The Recipe Doctor
From low-fat recipes to recipes designed for persons with diabetes, Elaine Magee, MPH, RD, shares recipes and advice to create healthy meals that are guaranteed to please. [Editor's note: Elaine no longer contributes to Silver Planet, but we have made her archived blog entries available as a service to our readers.]
One of the Most Popular Frozen Entrees at Whole Foods!
It tastes like homemade! Have you ever said this while eating a frozen entrée—particularly one that's lower in fat and calories? I didn’t think so. Well, I was chatting with the frozen food buyer at my Whole Foods Market and lo and behold, quite a few frozen entrees seem to be in a class by themselves. People buy them over and over again—so these companies must be doing something right!
One of their most popular is Cedarlane's Three Layer Enchilada Pie. The nutrition information on the box indicates that a serving contains the following:
- 215 calories
- 7 grams fat
- 3 grams saturated fat
- 0 grams trans fat
- 15 milligrams of cholesterol
- 595 milligrams sodium
- 27 grams carbohydrate
- 3 grams fiber
- 13 grams protein
I gave it a try and microwaved it for lunch today. Guess what? It really did taste like it was homemade! My only complaint is that the box is apparently supposed to serve two, but it looks to be about the same size container as most frozen entrees made to serve one. Most hungry people are going to just assume it’s one serving and eat the whole 5.5-ounce tray (which isn’t that big, trust me) like I did. If that's the case, we need to double the numbers above. This still works out well for the grams of fiber, which now becomes an impressive 6 grams. But it doesn’t work out so well for sodium (now over 1,000 milligrams) and fat (now 14 grams). Twenty-nine percent of the calories still come from fat, though.
I think it’s still a pretty good choice compared with traditional frozen dinners. And if you eat the whole tray, then you also get 30% of the daily value for vitamin A, 50% for calcium, 20% for vitamin C, and 20% for iron.
By Elaine Magee, MPH, RD
The Recipe Doctor Blog
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