very comforting. While I am still incredulous that a frozen meal could be preservative free, when I read over the ingredients the only one that seemed suspicious was thiamin mononitrate - a B vitamin added to the pasta. There were a couple of different types of "enzyme-modified" cheeses, where enzymes are used to enhance the flavor. Other than that all the ingredients were fairly familiar. Here's the nutritional information.

Serving Size	11.5 ounces
Calories	330
Total Fat	9 g
Saturated Fat	4 g
Cholesterol	20 mg
Sodium	690 mg
Carbs	50 g
Fiber	4 g
Sugar	10 g
Protein	12 g

While this meal was by no means stellar, it did work. Paired with fruit or a salad, the dish might be more satisfying. I so think pasta and cheese for lunch is ultimately a bad idea, and I will be looking of more protein out of my next frozen meal. Any recommendations?

Food Recall: Lean Cuisine Chicken Meals

FitSugar — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 03:00:00 -0800

Oops! Nestlé did it again. In July, Nestlé recalled some Lean Pockets for having plastic bits in them, and now the company has announced it is recalling 879,565 pounds of Lean Cuisine frozen chicken meals for the same reason. The presence of small pieces of hard plastic led some customers to complain and caused one injury. All of the affected products are chicken-based meals.

Check your freezer for the following products subject to recall, and call Nestlé Consumer Services Center at (800) 227-6188 with any questions.

Lean Cuisine Pesto Chicken With Bow Tie Pasta: Production code "8280595912" with a "Best Before" date of "May 2010."
Lean Cuisine Chicken Mediterranean: Production code "8231595912" or "8241595912" with "Best Before" date of "Sept 2010"; production code "8263595912" "8269595911" or "8274595912" with a "Best Before" date of "Oct 2010"; or, production code “8291595912” or “8301595912,” with a “Best Before" date of "Nov 2010.”
Lean Cuisine Chicken Tuscan: Production code “8234595911” and “Best Before" date of "Sept 2009”; production code “8253595911” or “8269595912” with a “Best Before" date of "Oct 2009”; or, production code of “8292595911” or “8296595911” with a “Best Before" date of "Nov 2009.”

My pal Yum isn't pleased with this news either. If you're now inspired to cook your own food, she's has recipes galore for you to browse for inspiration.

Food Review: Lean Cuisine Szechuan Shrimp Stir Fry

FitSugar — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 10:00:00 -0700

Though I sometimes eat Lean Cuisine products in a pinch, I'm not usually a fan of processed frozen food. But when these Lean Cuisine meals arrived at the office the other day, I recognized the Spa Cuisine Classics box from the 100 healthiest supermarket foods list. (The Chicken With Peanut Sauce was named best frozen dinner.) Better yet, the box proclaimed that the meal was preservative free, so I decided to try it.

I had the Szechuan Style Stir Fry With Shrimp, featuring whole-wheat noodles, baby corn, sugar snap peas, carrots, and bell peppers. After I zapped the meal in the Sugar HQ kitchen, several passersby said it looked delicious. To find out if it actually tasted good, read more.

I'm not sure how a frozen meal can be preservative-free, but it's true: there was nothing troubling on this ingredient list, aside from "caramel color." Mostly, it was shrimp and veggies, plus soy sauce, garlic, and seasonings. Though the box promises a "spicy Asian-style sauce," this dish wasn't at all spicy but actually rather sweet and mild. I was sad to find very few snap peas in my box, but the entree redeemed itself with flavorful shrimp and tender pasta that tasted fresh.

Flavor and texture-wise, the Spa Cuisine Classic impressed. Although some co-workers said the portion looked small, it filled me up quite nicely, and with just 240 calories and 2.5 grams of fat, it was a very healthy lunch. Unfortunately, like many frozen meals, this one is very high in sodium: It contains 760 mg, or 32 percent of your daily recommended intake. But if you're looking for a healthy, fast frozen lunch or dinner, this one is better than the average microwave meal, and I appreciate the lack of strange-sounding chemicals in the ingredients.

Have you tried these? If so, what flavor do you like?

Healthy Freezer Meals Evaluated

FitSugar — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 10:15:00 -0800

We all have those times when we just want to pop something in the oven, or microwave and have it come out ready, healthy, and tasty. A simple goal for the girl standing in the freezer aisle at the grocery store pondering hundreds of frozen foods, right? Wrong. Often times we get these healthy frozen meals home and heated up only to find they lack one key ingredient: taste. Lucky for us the good folks over at Epicurious have done the dirty work and evaluated healthy frozen meals to find the best of the best.

Here's their take:

The Winner: It's not just for cereal. . . Kashi, a newcomer to the frozen-dinner scene, was our favorite of the bunch. We really liked its Lemongrass Coconut Chicken, a colorful, well-balanced meal that combines a chewy, nutty whole-grain pilaf, chunks of chicken, carrots, and sugar snap peas with a sauce that had a lemongrass kick. Though Kashi's frozen dinners aren't marketed as diet meals, this one comes in a fairly large portion (10 ounces) for only 300 calories, which is comparable to a similarly sized diet meal, plus it has fiber (7 grams) to fill you up. We also liked Kashi's Chicken Pasta Pomodoro, which has toothsome multigrain pasta, veggies, and a well-spiced, not overly sweet tomato sauce.

There's more so read more.

Runners-Up: If you're looking for the comfort of pasta with an Alfredo-style sauce, we recommend Lean Cuisine's Chicken Fettuccini Dinnertime Selects, a fairly big portion of pasta with a creamy sauce and fresh-tasting broccoli, along with a side dish of caramel apples for dessert (12 ounces, 360 calories). Also good was the cumbersomely named Weight Watchers Smart Ones Bistro Selections Chicken Fettucini [sic], which had the cheesiest-tasting sauce but no veggies (10 ounces, 340 calories).

I always loved Kashi myself, so I'm glad I'm not the only one supporting such a great brand. If you have a healthy frozen meal that you're particularly fond of, share it with us in the comments section below.

Source

Lean Cuisine Flat Bread Melts

FitSugar — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 02:00:00 -0800

I am not one for processed food, let me state that up front. In a recent pinch for lunch the other day I tried a Lean Cuisine Flat Bread. I tried the chicken pesto melt because even in a pinch I have a weakness for pesto. The flat bread cooks in less than three minutes, but needs to rest, much like a steak, for 60 seconds. It tasted good though not great, but only kept me full for about two hours. There was a generous portion of chicken and I had a sweet sun dried tomato in almost every bite. The problem with many of these quick food solutions is you need other food to make them a sustaining meal, but when you are on the go chances are high you don't just happen to have a salad or some steamed broccoli stashed in your back pocket.

To see nutritional information and what the flat bread truly looks like, just read more

The flat bread looks very much like the image on the box, you can see there are a lot of red peppers and sun dried tomatoes.

Calories	Fat (g)	Protein (g)	Cholesterol (mg)	Sodium (mg)	Fiber (g)	Sugar (g)
330	8	22	20	630	5	6

My main problem with this meal is the amount of sodium, since it contains 25% of the recommended daily intake of sodium (2,300mg is the upper limit of healthy per day). Plus why not use whole wheat in the crust and make the bread part healthy and more than just a vehicle for toppings? I do think it is great that Lean Cuisine gets credit for not using trans fat in this one.