Price: $2.00 on sale
Serving: 1 meal, 12 oz.
Calories: 260
Fat: 12%, 8g
Cholesterol: 15%, 45mg
Sodium: 32%, 770mg
Protein: 27g
Carbs: 18%, 53g
Fiber: 16%, 4g
Diet Exchanges: 2 Lean Meat, 2 Starch, 1 Vegetable, 1/2 Fruit, 1/2 Skim Milk
WW Points: 8 Points

Lean Cuisine says: Roasted chicken tenderloins, freshly made fettuccini and hand-picked broccoli tossed in a creamy Alfredo sauce with parmesan and romano cheeses, served with apples in caramel sauce.

Nicole says: Twelve ounces of food. That’s pretty exciting. Of course, I have a couple Hungry-Man meals at home that could bench press ten Lean Cuisine meals anytime (or sit on them and squash them to death,) but it’s nice to stay on the reasonable portions side of things and still have some expectation of satiety.

This meal require some babysitting - partway through cooking, you must pull back the plastic film, stir main meal section, re-cover, and continue heating. While I appreciate fully cooked food, I think that the spinning motion of the microwave plate should suffice for stirring.

The alfredo sauce was not bad - sure, it had the texture and appearance of a sauce that separates and doesn’t re-mix so well upon reheating, but it tasted A-OK. The noodles were just a touch on the soft side, but served in a hearty quantity. The chicken portion included three large (staple remover) chicken peices and four smaller ones (the hole in the center of a roll of Scotch tape). The flavor of the chicken was chicken-y and texture is appropriately meat-like. The broccoli is bright green, firm, and scrumptious.

And there’s dessert! Apples in caramel sauce! I really think we need to advocate for a law requiring frozen meals to include a meal-appropriate dessert. This one is quick and delightful with a nice mix of pie-quality spiced apples and sweet thin caramel sauce. And I’m spent. It is the size that matters, and this one is a happy medium.

Price: $2.00
Serving: 1 package, 11oz.
Calories: 280
Fat: 7%, 5g
Sodium: 21%, 510mg
Protein: 22g
Carbs: 12%, 36g
Fiber: 13%, 3g
WW Points: 5 Points

Lean Cuisine says: A roasted, herb-seasoned chicken breast topped with a flavorful tomato- basil sauce with Parmesan cheese. Accompanied by spaghetti, tossed with grilled zucchini, yellow peppers and tomatoes.

Abi says: Take a long look at the photo of this meal. You may have a bit of trouble finding the chicken, so I will help you out. The biscuit-cutter sized chicken cutlet is located on the left-hand side of the tray. Yes, biscuit-cutter size. If you don’t know the size of a biscuit cutter, then consider a soda can and the approximate diameter of a cross-section. Approximately 1.75 inches in diameter. Diameter is the one that goes across the circle. Circumfrence is the one that goes around the circle.

Do you ever feel odd about using decimal points and ’standard’ measurement. I feel weird about it, but I don’t stop doing it. This is partly because 1.75 in fractions doesn’t look so hot on the internet.

Regardless of the measurement system used, this is still a very, very small piece of chicken. I took one look at the cooked meal and started making post-Lean Cuisine Lunch Plans. You’ve been there. You know how it goes when you eat some sort of diet meal and realize that drinking 2 extra gallons of water a day is not going to make up for the immense hunger you feel. I don’t enjoy that feeling.

I think I’d be angrier about the lack of chicken, mediocre spaghetti (though significantly better than Smart Ones spaghetti that you’ll learn about next week), and super-mushy vegetables if I was not currently consuming Chex Mix and a Diet Coke. It is a great combo. If this Chex Mix contained some M&M’s then I would be perfectly happy. Ok, not perfectly. Perfect happiness might come at the confluence of Diet Coke, Chex Mix with M&M’s, and a lounge chair at a beach.

If you eat this meal, you will not be perfectly happy. You’ll be hungry almost immediately and you’ll be angry at all of the people around you because you totally know that you were gypped out of a good lunch. Also, the people around you will get mad at you for being angry because you’ve now read this review and should know better than to be mean to them.

Price: $2.89
Serving: 1 Bowl, 10 1/2 oz.
Calories: 290
Fat: 11%, 7g
Sodium: 26%, 640mg
Protein: 22g
Carbs: 11%, 33g
WW Points: 6 Points
Diet Exchange: 1 1/2 Lean meat, 2 starch, 1 vegetable, 1/2 Skim Milk

Lean Cuisine says: Roasted white meat chicken with penne pasta, red and yellow peppers and zucchini in a creamy basil sauce

Nicole says: Lean Cuisine’s Creamy Basil Chicken bowl looks and smells absolutely lovely. Big slices of red and ywlloe peppers, chunks of zucchini, nine or ten small chicken chunks of jacks to shooter marble size with various other tiny chunks (not reformed patties) and a hearty helping of penne pasta, all coated in a light, creamy basil sauce.

The thickness of the penne ensures that the pasta doesn’t cook up too soft. Good choice, LC! The veggies are pretty soft, though - though they retained a good color and flavor, the zucchini is very mushy and the peppers are just barely crisp. The chicken has a nice texture and is well compliments by the basil sauce, which coats everything but isn’t such a generous helping that you have a pool on the bottom of the bowl.

This meal was really tasty, but just a bit on the light side. I’m full now, but I don’t expect it to last more than a couple hours. Good thing I have a Little Debbie “Pecan Spinwheel” for a snack. Which, by the way, has more than one-half the calories of this entire tasty meal. (Source: The Daily Plate)

Jess also reviewed this meal. Read Jess’s review of Lean Cuisine’s Creamy Basil Chicken and compare for yourself.

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.