Price: Provided by Oscar Mayer
Serving: 1 sandwich, 4.9oz.
Calories: 320 per serving
Fat: 20%, 13g
Cholesterol: 18%, 55mg
Sodium: 25%, 590mg
Protein: 22g
Carbohydrates: 10%, 30g
Fiber: 3%, 1g
Sugar: 3g
Weight Watchers Points: 7 Points

Oscar Mayer says: Experience a sandwich that has all the warmth, flavor and fresh baked taste you look forward to, without having to go out. In no time at all, you can create a lunch for one, served with soft warm flatbread, premium cuts of meat, specialty sauces and natural cheeses, all individually wrapped for freshness.

Andrew says: Ordinarily I’d be all for some combination of chicken, ranch dressing and bacon, but this flatbread sandwich falls short of my lofty, pork-driven expectations.

The problem with the execution here is tang. As in too much of it. This is the most tangy ranch sauce of all time and I don’t know what they were trying to accomplish with it. I’m looking at the ingredients list and puzzling over what it is in the sauce that makes it so sour-tart, but I can’t figure it out. All I know is it’s overbearing. It pins the moist, tender chicken pieces to the mat and extinguishes its flavor with its flavor chokehold.

And the shredded reduced fat sharp cheddar cheese doesn’t help much, adding its sharp, cheesy tang to the already incredible tang of the sauce. Frankly it’s not a BAD flavor all together, but it’s not what ranch, bacon and chicken ought to taste like. I couldn’t taste anything but the ranch sauce, which means of course that I COULDN’T TASTE THE BACON.

So basically, the flatbread sandwich lured me in with the promise of bacony flavor with ranch sauce and chicken and dashed my hopes with its ranch tang freak show. For shame, Oscar Mayer. For shame.

Price: $2.99
Serving: 3 links, 2oz.
Servings per package: ~3.5 (10 links)
Calories: 240 per serving
Fat: 34%, 22g
Cholesterol: 15%, 45mg
Sodium: 18%, 420mg
Protein: 7g
Carbohydrates: 1%, 2g
Fiber: 0%, 0g
Sugar: 1g
Weight Watchers Points: 7 Points

Jones Dairy Farm says: Jones Dairy Farm products offer you the old-fashioned quality and flavor you’d expect from a family farm. Made with natural ingredients and six generations of Jones family pride, our products are prepared fro you with the wholesome simplicity of recipes passed down through the generations.

No MSG Added - No Artificial Ingredients - No Preservatives - No Gluten Added

Abi says: Oh dear Lord in heaven, now I know why I never read the nutrition label on any sort of sausage. Well, except artisan chicken and/or turkey sausage which I already know is low in fat and high in virtuousness/animal parts.

The asterisk in the on Jones (no relation) Maple Sausage box means ‘No artificial ingredients and only minimally processed.’ The ingredients list is impressively simple:

• Pork
• Water
• Maple Sugar
• Sea Salt
• Spices
• Raw Sugar
• Maple Flavor (carmelized sugar syrup, flavorings, maple syrup, brown sugar)

I like knowing what’s in my sausage, though I’m definitely confused when one of the ingredients of a ‘Flavor’ is ‘flavorings’. How do they get away with that? And how happy are you to see that the term ‘mechanically-separated‘ isn’t included in that list?

Taste-wise, these little guys (each is the size of Pretty darn good for some pre-cooked brown-and-serve sausages and considerably juicier than Morningstar Farms Sausage Patties. There’s no casing, so they exhibit about as much snap as a meat-free corn dog. Fortunately, the my preferred cooking method involves microwaving them for 30 seconds first, then browning for a crisp exterior.

In restaurants, I like dipping regular sausages in syrup. At home, I ran out of affordable maple syrup (a fellow food writer from Montreal says that the only acceptable maple syrup comes in a can), so I opted for these sausages between visits to Trader Joe’s. Those of you who prefer savory sausages might be a little put off by the combo, but I suggest trying it before you knock it.

Price: $2.79
Servings Per Package: 2
Serving Size: 8.0 oz., 1 quesadilla
Calories: 220 per serving
Fat: 11%, 7g
Cholesterol: 20mg
Sodium: 26%, 620mg
Protein: 12g
Carbohydrates: 9%, 26g
Fiber: 20%, 5g
Sugar: <1g
Weight Watchers Points: 4

Smart Ones says: Chicken & cheese quesadilla with grilled white meat chicken, a three-cheese blend, peppers and onions folded into a crispy flour tortilla.

Kelly B. says: I consider cheese a food group. And though I don’t know the correct translation of “quesadilla” I know it has something to do with cheese. Lots and lots of cheese.* Typically, eating these at restaurants makes me feel sick/guilty/bloated but tadaa! Smart Ones has blessed us all with a low calorie, low fat quesadilla. It may even give the microwaveable 7-11 ‘Mexican’ fare a run for its money!

I am familiar with “crisping sleeve” technology as a frequent Lean Pocket user, so it seemed easy enough to place the quesadilla into the sleeve and then into the microwave. After no time (2 minutes) my quesadilla was ready! While it is not exactly easy to eat at the office (due to a lot of gooey chicken/cheese combo), it is delicious by fork & knife with a little bit of low fat sour cream. It may have been my microwave but parts of the tortilla were a little hard and too crispy for my liking, that’s what brought it down from 5 to 4 stars. The cheese melted nicely & the peppers and onions added a slight kick. The chicken wasn’t too bad too bad either! I definitely give Smart Ones quesadillas two thumbs up though as far as diet, microwaveable Mexican food goes!

*It translates roughly to “little cheesy thing”. - Ed.

Need further confirmation? Tanya over at Iateapie.net liked these, too. Read her review.

Price: $9.99
Serving: 1/2 package, 12oz.
Servings per package: 2
Calories: 410 per serving
Fat: 26%, 17g
Cholesterol: 25%, 75mg
Sodium: 70%, 1680mg
Protein: 25g
Carbohydrates: 14%, 41g
Fiber: 16%, 4g
Sugar: 6g
Weight Watchers Points: 9 Points

Bertolli says: Imported linguini pasta cooks up al dente and twirls around your fork, just like it does at a table in Tuscany. Tender roasted chicken breast filets, melted mozzarella and zucchini are perfectly married in a mellow tomato basil sauce.

Suggested wine pairing: Sauvignon Blanc

Abi says: Remember that episode of Top Chef Season 3 where Rocco DiSpirito appears and the challenge is a Bertolli-product-placement infused marathon that culminates in the lesson that pasta and sauce are best reheated when frozen separately? No? Well, here’s a refresher if you missed it.

If you didn’t miss it you know that Rocco DiSpirito is no longer a chef and is now a shill for Bertolli, the winning pasta involved truffle butter and that chefs can identify bow tie pasta by sight (wow!) but sometimes confuse peanut butter and tahini.

Even though I’ve seen that episode, viewed the Bertolli pastas in my freezer aisles for years and received coupons for free pastas (which I lost when I moved to California, so if you Bertolli people could send some more that would be great), I’d never tried one of these pastas before now. I think that part of the problem is that they cost $10.00 each and require the use of a stove and a pan. And plates. $5.00 per serving is a lot to pay for pasta, even if it does come with chicken. Plus, the time/ease gain in heating up one of these vs. cooking my own pasta, sauce and meat just aren’t enough to justify the price.

Until now. After a long day at the office for me and a trans-Atlantic and trans-continental flight for my partner, dinner was of huge importance. Unfortunately, a week of living solo and surviving on popcorn, meant that our fridge was empty. Nothing in the deli section looked both edible and affordable, and pasta with chicken and zucchini and mmmmm, mozzarella sounded pretty darn good.

In reality is was pretty darn salty.

And the mozzarella separates from the sauce, leaving a coating of cheese at the bottom of the skillet and very little actually in the pasta.

And the chicken was both meager and unappetizing, a lose-lose situation.

But back to the salt. I love salt. I buy things because they have the word ‘Salt’ on the label. I have six different kinds of salt in my house. Crazily, the saltiness of this meal was so intense that my mouth waters whenever I think about it. And this isn’t anticipatory salivation. No, this is the kind of mouth-watering that occurs to clear a noxious substance out of your body. Not that Bertolli pastas are poisonous or anything (please send me coupons so I can try more of these!). They’re just incredibly salty. As in 70% of your sodium for the day salty.

Ounce for ounce, this meal contains more sodium than all but two of the Hungry-Man meals we’ve reviewed. Yikes.

On the plus side, Rocco DiSpirito is sort of cute and the excessive salt is a great excuse to drink plenty of the suggested wine pairing - Sauvignon Blanc on the bag, Pinot Noir on the website.