Healthy Choice Garlic Herb Shrimp

Just a simple meal review here…

Today’s meal is the Healthy Choice Garlic Herb Shrimp.  This is one of Healthy Choice’s “Steaming Entrée” products – which is not the line with a colander nested into a bowl, but the line that includes a small, single tray that does not require puncturing of its plastic wrapper for cooking.  The cardboard packaging portrays the product to be chock full of vegetables and other natural ingredients; there is even a stamp-like image that states “Fresh Taste from Quality Ingredients” and photographs of the individual natural ingredients.  The ingredients listed begin with whole grain pasta, zucchini, asparagus, and shrimp.

Another thing that further solidifies this product’s description as “healthy” is its taste.  Which is to say…it tastes very boring.  Now don’t get me wrong; as I’ve said on many occasions, I like the taste of a good fresh vegetable.  But somehow this product’s bits of asparagus and zucchini just didn’t add the flavor I desired.  Additionally, the sauce was overly mild – a bizarre statement, many would say, about a garlic-flavored sauce (since afternoon meetings following consumption of such a named sauce are typically not a good idea). 

I wouldn't say I would never eat this again, but I can’t say I’d turn to it if I was looking for rewarding flavor. 

Details

Calories:  260
Fat:  7 g
Sodium:  600 mg
Notable good nutritional content:  Folic Acid 20%
Notes on cooking:   single shot, 3 - 3 ½ minutes
Notes on packaging:  clear plastic tray, recyclable 

Frozen meals' nutritional report card

I have to tell you that I am woefully disappointed in the nutritional content of most frozen meals.  I am discovering more and more that “lean” does not necessarily equal “nutritional”.  Most meals can boast only mentionable percentages of one or two key vitamins.  That said, here are some important things to keep in mind:

1. Take a multivitamin.  I don’t know that I need to say anything additional about this.  You know it’s a good idea.
2. Consider thoughtfully how you will supplement your frozen meal.  Especially for those of us who consume our frozen meals for lunch at work, it is fairly unrealistic to think that we won’t need to eat anything else the remaining hours we work.  While the frozen meal may be good for giving us some calories, protein, and carbs, but may not suffice when it comes to nutrition, why not consider a piece of fruit?  What about some yogurt (again, preferably with fruit)?  Or my favorite from the past few days – some celery with peanut butter?  Yum, yum!  In addition to well-planned supplements providing you with additional needed nutrition, they might also prevent a 3 p.m. trip to the vending machine.
3. You really should opt for the frozen meals that boast healthfulness.  I cannot even imagine the contents of those that do not claim at least “lean” or “healthy” and you likely won’t find me blogging about them.  Of course, these are marketing claims only; I will try to cut through the fat and call them like the contents read here on the blog.
4. Consider your breakfast.  I know it doesn’t really have anything to do with this blog, but please eat breakfast.  You’ve been told by a million sources just how important it is.  In the past year or so I picked up a couple tidbits about breakfast that have stuck with me.  Unfortunately I don’t recollect the source of these tidbits, so take them with a grain of salt and/or look them up if you want to:  one tidbit was that sumo wrestlers do not eat breakfast because this helps them pour on the pounds later in the day.  The other was that if you ate a breakfast that contained *eggs*, you’d likely consume about 300 calories less over the course of the day than if you didn’t.  By consuming early in the day, you avoid some later-day mistakes! 

Have I mentioned fruit?

Yes, I believe I mentioned it in my last entry.  Fruit, I believe, is the nutritional saving grace of frozen meals.  Today's meal, the Healthy Choice Pineapple Chicken, contains 50% of the U.S. RDA of Vitamin A and 25% of Vitamin C.  I attribute it primarily to the pineapple, but it could also be the yummy addition of carrots and red peppers.  Additionally, this is a brown rice meal – kudos to the whole grain power of brown rice!  And there are only 190 mg of sodium, which seems amazingly low compared to what I’ve noted in other meals (560 mg in my most recent entry). 

Where this meal stumbles is in the chicken.  The chicken is defined in the ingredient list as “fried tempura fritter chicken breast chunks.”  Ew.  I’m just not sure that any kind of frozen and reheated tempura could ever be good, at least not when cooked in a microwave when it is already mixed with cooked vegetables, rice, and sauce.  Not a fan.  A few bites of it were tough and difficult to chew.  I believe there are better textured, better tasting meals of a similar recipe available and I intend to uncover them in the coming weeks.

Details

Calories:  380

Fat:  7 g / 0 g trans fat

Sodium:  190 mg

Notable good nutritional content:  50% Vitamin A / 25% Vitamin C

Notes on cooking:  3 – 3 ½ minutes, single shot

Notes on packaging:  black tray, recyclable

Frozen meals - from passion to suicide (actually vice versa)

While I certainly don’t subscribe to the idea being mocked here, I do find this clip from The Onion about a frozen food company printing suicide prevention tips on its packaging as hilarious as Jim Gaffigan’s “Hot Pockets” bit.  It seems as though it’s a necessary addition to a blog about frozen meals. 


If the embedded video doesn't work in your browser (I've found that it doesn't in some), click the link below the embed to watch from The Onion's site.

Stouffers To Include Suicide Prevention Tips On Single Serve Microwavable Meals

However, I am of the opinion that it is not so much loneliness that causes the consumption of frozen meals, but the need for speed.  Many times I find that I don’t even have the time for the 4 ½ minutes in the microwave required by the product.  Many times, while facing an impending 1 p.m. meeting, I’ve postponed my microwave lunch until 3 p.m. or later, sometimes even ultimately eating while standing up.  More on this later…


The favorite brand in the office

In our office, it seems as though Lean Cuisine is the single-serving frozen meal brand of choice.  That being the case, I can’t believe it has taken me until now – my fourth entry – to write about a Lean Cuisine product.  Today’s meal is the Lean Cuisine Ginger Garlic Stir Fry with Chicken. 

I don’t believe I’d ever tried this product before.  Primarily, that’s because of the broccoli.  Broccoli and I generally don’t get along, though we were able to be civil to each other on this particular Tuesday.  The other vegetables and the chicken were also good – moderately flavorful and of a good consistency – and the ginger sauce was a bit more unique than some of the other Asian-inspired sauces found in frozen meals.  The noodles, however, left a little something to be desired.  I am not well-versed in Asian noodles, but these seemed rather thick and spaghetti-like and not very Asian by my taste.  They are whole wheat, though, and that nutrition should be worth extra points. 

When I went online to find the official company information about this product, I was amused to discover that the Lean Cuisine website gives consumers the opportunity to review products.  I clicked on the link to read the customer reviews.  Well!  APPARENTLY, this product used to have brown rice in place of the whole wheat noodles and let me tell you, there are some consumers out there who are quite unhappy about the change!  I can’t help but repost some of my most favorite comments on the topic:

I kept looking for my fav dish and I just realized today that the rice was replaced with noodles!! Whyyyyy? It tastes weird with the noodles.

Sad indeed to have a great product with the rice and flavor then to change it. Guess you lost two customers completely. Seems the powers that be don't listen. 

I'm so happy i'm not the only one here who thinks the rice version was way better. Please Lean Cuisine change it back if you love ur customers! Honestly the rice one was my favorite... I miss it A LOT

I was very disappointed when they switched the recipe from rice to pasta. The meal just isn't as good anymore. Bring back the rice!

Do you guys read the reviews that we take our time to write? It seems everyone is asking for the rice and you guys are still producing this. Was the rice that expensive? Please bring the rice back!!

I fear I don’t presently possess this level of passion for my frozen meals. I think that's fine, and it's probably fine for you too!

Reducing the carbon footprint of your frozen meals

As a result of a little online research, I was pleased to discover that much of the plastic packaging in the frozen meals I eat is indeed recyclable.  In my community of Springfield, Illinois, all numbers of plastic products are recyclable except for #6.  My most recent meal had one of those black plastic trays and it was a #1.  Of course, in order to recycle this tray, I had to clean it.  But even though the meal had some melted cheese involved, the tray still cleaned up rather easily; it was worth it to me to spend a few extra seconds at the sink to get it clean for recycling.

What was disappointing in my findings about recycling was that the cardboard boxes in which most frozen meals are packaged may not be recyclable.  It seems that boxes built for the freezer are sprayed with a plastic coating that protects the contents against freezer burn. (If you haven’t noticed this before, you might want to compare a frozen meal box with a cereal or cracker box and you’ll find this coating to be obvious.)  At any rate, it seems as if the coating makes these boxes unable to break down in the recycled paper pulping process, according to several websites. Prior to this research, however, I’d never been instructed to not include frozen meals boxes in with my other cardboard recycling.  This gives me pause…and hope…about the possibility that perhaps some facilities are able to recycle it.

Click here for information about Springfield, Illinois’ recycling details.  

A high-brow, vegetarian take on an old standard

Today’s meal is the Healthy Choice Roasted Red Pepper Marinara .  I find this to be a healthy, somewhat more flavorful version of the standard pasta-and-red-sauce concoction.  The pasta is a nine-grain cavatelli and it’s consistency is good.  The sauce, while much more pleasing in consistency and flavor than an old-school spaghetti meal, is not particularly challenging to the palette; red peppers do not really permeate the taste.  Yet this meal is part of a line of products that is designed to feel sophisticated.  That said, I would say this is a good meal for a day at the office when you need to give the illusion of sophistication while in reality, you’d rather just open a can of Spaghettios.

At only 270 calories, this meal is not a significant source of particular vitamins and nutrients.  15% of the RDV of Calcium and Vitamin C are the only mentionable nutrients involved (given the parmesan, romano and asiago cheeses, only 15% of Vitamin C is rather surprising).  Some will balk at the absence of meat, but I think it’s great to see vegetarian options available in the frozen meal section since multiple servings of meat daily are not necessary for continued good nutrition.  

Meal Review Number Two

I have to start out by thanking everyone for all the great suggestions about different elements to highlight in a review of a frozen meal.  Is the packaging recyclable?  Can it be heated in a single programmable segment at full power, or is there a lot of cooking and half power, stirring, cooking at full power, and stirring.  And just how long does it take to cook it?  I will keep all of these suggestions in mind and incorporate them into future meal reviews.

Can a frozen meal really be spicy?

Yesterday for lunch I had the Healthy Choice Spicy Caribbean Chicken.  This was your standard-sized meal for the calorie-conscious, which is to say that the portion size seemed rather small.  Indeed, there were only 310 calories which I believe to be an impressively small amount for an entire meal, so it’s no wonder the portion size is small.  However, this mix of chicken, pineapple, black beans, and corn had brown rice as its base, giving it 30 grams of whole grain fullness (brown rice always seems to fill me up easily). 

The beans and the corn had an unfortunate consistency that made it seem like they had been dehydrated and then rehydrated.  The pineapples, while a great addition to a frozen meal entrée, had a less-than-flavorful canned quality.  The chicken was fine; not great, but fine.

As to the question of whether or not a frozen meal really can be spicy, I have my doubts.  This meal’s jerk sauce had a spicy level that was about equal with your standard “medium” salsa.  Personally, I don’t find this to be a terrible thing, but does that really qualify it as “spicy”?  Additionally, the entire meal seemed to have the same flavor.  No individual bites of chicken, corn, rice or beans seemed to stand out with their own flavor.  The pineapple, of course, was still noticeable in its sweetness, but not enough to help give this meal high marks in the category of flavor.  It *was*, however, enough to give a person 25% of their daily recommended value of vitamin C.  Not too shabby.

It should be noted that this meal *was* able to be cooked in a single shot of several minutes, without additional stirring and other inconveniences.  That's worth extra bonus points.