Are you aware that the company Lean Cuisine has a product recall for three of their frozen entrees? If you enjoy Lean Cuisine you may want to check your freezer to see if you have one of these three:

Lean Cuisine Pesto Chicken with Bow Tie

Lean Cuisine Chicken Mediterranean

Lean Cuisine Chicken Tuscan

These particular chicken meals may contain pieces of hard blue plastic. You can read more about the product recall and get the production codes to look for at the Web MD site.

Food production on a large scale is not easy. There is the potential for so many things to go wrong. I worked in Quality Assurance for a small food company many years ago and I can honestly say that despite rigorous procedures and care, things happen. It’s a wonder that we don’t have more product recalls than we do.

Lean Cuisine offers reasonably healthy and nutritionally balanced pre-prepared meals. I am not affiliated with the company in any way. Nor do I recommend depending on frozen entrees or any other packaged meals on a regular basis. Home-prepared meals from fresh whole foods are best. (In addition, there are the questions of environmental impact and social justice but that’s another discussion.) I do eat frozen entrees from time to time like most everyone else.

I particularly like some of the Spa Cuisine choices because they seem to have more added fruits and vegetables than the others. Lean Cuisine has partnered with the non-profit organization Fruits and Veggies: More Matters. I agree, fruits and vegetables are very important!

The Lean Cuisine website and Fruit and Veggies site offer some resources you might find helpful in your efforts to eat low calorie healthy meals.

Lean Cuisine:

You can download a PDF version of nutritional information for Lean Cuisine products. With the included chart you can get a better sense of which meals might fit best with your diet. Trying to keep your carb or fat grams down to a certain amount? Or maybe you need to watch your intake of saturated fat like me. Well now there’s no need to stand at the frozen food case at the grocers reading one Nutrition Facts label after another. (To learn how many grams of fat or carbohydrate you need on a 1200 or 1500 calorie diet you may want to read: 1200 Calorie Diet: Protein, Carbohydrate, Fat, and Fiber Needs)

Lean Cuisine Products: Nutrition Information (Look for Wellness Tools then Nutrition Information. It is only available as a download.)

Fruit and Veggies: More Matters

1. This organization provides lists of what fruits and vegetables are available by season. Very nice! This can be quite useful when you are planning meals for the week but you can’t remember if it is the right season for a certain fresh fruit or vegetable.

Fruits and Vegetables: Availability by Season

(Be sure to check my lists on the Women and Weight Website for which fruits and vegetables are your best bets as far as calories and fiber content:

Fall Fruits and Vegetables: Low Calorie and High Fiber

Low Calorie, High Fiber Winter Fruits and Vegetables

High Fiber, Low Calorie Spring Fruits and Vegetables

Low Calorie, High Fiber Summer Fruits and Vegetables

2. Something else you might want to explore is the recipe section for the Fruit and Veggies site. I spent a few minutes looking around and found some recipes I’d like to try! The calorie counts for certain recipes seems to be reasonable but do pay attention to the serving size.

Fruits and Veggies: More Matters - Recipes

There’s also a menu choice (see the sidebar on the right) that offers recipes that can be prepared in 30 minutes or less.

If you would like more information on sites that offer healthy recipes or where to go to get nutrition information you may want to check out two of my previous review articles:

Healthy Low Calorie Recipes: 8 Super Sites to See

Nutrition Calculators: Review of the Best Sites Online

Till next time, watch those calories and remember to eat healthy!

By the year 2000, the average American consumed 31 tsp. of added sugar a day. This refers to ALL forms of sugar added in the processing or preparation of foods but not to the sugar that is found naturally in foods such as fruit or milk. Added sugar alone accounted for 496 calories! (Iowa State University, CARD, 2005) Are you average? I suspect you are NOT average or you wouldn’t be reading this article. However, you may be consuming far more sugar than you realize even if you avoid adding sugar to the foods you eat.

Fortunately the year 2000 seems to have been a turning point for Americans and added sugar consumption. Even so, total sugar consumption remains very high. This may be because much of the sugar consumed is not obvious. It is “hidden” sugar. Sugar you are simply not aware you may be eating.

Sugar is just a form of simple carbohydrate. As such it is neither good nor bad. Sugars associated with so-called “empty” calories or more specifically empty carbohydrates offer little food value other than calories (for example, candy and soda pop). Healthy carbohydrates on the other hand, are a good source of dietary fiber, vitamins, minerals, and possibly antioxidants and other healthy substances we have yet to discover. Does that mean you should forgo eating Halloween candy or sugary desserts? No, but it is a good reason why you are far better off limiting this sugar to small amounts for special occasions.

The 2005 U.S. Dietary Guidelines recommend limiting added sugar to no more than 8 tsp. per day for the average reference woman eating 2000 calories. That would mean only 6 tsp. a day for 1500 calories or about 5 tsp. for a 1200 calorie diet. Wow! That’s next to impossible. Added sugar is in so many of the foods we eat whether we know it or not.

Image via WikipediaTo put this in perspective, a tsp. of sugar is equivalent to approximately 4 grams. Go grab a box of breakfast cereal from your kitchen and look at the Nutrition Facts panel. Unless you grabbed a box of Fiber One by General Mills, I’ll bet your box of cereal has 5 grams of sugar or more per serving and that’s on the low side. Sugar is added for a good reason, it makes the cereal taste better and we’re more likely to eat it. But if you are watching your calorie intake and doing your best to eat healthy on a low calorie diet, there isn’t much room for the added sweetness.

4 grams of Sugar = Approximately 1 tsp. of Sugar

So what do you need to look out for? The source of most added sugar in the diet of Americans is from soda pop and other soft drinks, candy, dairy desserts such as ice cream, cakes, cookies, pies, and sweetened cereals. I would imagine you are already aware of these.

There are many sources of added sugar, however, that may not be as well known as the ones I just listed. This is the hidden sugar. Energy bars often have a lot of sugar. Nature’s Path Optimum Energy Bar has 19 grams of sugar! Ketchup tastes as good as it does because of the added sugar. A tablespoon of ketchup might have 4 grams of sugar, the equivalent of 1 tsp. Van Camp’s Pork and Beans has 7 grams of sugar in only 1/2 cup. That’s almost 2 tsp of sugar! Many salad dressings, spaghetti sauces, and yogurts, especially fruit-flavored yogurt have a significant amount of added sugar.

If a food product is labeled as sugar-free or no added sugar, it means that no sugar was added during processing. However, foods may contain naturally occurring sugar or a product might be sweetened with a fruit juice concentrate (natural sugar). This is why you want to check the Nutrition Facts and Ingredient Labels when you buy packaged or canned food products. The Nutrition Facts label provides the total amount of sugar but it is not separated into the different kinds of sugar present. For that you will need to take a look at the ingredient label.

Sugar comes in many different forms. Here are some of the most common terms:

Brown sugar, corn sweetener, corn syrup, dextrose, fructose, fruit juice concentrate, glucose, high-fructose corn syrup, honey, invert sugar, lactose, malt syrup, maltose, molasses, raw sugar, sucrose, syrup, sugar substitutes, and table sugar.

Ultimately, your best bet to avoid eating too much sugar and the unnecessary calories that sugar can provide is to eat whole foods, with little or no processing and added sugar, such as fresh fruit and vegetables, whole grains, and legumes (beans). To get a better sense of how much added sugar you are consuming you might want to take a day or two and read the labels for every canned or packaged food you eat. Hopefully, you won’t be unpleasantly surprised!

Weight Loss Success: Are You Buying the Best Products? Part One

Weight Loss Success: Are you Buying the Best Products? Part Two

Till next time, watch those calories and be sure to eat healthy!