Price: $2.00 (free from boyfriend’s freezer)
Serving: 1 meal, 10.3 oz.
Calories: 300
Fat: 8%, 5g
Cholesterol: 8%, 25mg
Sodium: 18%, 430mg
Protein: 17g
Carbs: 15%, 46g
Fiber: 32%, 8g
WW Points: 6 Points

Healthy Choice says: Tender white meat chicken smothered in creamy Alfredo sauce, made with a small amount of strongly flavored Parmesan cheese to create the distinctive Italian-style flavor for fettuccini cooked al dente. The broccoli, peas and carrots complement this filling meal, and the cherries with vanilla crisp dessert finishes this complete meal on a sweet note.

Nicole says: Well, there is certainly a healthy portion of veggies here - you get broccoli with your Chicken Alfredo as well as a side of peas and carrots. The peas and carrots cooked up pretty firm, the broccoli cooked in the sauce so it was limp and mushy. I can’t think of anything that I enjoy limp and mushy.

Healthy Choice’s Alfredo sauce is both flavorless and watery. These things are probably related. The noodle helping is in good proportion to the chicken, but the noodles cook up a bit soft, just like the broccoli. There are three or four larger pieces of chicken (larger than a mini post-it pad) and a couple small pieces - the chicken can boast good texture and appearance, but not much flavor. There was nothing “crisp” about the cherry dessert, but it was not overly sweet, which I liked. This was equivalent to a cup of mid-grade canned pie filling with some white flavored bits on top - I could taste the vanilla, which is saying something considering the blandness of the rest of the meal.

I had to eat this meal with a spoon because we are experiencing a fork shortage at my office. If someone IS hoarding forks, go fork yourself. Eating pasta with a spoon and no fork is no walk in the park.

The dessert was the highlight here, the Alfredo cheese sauce was a big disappointment and I don’t much like peas. I will not buy again. (Well, actually, I didn’t buy this time - I stole it from my boyfriend’s freezer.) If you are shooting for a vegetable-and-fruit-heavy diet, this might be for you, assuming you don’t like cheese.

Price: $2.00
Serving: 1 meal, 10.8 oz.
Calories: 410
Fat: 14%, 9g
Sodium: 25%, 600mg
Protein: 17g
Carbs: 21%, 64g
Fiber: 20%, 5g
WW Points: 8 Points
Diet Exchange: 1 Very Lean meat, 4 starch, 1 vegetable, 1 Fat

Healthy Choice says: Tempura battered chicken breast chunks, covered with a spicy brown sauce and served with a rice medley that includes peas, carrots, and tangy red peppers.

Abi says: Tempura is Japanese for ‘The only fattening item in our entire cuisine arsenal’. This explains why tempura is so popular in the United States. I have long been fascinated with tempura, not that I ate any as a kid. Instead, for the entirety of my childhood, there was a little blue box of ‘Tempura’ on the shelf in our kitchen. The cover of the box showed a battered shrimp being dipped into cocktail sauce. While visiting my mom this summer I noticed that the box is still in the pantry. I’m sure that the tempura batter has lost some of its nutritive value over the years.

Fortunately for me, Healthy Choice has created a tempura-battered item that I can eat without any feelings of guilt or ponderings of product expiration dates. Granted, I’m not especially keen on the meal. While I probably won’t buy it again, I wasn’t mad at myself for purchasing this meal.

I didn’t grow up eating Chinese food, so the term ‘brown sauce’ has positively no meaning. Also, it contains no positive meaning. In fact, to me it implies that a tasteless sauce has been foisted upon protein or vegetables in order to better lubricate them during the eating process. I have studiously avoided any and all meals that are topped with ‘brown sauce’. Considering that I enjoyed Healthy Choice’s version of brown sauce, I would probably like it in restaurant meals too.

The chicken portion of this meal is larger than expected (this is also a 410 calorie, 8 Point meal), the sauce is full of mysterious flavors, and the rice exhibited a lovely fluffiness. If you’re on a diet and looking for some semi-healthful Chinese food, give this meal a try.

Tanya at IateApie.net noted that “this meal was Asian “inspired” and it’s more like a less spicy version of regular General Tso chicken.” [Read her review]

Price: $2.00
Serving: 1 package, 10oz.
Calories: 240
Fat: 9%, 6g
Sodium: 25%, 600mg
Protein: 19g
Carbs: 9%, 26g
Fiber: 20%, 5g
WW Points: 5 Points

Healthy Choice says: Tender wild salmon is sliced and covered in a savory creamy dill sauce and served over penne pasta with a side of fresh broccoli florets.

Abi says: I’ve been thinking a lot about the ingredients in Healthy Choice’s Creamy Dill Salmon meal. When you consider the salmon, it initially seems to be one of the nobler fish in the sea. But upon further review, I must say that the salmon leads a rather unsatisfactory life, a life that ends with either laying eggs and dying or spraying sperm over eggs and dying. I don’t think that’s the way I’d want to go.

The wild salmon, despite its horrible sex-related death, is generally a delicious creature. It is full of nutrients and makes for a wonderful addition to caesar salad, fettuccine alfredo, or bagels with cream cheese. I prefer my salmon fully cooked, and even blackened, but today I learned that frozen salmon cooked in a microwave is a way to terrorize your coworkers and your palate at the same time.

Dear coworkers, let me apologize for the disastrous odor streaming out of the microwave. I knew it was going to smell that bad (hello, salmon and broccoli), but I put the needs of the readers of HeatEatReview.com ahead of your own need to work without horrible smells wafting from the kitchen.

Dear mouth, I am so, so, so sorry for forcing you to endure the agony of microwaved frozen salmon. While fresh salmon may be steamed (in a special container) and emerge from the microwave in a state of deliciousness, frozen salmon was not made for the nuclear era.

Healthy Choice’s broccoli is reminiscent of baby food; mushy and largely flavorless. Fortunately, that is just a small part of the meal. Unfortunately, it turns out to be the best part. The texturally frightening salmon in this meal is cloaked in a dill sauce that never gets past a globularity that would make any cook cringe. If you’re a dill fan (by that I mean that you enjoy all other flavors in a meal being overcome by dill), then you might be able to overlook the lumpy sauce, unevenly cooked pasta, and need to turn partially cooked salmon halfway through the microwaving process. Unfortunately, I am not a big enough fan of dill to overlook those enormous faults in this meal.

On a lighter note, if you’re on a starvation diet you could just heat up this meal and put yourself off food for the rest of the afternoon.

Price: $2.00 (good sale at Safeway)
Serving: 1 package, 13.25 oz.
Calories: 390
Fat: 13%, 8g
Sodium: 35%, 840mg
Protein: 23g
Carbs: 19%, 56g
Fiber: 28%, 7g
WW Points: 8 Winning Points
Diet Exchanges: 2 Lean Meat, 3 Starch, 1 vegetable, 1/2 Fat

Healthy Choice says: In our Lasagna Bake, tender al dente lasagna noodles are tossed with fresh basil, then paired with a traditional sauce. Our sauce is made with tomatoes, garlic and oregano, and completed with crumbled beef and cheese.

This review was written during the height of the summer. I was so unenthusiastic about the meal that I resisted posting a review, thus doing a huge disservice to you, the reader. My sincerest apologies for any tastebuds that may have suffered. What’s interesting is that today is November 9th and it will be approximately 70 degrees Farenheit in Washington, DC.

Abi says: The heat index in Washington, DC is currently over 100 degrees. In fact, the ‘RealFeel’ temperature is 108. Yes, you read that correctly. In times like this the citizens and tourists of DC begin dressing like hookers. Oh, you think I’m kidding, but then you probably don’t live in DC. Hookers remind me of the movie Pretty Woman, which reminds me of being a kid and watching Pretty Woman (ok, a teenager). It also reminded me of being a kid and how much I was scared of lasagna as a child.

I loved spaghetti, fettuccini, and penne, but containers of ricotta scared the bejeezus out of me. I wasn’t sure what it was, but it wasn’t meant to go inside the human body. FYI, I have since been reformed and I loooove lasagna. Unfortunately, Healthy Choice’s lasagna seems to be inspired by what I would have like to eat as a child: noodles, sugary tomato sauce, cheese, and a few crumbles of meat. I’m surprised that Kid Cuisine hasn’t launched a copyright infringement lawsuit against this meal.

Next time I will shell out the money for some Stouffer’s, Marie Callendar’s, or Boston Market lasagna. Trusting Nicole’s sense of taste (ha!) I will probably be able to find a suitable frozen lasagna amongst those other brands. Oh, looking for a diet-safe lasagna? Check out this Smart Ones offering.