How do you guys feel about low calorie frozen meals?
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poisonesse wrote: »One word says it all when it comes to frozen meals, low calorie or not. SODIUM! It's off the scale, most meals come in at close to your entire day's sodium goal. Which means they're not healthy. In the short term? If you have to eat them, do so. In the long term, they're just not good for you.
OH, and while eating those low, 900-1200 calories per day might seem like a great way to lose weight... again, that one word, SODIUM! Which means water retention, which means you don't see the results you might hope to see.
I just checked the handful of frozen meals in my freezer and they all have b/w 600-700 mg of sodium in them. I don’t have a medical condition causing me to limit sodium so I don’t particularly track it but I believe the standard recommendation is<2,500 mg per day so I’m struggling to see how these meals are “off the scale”.19 -
They've been a lifesaver for my elderly father who spent 5.5 months in hospital last year in part because he didn't have an appetite and couldn't be bothered to cook and eat.
Frozen dinners aren't all Hungry Man nutrition disasters, they've become significantly healthier in recent years as manufacturers realised that consumers want decent food and not just convenience. My father manages to stay below 1500 mg sodium per day, and that includes a frozen meal and an Ensure (not particularly low either!)
Oh and they were a lifesaver for me when he was in hospital and I had to look after his house as well as my own. There were nights I ate a frozen meal standing at the kitchen counter in my coat and boots because I needed every minute I could save running between work, two homes that needed shoveling and the hospital. I had to add protein to the veggie meals to meet my goals but that took a matter of seconds.12 -
poisonesse wrote: »One word says it all when it comes to frozen meals, low calorie or not. SODIUM! It's off the scale, most meals come in at close to your entire day's sodium goal. Which means they're not healthy. In the short term? If you have to eat them, do so. In the long term, they're just not good for you.
OH, and while eating those low, 900-1200 calories per day might seem like a great way to lose weight... again, that one word, SODIUM! Which means water retention, which means you don't see the results you might hope to see.
I'm sorry, but this is simply not true. I've been eating a few frozen meals per week for years (even before I was trying to lose weight) and I've never seen a frozen meal that was "close to your entire days sodium goal". The ones currently in my freezer aren't even half my sodium goal for the day.
And if you retain water due to eating frozen meals, and you eat that same theoretically higher level of sodium every day, you don't continue to retain more and more water. You would just be carrying a bit more retained water all the time, you would still see the fat loss on the scale.
Even canned soups, which are like the poster child for high sodium foods, can be fit into a balanced diet.
I suppose if someone ate nothing but frozen meals and canned soups for their entire lives, perhaps at some point the high sodium would cause a problem. But there's a huge difference between "I would be worried about eating that for every meal every day for years" and "eating one of these for lunch or dinner sometimes isn't healthy".13 -
Yes, I ate a frozen dinner (around 300 calories) most nights and it helped me lose 20 pounds. I thought of it as kind of a poor man's Jenny Craig.12
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When I’m on a pinch—I’m an easy mac girl...processed...and likely considered junk food in someone’s book...
But they taste delicious, and in my book not eating and being far under calories is far worse for me!
While I try my best to plan meals—life often gets in the way!7 -
Pretty much echoing others' responses...I think they're fine but wouldn't want to eat them regularly and definitely not daily. Lots of other food I prefer that is quick/easy to prepare. I do like them occasionally though and usually find I need to round them out with more vegetables, piece of fruit, or something else. I bought one this week to bring to work because I usually come home & eat a cooked lunch but one day I won't be able to do that. Normally I bring a packed lunch but I'm sick of all my usual options for that... I think they're great for similar situations.
I tend to go for the "regular" ones with 300-450 calories instead of the lighter versions because 180-200 cal (for example) is definitely NOT enough for a meal, for me. This time I got a Swedish meatballs entree because that's not something we would ever cook at home. I'll bring raisins and/or an apple to go with it.
Years ago, I ate a Lean Cuisine chicken enchilada suiza for lunch every weekday for an entire summer. I lost a few pounds (had many to lose at the time) and because of that I felt like they were magical. I was completely ignorant about calorie counting at the time and now I know that I could have just planned out a similar calorie lunch each day & enjoyed a lot more variety.3 -
kshama2001 wrote: »I don't really understand the contention by some that frozen meals are all "processed" in an evil, negative way. Many brands these days are recognizable food items, cooked in recognizable ways, then frozen. (Sure, some have some non-home-kitchen ingredients, but mostly not scary, and some brands don't have anything but regular home-kitchen food in them.) Putting them in a box and freezing them ruins nothing, vs. home-prepped same ingredients.
For my needs (as a vegetarian), I find most types long on low-nutrient-density carbs, and short on protein and veggies. But the calories are low enough that one could supplement with added veggies (also frozen) and maybe some cottage cheese or something, and be just fine, nutritionally. And I think the meaty ones are often better on the protein side, so maybe only veggie (or dessert fruit) supplementing would be fine (and that's with my "eat way big amounts of veggies/fruit" prejudices).
I like cooking from scratch, and find home-cooked foods tastier, but I'm retired and have the time so rarely eat the frozen meals these days (I did when working). I don't see why a good-quality frozen meal is "lesser", if in a context where one's full nutritional and caloric needs are met overall.
While it wasn't me who previously mentioned processed foods, I'll respond. Some brands are super high sodium to fix taste quality problems. When I freeze meals I don't have to add 18 types of salt and sodium in order for them to be palatable when reheated.
From the Salt chapter of Michael Moss's "Salt, Sugar, Fat":
"In the world of processed foods, salt is the great fixer. It corrects myriad problems that arise as a matter of course in the factory.
..Among all the miracles that salt performs for the processed food industry, perhaps the most essential involves a plague that the industry calls "warmed over flavor,"
...One of the most effective cures for WOF is an infusion of fresh spices...But fresh herbs are costly. So manufacturers more typically make sure they have lots of salt in their formulas. The cardboard or dog-hair taste is still there, but overpowered by the salt.
...The same Hungry Man turkey dinner that listed salt nine times among its various components also had nine other references to various sodium compounds.
Y'know, since I no longer have BP problems (weight loss happily fixed that, for me), I don't worry much about salt: I love fermented foods like sauerkraut, kim chi, miso, etc., and many are super salty. I'm over MFP's default goal frequently.
"Processed" and "too much salt" and "frozen dinners" would have a Venn diagram with some overlap, but not total.
All frozen dinners (I think) are "processed", but if salt/sodium is a problem for someone, there are some fairly reasonable choices out there, especially in context of an overall decent diet that isn't all frozen dinners, all the time.
Overgeneralization is a bit of a conceptual trap, IMO.
Oh, I'm not objecting to high sodium levels per se - when I make Thai food the sodium is off the chart.
My point was to illustrate that sodium can be used to mask taste quality issues (and other issues). The manufacturer cited was too cheap to use more expensive ingredients like herbs and spices that would have made the meal better, so they dump in salt instead.
I don't have this issue with foods that I cook and freeze myself. I have a plethora of herbs and spices.
ETA: Please note I did say "some brands" in my original post. This was meant to illustrate why some brands are high sodium, and was not meant to be a blanket indictment of all frozen meals.3 -
kshama2001 wrote: »I don't really understand the contention by some that frozen meals are all "processed" in an evil, negative way. Many brands these days are recognizable food items, cooked in recognizable ways, then frozen. (Sure, some have some non-home-kitchen ingredients, but mostly not scary, and some brands don't have anything but regular home-kitchen food in them.) Putting them in a box and freezing them ruins nothing, vs. home-prepped same ingredients.
For my needs (as a vegetarian), I find most types long on low-nutrient-density carbs, and short on protein and veggies. But the calories are low enough that one could supplement with added veggies (also frozen) and maybe some cottage cheese or something, and be just fine, nutritionally. And I think the meaty ones are often better on the protein side, so maybe only veggie (or dessert fruit) supplementing would be fine (and that's with my "eat way big amounts of veggies/fruit" prejudices).
I like cooking from scratch, and find home-cooked foods tastier, but I'm retired and have the time so rarely eat the frozen meals these days (I did when working). I don't see why a good-quality frozen meal is "lesser", if in a context where one's full nutritional and caloric needs are met overall.
While it wasn't me who previously mentioned processed foods, I'll respond. Some brands are super high sodium to fix taste quality problems. When I freeze meals I don't have to add 18 types of salt and sodium in order for them to be palatable when reheated.
From the Salt chapter of Michael Moss's "Salt, Sugar, Fat":
"In the world of processed foods, salt is the great fixer. It corrects myriad problems that arise as a matter of course in the factory.
..Among all the miracles that salt performs for the processed food industry, perhaps the most essential involves a plague that the industry calls "warmed over flavor,"
...One of the most effective cures for WOF is an infusion of fresh spices...But fresh herbs are costly. So manufacturers more typically make sure they have lots of salt in their formulas. The cardboard or dog-hair taste is still there, but overpowered by the salt.
...The same Hungry Man turkey dinner that listed salt nine times among its various components also had nine other references to various sodium compounds.
Campbell's gave Michael Moss, author of "Salt, Sugar, Fat" a taste test of soups with various salt and spice formulations:
"Campbell had figured out that the way to reduce salt in soup was not the Cargil trick, potassium chloride, but rather the trick that my mother, for one, had used to make her soups taste good: adding fresh herbs and spices.
Campbell declined to discuss what spicing it used and how much it caused, but Dowdie made it clear that there were financial constraints to the more-herbs-less-salt formula. Every time the company took the sodium down a notch, replacing it with fresh herbs, the production costs rose. Who was going to pay for this? Relative to the cheap cost of salt, he said, "This is going to cost you more."
Finally, we tasted a vegetable beef soup in which the sodium had been lowered, without any adjustment in spicing. It didn't just taste flat. The soup had some bad tastes, tastes that hovered somewhere between bitter and metallic. These undesirables - what the industry calls "off notes" - were likely still present in the original soup, but the salt - in one of its functions - covers them up.
"The salt is masking these off-notes?" I asked Dowdie.
"Yeah, absolutely," he replied."
******
The book goes on to discuss how after Campbell reduced sodium, revenue was flat and Wall Street was not reacting well. Campbell announced that they were raising sodium in the Select Harvest line and the stock price went up the day of the announcement.6 -
I wonder has anyone ever really looked into how much sodium they add to their home cooked meals🤔12
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I eat them a lot. When I've come home after the pub (not all the time), when my OH is on a late shift and I don't fancy cooking after 10 pm, many reasons really.1
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I watch lots of cooking shows, and chefs working with fine ingredients put handfuls of salt in everything. One of the more common criticisms in cooking competition shows is "under seasoning" which usually leads to them saying If you'd just salted this properly it would've been a winner. I'm sometimes horrified by how much salt I see them add to each "layer of flavor". I'm not so sure an excess of salt necessarily means low quality ingredients. I actually don't use much salt at all when I do cook, and I like the food I cook, so I figure that evens out the soups, frozen dinners, and pickles I eat quite nicely, if that's even necessary. <shrugs>9
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WinoGelato wrote: »poisonesse wrote: »One word says it all when it comes to frozen meals, low calorie or not. SODIUM! It's off the scale, most meals come in at close to your entire day's sodium goal. Which means they're not healthy. In the short term? If you have to eat them, do so. In the long term, they're just not good for you.
OH, and while eating those low, 900-1200 calories per day might seem like a great way to lose weight... again, that one word, SODIUM! Which means water retention, which means you don't see the results you might hope to see.
I just checked the handful of frozen meals in my freezer and they all have b/w 600-700 mg of sodium in them. I don’t have a medical condition causing me to limit sodium so I don’t particularly track it but I believe the standard recommendation is<2,500 mg per day so I’m struggling to see how these meals are “off the scale”.
Yep, and agreed, for them's as has no need to watch for sodium. For someone like me, who actually tries to stay below 1,000 per day (though I often fail on weekends....), 600 mg is a lot.2 -
Frozen dinners aren't all Hungry Man nutrition disasters, they've become significantly healthier in recent years as manufacturers realised that consumers want decent food and not just convenience. My father manages to stay below 1500 mg sodium per day, and that includes a frozen meal and an Ensure (not particularly low either!)
Hungry Man meals aren't necessarily nutrition disasters, depending on your goal! I have a 19 year old college athlete who needs to take consume 4000 calories per day and doesn't always have time to prepare a home cooked meal (and my cooking habits are on the lighter side). He goes to the grocery store and looks for the highest-calorie prepared meals he can find just to maintain weight!
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I definitely include them in my meals, i frequently don't get time to go for lunch when i'm at work at remote locations, so i keep a couple in the freezer at work. I also keep several in the freezer at home. I don't cook much so if i'm on my own for dinner, a frozen meal is delicious. Remember though, that they frequently do change recipes on these things, so if you have any food allergies read the box every time you buy them. I've forgotten the brand but i recently bought a cheese enchilada meal that i've had before, but they've since changed the recipe to include "mushroom essence". I'm allergic to mushrooms, and am glad i glanced at the box as i was waiting for it to cook, who would imagine mushroom essence in a cheese enchilada?
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I wonder has anyone ever really looked into how much sodium they add to their home cooked meals🤔
I add very little...I rarely cook with it and if I do, it's usually a small pinch in what is an otherwise large recipe. I figure people can salt it on their own if they are so inclined. I cook with a lot of herbs and spices and don't need to dump salt into my cooking to give it flavor.
I'm hypertensive, so I have to watch my sodium. I high day here and there isn't a big deal, but I eat a largely lower sodium diet. After 7 years, my taste buds are definitely sensitive to over-saltiness...it can make eating out difficult sometimes because I want to taste the food...not the sodium bomb they through in there. People forget what the actual food tastes like.3 -
As a pregnant person, I loathe these stinky microwave meals. I can smell it when anyone on the floor heats one up and I call them "fake chemical salt meals". They smell like no food I've ever smelled. I now consider them edible food-like substances because they smell so off I can't even really describe it.14
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Amy's are the best. As for prepping your own frozen that's awesome. I bet it's way cheaper too. What do you store your meals in? Thanks!0
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As a pregnant person, I loathe these stinky microwave meals. I can smell it when anyone on the floor heats one up and I call them "fake chemical salt meals". They smell like no food I've ever smelled. I now consider them edible food-like substances because they smell so off I can't even really describe it.
Curious if you felt this way about the smell of frozen meals prior to your pregnancy? These are pretty strong reactions to something that many of us eat and even enjoy, so to have them classified as “fake chemical salt meals” and all lumped together when they are are literally hundreds of different types of meals seems like it’s more of a situation with your heightened olfactory system than in the meals themselves...6 -
Like most here I do frozen dinners/lunches occasionally. I love Costco's Yakisoba noodles, Lean Cuisine Butternut Squash Ravioli, Trader Joes Won Ton Soup, etc. You do need to be mindful of sodium but there is no reason (I can see) to avoid them completely.0
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