Price: $2.50
Serving: 1 tray, 12.3 oz.
Calories: 360 per serving
Fat: 9%, 6g
Cholesterol: 13%, 40mg
Sodium: 25%, 590mg
Protein: 20g
Carbohydrates: 19%, 56g
Fiber: 28%, 7g
Sugar: 17g
Weight Watchers Points: 7 POINTS

Healthy Choice says: beef in a Spicy Southwestern Style Sauce, Whole Grain Rice, Vegetable Blend & Caramel Apple Multigrain Crisp.

Jessica says: Healthy Choice Fajita Steak is good! As you can see in the pictures, this meaty Mexican-inspired dish with a kick had a healthy serving of EVERYTHING. Every compartment was filled up with frozen dinner foods. There was a admirable amount of whole grain rice, a decent helping of thick, beef chunks, plenty of corn with just a few beans (that’s the way I like it, but if you’re hoping for tons of beans, this isn’t for you) and the very reason why I love Healthy Choice complete meals, Apple Crisp! Mmmm!

I think the addition of cilantro in the vegetable blend was not my favorite combination, but the corn wasn’t too soft and the cilantro wasn’t so strong that I couldn’t enjoy the sweet corn. The Spicy Southwestern Style Sauce was a little spicy, but not bad at all, and there was plenty for not just the meat but also to mix in with the rice. Of course the beef is the typical frozen dinner beef, but the chunks were thick and there were several thumb-sized pieces. The Apple Crisp has always been my favorite Healthy Choice dessert, but you can definitely tell it’s a healthier version of the sticky, gooey mess my mom used to make me.

Eat it or leave it? Overall, I will definitely buy this again. It’s always hard to find frozen dinners that actually have a lot of food and variety. Healthy Choice really did a great job with this one.

Price: $1.25 (note if not US dollars)
Serving: 4.6oz.
Calories: 370 per serving
Fat: 27%, 18g
Cholesterol: 13%, 40mg
Sodium: 35%, 840 mg
Protein: 19g
Carbohydrates: 37g
Fiber: 6%, 1g
Sugar: 7g
Weight Watchers Points: 9 POINTS

Smiley’s says: Flame Broiled Patty Real American Cheese (I thought American cheese is processed cheese to begin with, how can there be “fake American cheese?) Microwavable Sesame Seed Bun

Chang says: About 10 years ago, grocery stores in China began selling pre-packaged hamburgers (with lettuce and various sauces, including thousand island dressing). I used to eat one everyday for breakfast (Why breakfast you ask? Well my grandmother would only cook me lunch and dinner.) Like all fad foods, this trend died down within three years, but I still get nostalgic whenever I eat low-quality hamburgers (by which I mean lower-than-McDonald’s)…

…which is the only reason why I gave this cheeseburger two stars instead of say one or zero.

I tweaked the microwaving a bit by nuking the bun first for about 20 seconds and heat the patty and the cheese separately so the bun won’t get soggy. At the first bite it did feel like ‘flame broiled”, but a few seconds later I realized I’ve been tricked by liquid smoke. Despite a lot of sodium the whole thing is bland (I thought I had a packet of ketchup stolen from Burger King in my drawer, but I couldn’t find it.) The worst part is the patty. You know how good burgers (scratch the “good”, even Burger King’s burgers) are supposed to juicy, greasy, and slightly chewy? Well this burger has the texture of…poor quality sausage patties (sans the flavor), it’s soft, almost soggy (but not juicy or greasy) and you can’t stop wondering what’s in it. (I can stop wondering now, the second and third ingredients are water and textured soy protein).

The best part in this cheeseburger is the bun, but then you can’t really mess up a hamburger bun, right?

{In effort to find the most disturbing cheeseburger-related video that did not involve cats, I present to you Twilight…..with Cheeseburgers – Ed.}

Price: $5.00
Serving: 1/3 pizza, 4.53oz
Calories: 350 per serving
 Calories from Fat: 162
Fat: 28%, 18g
 Saturated Fat: 40%, 8g
 Trans Fat: 1g
Cholesterol: 12%, 35mg
Sodium: 33%, 800mg
Protein: 16g
Carbohydrates: 10%, 31g
Fiber: 8%, 2g
Sugar: 3g
Weight Watchers: 9 POINTS

California Pizza Kitchen says: Crispy thin pizza topped with two types of pepperoni, diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, mozzarella cheeses, fontina cheese, and smoked gouda cheese. US inspected and passed by Department of Agriculture. Not ready to eat.

Abi says: After slicing this up and serving it, my husband looked at his 2 slices of pizza and asked “Did you take all of the pepperoni?”

“No,” I replied “that’s how much comes on each piece.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. I just baked it.”

“I don’t think we should buy this anymore.”

And we haven’t purchased it since. Oh, we’ve had the Sicilian Meat Lovers pizza and the Barbecue Chicken and the Garlic Chicken, but we haven’t gone back to the pathetic pepperoni pizza.

I’m always a bit disgruntled when the picture on a box of food is dramatically different from what comes out of the box. I don’t expect my dry cereal to come with milk. And I don’t assume a box of Bisquick will magically turn into pancakes on its own. What gets me miffed are “serving suggestions” that show twice as much chicken or pepperoni or pieces of broccoli as actually comes in the package.

The “serving suggestion” is about adding other ingredients or products, not about telling me to buy two pizzas and then cannibalize one of them so that I can have more than 1.25 slices of pepperoni per slice of pizza.

Aside from the pepperoni shortage, this is a decent pizza: the sauce is savory rather than sweet, the cheese covers the entire pizza without turning into a stringy shield of goo, and the crust is divinely crisp. This is fantastic crust. Lovely crust. Delicious crust. This is thin, airy not-too-crunchy crust.

But even a great crust cannot make up for the lack of pepperoni. The shortage is beyond irksome, especially on a “gourmet” frozen pizza. The picture on the box shows THREE TIMES the amount of actual pepperoni that comes on this pizza. THREE TIMES. ARgh.

Ingredients: Wheat Flour, Water, Tomatoes, Pepperoni (Pork and Beef, Salt, Water, Spices, Dextrose, Natural Smoke Flavor, Lactic Acid Starter Culture, Oleoresin Paprika, Flavoring, Sodium Nitrite, BHA, BHT, Citric Acid), Pepperoni (Pork, Beef, Salt, Sugar, Spices, Paprika, Lactic Acid Starter Culture, Oleoresin of Paprika, Sodium Ascorbate, Flavoring, Sodium Nitrite, BHA, BHT, Citric Acid), Diced Mozzarella Cheese (Pasteurized Milk, Skim Milk, Cheese Culture, Salt, Enzymes), Shredded Low Moisture Part Skim Mozzarella Cheese (Part-Skim Milk, Cheese Culture, Salt, Enzymes), Shredded Fontina Cheese (Pasteurized Milk, Cheese Culture, Salt, Enzymes), Shredded Smoked Gouda Cheese (Pasteurized Part-Skim Milk, Cheese Culture, Salt, Enzymes, Annatto [Color], Smoke Flavor), Tomato Paste, Tomato Juice, Contains Less than 2% of Soybean Oil, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean and Cottonseed Oil, Sugar, Grated Parmesan Cheese (Pasteurized Part-Skim Milk, Cheese Culture, Salt, Enzymes, [Potassium Sorbate to Protect Flavor]), Salt, Olive Oil, Yeast, Garlic, Mono- and Diglycerides, Spice, Citric Acid, Artificial Flavor, Sodium Citrate, Xanthan Gum, Soy Lecithin, Flavor, Beta Carotene (Color).

Price: $3.50 (on sale!)
Serving: 1/6 of a pizza, 5oz
Calories: 370 per serving
 Calories from Fat: 140
Fat: 25%, 16g
 Saturated Fat: 16%, 3.5g
 Trans Fat: 1g
Cholesterol: 7%, 20mg
Sodium: 27%, 640mg
Protein: 18g
Carbohydrates: 13%, 40g
Fiber: 12%, 3g
Sugar: 7g
Weight Watchers: 8 POINTS per serving

DiGiorno says: Now two favorites come together! Experience the savory flavor of garlic, baked right into our signature rising crust pizza. Made with 100% real cheese. Pepperoni made with pork, chicken and beef. US inspected and passed by Department of Agriculture.

Abi says: The 2-for-$7 sale is the 2nd greatest invention in the history of the pizza, the first being pizza itself. A 2-for-$7 sale takes the otherwise crazy price of many a frozen pizza (uh, $7? Sheesh) and lowers it to an extremely digestible price point. It also means that I try pizzas I might not otherwise purchase, pizzas like DiGiorno’s Garlic Bread Pepperoni Pizza.

Yes, it is a side dish and main dish all in one! The pizza comes in a square shape, which is awesome if you have a family where half the people like crust and half the people don’t. Otherwise, it means that you have to eat the pizza with a knife and fork or make large, oddly-shaped slices so that everyone can have some crust to hold onto. The crust looks and smells garlicky, but says ’stale’ to my garlic-loving tastebuds. Alas, the use of dried garlic is the likely culprit, making me wonder how they got that garlic-buttery-looking sheen on the pizza crust. Is that why beta carotene is listed in the ingredients? Is carrot extract being used to fool me into thinking this pizza is garlicky?

Beyond the attempt at garlickyness (wow, spell check allowed that word) is a super-thick (and wide) pizza crust, a slathering of bright red sauce, the requisite stretchy mozzarella and nitrite-filled pepperoni. Oh pepperoni, I adore you.

Sorry, I have a thing for cured meats. You should have seen me the day the Columbus salame factory in San Francisco caught on fire. I was freaking out.

I did not freak out over the crust in this DiGiorno pizza. I’m okay with crust, but I don’t need this much of the surface area of my pizza to take the form of bread. Sure, bread is okay on the bottom of the pizza, but I did not buy this pizza so that I could gnaw my way through several inches of crust before I could get to the good part (pepperoni and cheese). Admission: I ate half of this pizza. Okay, not precisely half. But if you cut this pizza in half, and then removed the majority of the crust from one of those halves, I ate the non-crusty parts.

I was hungry. And after I ate the pizza I was totally full. The mozzarella and pepperoni portions were satisfying in a way that only junk food can accomplish: each slice of pizza had to be thoroughly mopped with a paper towel first and even then it was greasy! And I was okay with that. It is frozen pizza laden (okay, not laden – you can clearly count that there are not that many pepperonis) with pepperoni, it can be greasy if it wants to be.

If you’re looking a grossly decadent frozen pizza, DiGiorno’s Garlic Bread line contains the candidate for you. But if you like a not-insane amount of crust on your pizza, I recommend trying a thin crust option.