Price: $2.50 on sale
Serving: One tray, 11 oz.
Calories: 290
Fat: 17% Daily Value, 11g
Cholesterol: 18%, 55mg
Sodium: 34%, 820mg
Protein: 29g
Carbohydrates: 8%, 24g
Fiber: 32%, 8g
Weight Watchers Points: 6 Points

Kraft says: Breast strips with rib meat, penne pasta, broccoli, red bell peppers and asparagus in garlic parmesan sauce.

Andrew says: Kraft needs to work on their flavor text for South Beach meals. They all have the same lame note from the author of the diet and no real exposition on the meal you’re about to eat. In any case, I felt kind of bad that I had to go and drop that zero star rating on the South Beach wraps a while back, so I got a couple other meals of theirs that I expected to be more satisfying.

The first thing I noticed about this meal was the watery sauce. And then I realized that the penne pasta is whole wheat. The South Beach Diet must be pretty big on whole wheat, since Kraft uses whole wheat in their pizza crusts, the tortillas for those awful wraps and the pastas. The pasta isn’t bad, though it could be a little more al dente. By now I’ve come to realize that any frozen food pasta is a mini disaster waiting to happen, so any half-decent pasta is somewhat miraculous. Kraft’s South Beach pasta is half-decent.

Also I’d like to direct the readers’ attention to the inclusion of asparagus here. This is the first time I’ve ever had asparagus in a frozen meal and it turned out pretty nicely. It had a good buttery flavor to it and it wasn’t overly rubbery. It was my favorite part of the meal, actually, because the chicken (usually the highlight of frozen food for me) was both sparse and small.

The garlic parmesan sauce is mostly cheesy with some herbal notes, but it’s really not that garlicky at all. That said, it’s pretty smooth and kind of buttery (maybe that’s where the asparagus gets it). Also, sherry wine is in the ingredient list: Classy!

All in all, the meal was kind of forgettable. Certainly not one I’d avoid, but I could see myself buying this again in a month or so thinking I was trying something new, then starting to eat it and saying “hey, I HAVE had this before!” and feeling kind of let down.

I’m only 25, but this has happened more than I’d like to admit.

Price: $2.50
Serving: 1 packagea, 10.3 oz.
Calories: 260
Fat: 12%, 8g
Cholesterol: 22%, 65mg
Sodium: 35%, 840mg
Protein: 29g
Carbs: 8%, 23g
Fiber: 32%, 8g

South Beach Diet says: Breast strips with rib meat and fettuccine pasta in alfredo sauce and tomatoes, with broccoli, red bell peppers, and yellow carrots

Jenn says: All good things must come to an end. Today, my love affair with South Beach Diet food is coming to an end. To say this was a love affair would be putting it mildly as South Beach has reigned atop my world of frozen entrees since its inception. Seeing South Beach Diet food on sale made for a great trip to the grocery store. The meat was real, the sauces snappy and the vegetables plentiful. However, the Chicken Alfredo a la Roma is none of these.

As you can see from the picture, the chicken in the actual meal is no where near the size of the chicken on package. Lean Cuisine alfredo sauce outshines South Beach Diet alfredo sauce any day. And the vegetables were mushy. While I’ve never actually been on the real South Beach Diet, (my friend Dana did it and got so hungry in a meeting that she started shaking) I supported meals that were full of real meat and ample amounts of vegetables. Chicken Alfredo a la Roma needs to be kicked out of the South Beach Diet family. It’s giving its brothers and sister on the frozen food and snack food aisles a bad name.

Price: $2.50 (on sale)
Serving: 1 container, 10 oz.
Calories: 270
Fat: 17%, 11g
Sodium: 28%, 660mg
Protein: 44%, 28g
Carbohydrates: 4%, 13g
Fiber: 16%, 4g

South Beach says: Grilled breast strips with rib meat with garlic and herb sauce and green beans almondine.

Abi says: This meal contains an impressive amount of protein. Unfortunately, it contains sauces that render the chicken and green beans inedible, therefore the 44% of your recommended daily allowance of protein is useless.

I lack the sophisticated scientific machinery necessary to confirm that the sauce in Kraft’s South Beach Diet Garlic Herb Chicken actually contained garlic or herbs. Instead, I can only wonder why Kraft had to take some decent chicken breast strips (no measly cubes here!) and cover them with this much sauce. It reminded me of childhood experimentation with the spice cupboard at home and the horrific spiced milk that I couldn’t convince my little brother to drink.

But maybe you like extremely strong yet unidentifiable sauces. In that case, you’d love the green beans, which should be awesome (slices of almond, yum), but end up floating in a pool of oily water. Ok, I don’t know if it was actually oil, but it had the definite sheen of a city puddle after a rainstorm.

If you’re not eating this meal in front of other people, I highly recommend blotting each item with a paper towel before consumption. If that is not a feasible option, then you could just scrape the chicken pieces along the side of the tray, hoping to rid yourself of as much sauce as possible, while saving your dignity.

Price: $2.99 for two wraps
Serving: 1 wrap, 4.16oz.
Servings per Container: 1.5
Calories: 220
Fat: 11%, 7g
Cholesterol: 7%, 20mg
Sodium: 19%, 460mg
Protein: 25g
Carbs: 9%, 26g
Fiber: 24%, 6g
Weight Watchers Points: 4 per wrap

Kraft says: Each South Beach Diet Wrap provides a hot, delicious lunch or dinner at home or on-the-go. Enjoy with a small mixed green salad and your favorite South Beach Diet Dressing!

Andrew says: I’ve had good luck with South Beach Diet frozen dinners lately. I’m not on the South Beach Diet, but Kraft has a decent-looking lineup of gourmet-ish diet meals and, for the most part, they’ve been satisfying and tasty.

Still, I should have heeded the alarm bells going off in my head when I decided to buy two boxes of South Beach Diet wraps. How often does a frozen tortilla come out right in the microwave? I think mankind is still waiting. How often does a frozen mish-mash of cheese, meat and veggies reconstitute into anything other than a barfy paste? (I’m looking at you too, Hot Pockets!)

So I brought the Chicken Monterey wraps to work after a disappointing experience earlier in the week with the Denver Omlette-style breakfast wraps (somehow flavorless save for a disgusting onion aftertaste) and hoped for the best. The smell emanating from the microwave wasn’t entirely terrible, so I thought at least I’d get some flavor out of this one.

I guess my first warning sign should have been that the wrap stuck to the paper plate I’d deposited it onto. More accurately, paper plate material stuck to the wrap. Gross. The first bite of the wrap was entirely made up of the whole-wheat tortilla, which had hardened into something resembling card stock. The next bite included some soggier tortilla as well as some melty but flavorless cheese, a bit of completely flavorless chicken, a “red pepper”, and some way-too-mustard-y dijon sauce. There was supposed to be Monterey Jack cheese in there but all I experienced was this awful dijon sauce, filling every taste bud with a sense of nauseous dread.

I ate it all, and I survived. So did the terrible sour dijon aftertaste, unfortunately. But then I thought, “you know, maybe I overcooked it or something. I have one more wrap in the box, I’m going to try it later.” Yes, I am THAT DEDICATED TO FOOD REVIEWING. I adjusted the cooking time down slightly, took one bite and promptly deposited it into the trash. It wasn’t just me: This was pretty awful. I’ll still get other South Beach stuff, but the wraps are by far the worst frozen food I’ve had in months.