Heinz Weight Watchers meals

eeebee
eeebee Posts: 471 Member
edited October 5 in Food and Nutrition
I am generally a person who very rarely eats frozen meals or gets take aways: I love to cook and be in control over what exactly goes in my food....but I thought these would be worth a try for winter working lunches as the calorie count is super low (todays lunch was 200 cals, 4g of fat and really quite filling)

In all honesty, they're nothing to write home about but considering how bad I thought they'd taste, they certainly weren't the worst thing I'd ever eaten and each portion was around 300g.....making for a filling lunch. However, my home made versions of cottage pie, chicken casserole and lasagna, are always more flavourful and I use a lot more veg and far less carbs.

If anything, I have been inspired to make these dishes in single portions in a tupperware and freeze them for working lunches, hoepfully making them even lower in cals (by using a lot less potato or pasta and more vegetables) but it;s good to know you can still consume a decent helping of comfort food and not use up too many calories.

Has anyone else tried these ready meals and if so, did they help you lose weight? What were your experiences?

Replies

  • Figuringoutme
    Figuringoutme Posts: 330
    I want to do that too. I found some nice personal sized glass containers. I am trying to find meals/recipes to make a huge batch of and freeze so I can just pop one in the microwave/oven at work or school. There are a bunch of recipes that say they're great to freeze. Good luck

    *bump*
  • rachel871
    rachel871 Posts: 113 Member
    I quite like the Weight Watchers meals - particularly the lemon risotto one...

    But in my opinion, they are low in calories because the portions are small! There's not a real secret to them - so I reckon if you made your own you'd probably be able to make them better/lower calorie/lower sodium...

    Decent idea for convenience, but I'd say your own version in plastic lunchboxes is the way to go :)
  • twilight_princess
    twilight_princess Posts: 270 Member
    I quite like the Weight Watchers meals - particularly the lemon risotto one...

    But in my opinion, they are low in calories because the portions are small! There's not a real secret to them - so I reckon if you made your own you'd probably be able to make them better/lower calorie/lower sodium...

    Decent idea for convenience, but I'd say your own version in plastic lunchboxes is the way to go :)

    Echo this. I'm actually a chef and I love the taste of my own food (a bit too much at times), these meals aren't bad (had th beef hotpot last night) it just about portion control. But there also really cheap and I'm trying to cutback on money so £1 for a meal is good value as well, so 2-3 times a week I have one for dinner.
  • Luandanielle1979
    Luandanielle1979 Posts: 747 Member
    I eat them at work or for conveniance they mostly taste of nothing but I have still lost weight on them xx
  • TriedEverything
    TriedEverything Posts: 188 Member
    Must admit, I use these a lot. I think they're all quite tasty, but I agree, the portions are very small! I have to have a lot of veg or salad on the side. Making your own is probably better, if you can, but it's quite a hassle calculating the exact calories sometimes :yawn:

    But I do find them convenient, and if I made diet meals from scratch, my husband wouldn't eat them, so it never feels worth doing it just for me - but then again, if you freeze portions, I suppose it's a more worthwhile exercise.

    Also - don't know if you are in the UK or not, but some of the supermarkets' own brand ready meals are quite good too - usually a bit bigger than WW, for not that many more calories (but do check the labels, as they vary a lot!) :smile:
  • Matttdvg
    Matttdvg Posts: 133 Member
    I generally very cautious about Weight Watchers branded products. I haven't checked out the exact statistics of the Heinz Weight Watchers frozen meals, but lots of Weight Watchers products are just as unhealthy as a traditional product, but they have smaller portion sizes, slap a "X calories per portion" label on the packet and sell it at twice the price. The example I always come back to is their crisps. They sell a multipack with 16 gram packets and they're something like 90 calories a packet. Whereas Walkers are in a 27 gram packet at about 150 calories. When taking into account the packet size there is hardly any difference between the two, and Weight Watchers charge a fortune for theirs under the pretence that they're healthier. It's a rip off.

    Try comparing the calories of the Weight Watcher's meals to a similar, standard frozen microwaveable meal. You might find that the Weight Watcher's one will be just about as unhealthy as the standard one, but come in a smaller portion and it'll cost about twice as much. They might be better than the products I've compared, but I'd still do a little investigation yourself to see if you're really getting healthier, lower calorie food, or if you're just paying more for smaller portions of the same food.
  • umachanxo
    umachanxo Posts: 926 Member
    I eat them all the time. Well, Lean Cuisine's rather than the Heinz weight watcher ones. They go on sale a lot here for like $1, and when that happens I buy a bunch of them. ^-^
    I go to college and then right to work, so they make a really good quick meal for those days that I literally have no time to prepare anything else. So yes, I still lose weight while eating those.

    The only bad thing about them is the sodium amount.
  • JennC831
    JennC831 Posts: 628 Member
    I've used the healthy choice steamers for lunch.. It's quick and easy.. I'm trying to cut back on eating them so much; but I don't think eating them every now and then too terrible...
  • eeebee
    eeebee Posts: 471 Member
    Yeah the sodium content worried me initially, but actually there was only 1.6g for the meal and that's under 1/3 of what the RDA is - I suppose not as bad as I feared, of course it could be better but then there'd be very little flavour...still, really inspired to freeze lunch sized portions made by these fair hands o mine, thanks for the feedback all :smile:
  • leilaphoenix
    leilaphoenix Posts: 839 Member
    I like to keep these frozen meals as "emergency food" for when the cupboards are bare and the boyfriend is starting to mouth the words "take-away". Eating them every day probably isn't a good mentality in the long run. :)
  • eeebee
    eeebee Posts: 471 Member
    I generally very cautious about Weight Watchers branded products. I haven't checked out the exact statistics of the Heinz Weight Watchers frozen meals, but lots of Weight Watchers products are just as unhealthy as a traditional product, but they have smaller portion sizes, slap a "X calories per portion" label on the packet and sell it at twice the price. The example I always come back to is their crisps. They sell a multipack with 16 gram packets and they're something like 90 calories a packet. Whereas Walkers are in a 27 gram packet at about 150 calories. When taking into account the packet size there is hardly any difference between the two, and Weight Watchers charge a fortune for theirs under the pretence that they're healthier. It's a rip off.

    Try comparing the calories of the Weight Watcher's meals to a similar, standard frozen microwaveable meal. You might find that the Weight Watcher's one will be just about as unhealthy as the standard one, but come in a smaller portion and it'll cost about twice as much. They might be better than the products I've compared, but I'd still do a little investigation yourself to see if you're really getting healthier, lower calorie food, or if you're just paying more for smaller portions of the same food.

    I just compared to Sainsbury's taste the difference and 300g of their cottage pie (which is probably miles tastier, mind!) contains 423 cals and 26.4 cals VS weightwatchers 200 cals, 3g fat (Sainsburys also do cottage pie in their value range, same amount of fat, 27 more cals).....so yes I'd probably save money in the long run if I just made my own foods for lunch as I have almost always done :)
  • eeebee
    eeebee Posts: 471 Member
    I like to keep these frozen meals as "emergency food" for when the cupboards are bare and the boyfriend is starting to mouth the words "take-away". Eating them every day probably isn't a good mentality in the long run. :)

    No way, I love cooking way too much! this was the first time I'd ever bought them and they were 3 for £2 at Iceland, thought it'd be worth a try and....it was! Now I know I can have nice warming comfort food for lunch with hardly any fat and very low in cals , that ISN'T salad - that's the wrong kind of lunch to be eating when it's cold & dark outside (in my opinion, unless it's smoked fish, orzo and horseradish dressed salad with watercress and shredded carrot...mmmmm)!
  • Cleo200
    Cleo200 Posts: 62 Member
    I generally very cautious about Weight Watchers branded products. I haven't checked out the exact statistics of the Heinz Weight Watchers frozen meals, but lots of Weight Watchers products are just as unhealthy as a traditional product, but they have smaller portion sizes, slap a "X calories per portion" label on the packet and sell it at twice the price. The example I always come back to is their crisps. They sell a multipack with 16 gram packets and they're something like 90 calories a packet. Whereas Walkers are in a 27 gram packet at about 150 calories. When taking into account the packet size there is hardly any difference between the two, and Weight Watchers charge a fortune for theirs under the pretence that they're healthier. It's a rip off.

    Try comparing the calories of the Weight Watcher's meals to a similar, standard frozen microwaveable meal. You might find that the Weight Watcher's one will be just about as unhealthy as the standard one, but come in a smaller portion and it'll cost about twice as much. They might be better than the products I've compared, but I'd still do a little investigation yourself to see if you're really getting healthier, lower calorie food, or if you're just paying more for smaller portions of the same food.

    Totally agree - also the sweet treats, I fancied something naughty after dinner the other night so went to the cupboard for the WW chocolate biscuits I had picked up during the week. ThenI looked at the packet of the normal chocolate chip cookies that are in the cupboard for the kids........the double choc chip cookie had less carbs, saturated fat and fat than the WW one, and it had more protein. In future I will be reachingfor the real deal, unless your doing the whole WW plan and counting points I dont think these meals are any more beneficial than homecooked at the same portion size.

    Cleo
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