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!

According to recent survey results by the National Restaurant Association 3 out of 4 American adults are trying to eat a healthier diet than they were a couple of years ago. That’s good news. However, it may not translate into fewer calories consumed when eating out. If anything Americans are eating just as much if not more.

There seems to be a misperception about healthy foods and calories. Healthy and low calorie are not necessarily one and the same. The sad truth is that no matter how careful you may be it is all too easy to consume more calories then you might estimate. Why is that?

The results of a 2008 study published in the Journal of Consumer Research suggests that consumers are more likely to underestimate the total calories eaten when they choose food that is perceived as being healthy as opposed to unhealthy. Although the research involved perceptions of food from fast-food restaurants, I suspect the same would hold true for other restaurants as well.

The participants in the study underestimated the number of calories in main dishes. Believing that they were eating fewer calories then they actually were, they went on to choose additional calories in the form of side dishes, drinks, or desserts. In addition, these extra dishes had up to 131 percent more calories if the main dish was perceived as being healthy versus unhealthy.

Image via Wikipedia Knowing the calorie count ahead of time would solve some of the problem. But that’s a lot easier said then done! What I try to do is keep in mind those restaurants that have healthier food choices along with lower calorie counts. (A Low Calorie Restaurant Food Guide) When it is just my husband and me that works reasonably well. Throw children, other family, or friends into the mix and it doesn’t work quite so well!

Just as may happen to you, I end up at restaurants without enough advance knowledge of the food choices and calorie counts. When this happens the truth of the matter is that I can and do misjudge the calorie count. I can think of a couple of examples of situations that I encountered recently.

A few months back, I was at Bruegger’s with family. I love bagels as much or more than anyone else! But I tend to avoid this restaurant because I have found most of the choices on the menu to be high calorie. (Some of the soups seem to be healthy low calorie choices.) The day I was there, I encountered a new sandwich offering called the “softwich”. As I recall there were a couple of healthy sounding possibilities with this new line, the Mediterranean Softwich (hummus, muenster cheese, sun dried tomato spread, lettuce, and red onions) and the Thai Peanut Chicken Softwich (chicken fajita strips, cucumber, peanut sauce, lettuce, alfalfa sprouts, and a little cream cheese).

I enquired about the softwich and it was explained to me that a softwich is basically a bagel but it is softer and not so dense. So I reasoned that it would have fewer calories then the typical large and dense bagel. I was wrong. It is actually larger than a regular bagel and has more calories not less! I should have asked for the calorie count. (At chain restaurants this information should be available.)

I chose to order a Thai Peanut Chicken Softwich instead of the Mediterranean. Fortunately, that turned out to be the better choice in terms of calories but it was still more then I would have liked.

Mediterranean Softwich (790 Calories - Ouch!)

15 grams saturated fat
11 grams dietary fiber
13 grams of sugar
30 grams of protein

(15 grams of saturated fat and 13 grams of sugar are a lot for a seemingly healthy sandwich!)

Thai Peanut Chicken Softwich (590 Calories!)

2.5 grams of saturated fat
5 grams of fiber
18 grams of sugar (Likely in the sauce which came served on the side)
36 grams of protein

I chose to use very little sauce on my Thai Peanut Chicken Softwich and as such knocked the calorie count down to maybe 500 calories or so. That was better but still a good 50-100 calories more than I had estimated. It’s just all too easy to do.

Another situation I encountered was with a “treat” I selected to go with my cafe latte (made with skim milk) from Starbucks yesterday. I can’t afford to eat sweets very often but there it was, a Berry Stella looking and “sounding” as healthy and tempting as a treat could be.

A new offering from sometime in July, the Berry Stella is a star-shaped bakery treat listed as having “whole grain goodness”. The small cake-like offering is topped with raspberries, blueberries, and whole oats. It caught my eye, seemed to be a “healthy” choice, and I simply couldn’t walk away…

How did I fare? Well that tasty little treat had 280 calories! Was it healthy? For a treat, yes. Low calorie? No! One Petite Vanilla Scone, on the other hand, has only 130 calories. However, the first three ingredients for the Berry Stella listed in order are oats, brown sugar, and whole wheat flour. The first three ingredients for the Petite Vanilla Scone are enriched wheat flour, vanilla bean glaze (basically sugar), and heavy cream.

Berry Stella is the healthier but higher calorie choice. So do you choose healthy or lower calorie? My recommendation is to go with the healthier choice most of the time. BUT if you don’t know the calorie count (if possible do ask!) and you are on a low calorie diet, then only eat half. Save half for later or share with a friend!

Have a great week, watch those calories and, whenever possible, eat healthy!