South Beach Living Pudding Cups

Cross-posted from Pennies & Pounds.

I received some free samples of Kraft South Beach Living pudding cups from a PR rep for the company. As I have an interest in low-cal products that I share here on this site, I’ll share my take on this new product.

The packaging makes a boatload of claims: 60 calories! Sugar free! Good source of fiber!

Fiber? In pudding?

Both puddings I tried came infused with inulin, a fiber plentiful in plants such as chicory and jicama. Wikipedia says it’s a soluble fiber that may lower cholesterol, but recent reports suggest the isolated fibers added to processed foods may not carry the same benefits as those in whole foods. However, inulin, being indigestible, doesn’t add to the calorie count, and the only possible problem that might stem from its consumption (in large amounts) is a little indigestion.

Speaking of indigestion, these treats manage to achieve sugar-free status through the use of the sugar alcohols xylitol and maltitol, in addition to sucralose (Splenda) and acesulfame potassium (Ace K). Taking in too many grams of sugar alcohols also can lead to digestive upset, so take care not to binge should you indulge in sugar-free products. On the upside, xylitol helps prevent tooth decay.

Fiber, fake sugar, and plenty of water explain each cup’s svelte 60 calories. Starch, rather than fat, provides the thickness and silkiness; the Dark Chocolate Vanilla Marble has 1.5 grams of fat, and the Milk Chocolate Truffle has 1 gram. The fat is saturated, likely because of the cream listed in the ingredients.

That cream, along with the Dutch-processed cocoa and salt, are the only ingredients in this pudding that you could buy yourself at the supermarket. If you’re looking for all-natural foods . . . well, by now you’ve probably already looked elsewhere.

Taste? These cups taste much like other pudding cups I’ve tasted from the grocery store. They’re creamy and rich-tasting, despite the lack of sugar and fat. The size and texture make for a satisfying dessert for me, though my husband, Scott, opted for two. The cups come four to a package.

Scott’s favorite was the Dark Chocolate Vanilla Marble, which he enjoyed for the contrast in flavor between the chocolate layers and the center vanilla layer. I found the vanilla layer unassertive; it mostly tasted of milk, not vanilla, and the dark chocolate dominated this subtle flavor. It provided some relief from the chocolate, but don’t choose this looking for a vanilla hit. It tastes a lot like chocolate chips.

I preferred the Milk Chocolate Truffle. I guess I’m just a sucker for that buttery, chocolaty flavor I associate with those creamy Lindt truffles. There’s no contrasting flavor or subtlety here, just straight-up richness. I moaned a little.

Should you buy these cups? If you don’t mind all the additives and fake sugars, sure. They’re tasty and, at 60 calories, a perfectly reasonable dessert. If you balk at the idea of ingredients you can’t pronounce, go with my longtime favorite prepared pudding, Kozy Shack, in moderation. Nothing beats some tasty tapioca.

More on South Beach Living:
South Beach Living Packaged Meals

Photo: Colleen Fischer

Favorite Frozen Meals: Gardenburger

It’s not just a veggie patty anymore.

The Gardenburger brand has expanded its line significantly beyond the original burger substitute. Not only can you now get a wide variety of patty choices in the freezer case, but now you can also find pretend riblets, wraps, and “chicken” products.

Naturally, some of these make a tasty, convenient lunch.

Gardenburger

Black Bean Chipotle Wrap

The picture of the box here is not the best, admittedly. Neither is the picture of the food on the box. I almost didn’t buy this product, which would have been a shame, as it is delicious. It’s Gardenburger’s yummy black bean patty coated in a spicy and savory sauce, sprinkled with rich cheese, and stuffed into a plenty good whole-wheat tortilla. You get two individually wrapped 240-calorie wraps per box, and they’re tastier and more filling (six grams of fiber!) than Lean Pockets.

Favorite Frozen Meals: Michelina’s Lean Gourmet

Visit Pennies & Pounds for a revised and updated version of this Michelina’s Lean Gourmet article, along with more posts on weight loss and healthy eating on a budget!

Michelina’s may be at the low end of the frozen-food market, but you have to give them credit. That cardboard packaging may sometimes impart a little papery flavor to the food it holds, but it’s a highly efficient design, more likely to biodegrade than all those plastic trays and cellophane wrappers we toss out after our lunch breaks.

My mom used to stock the freezer with several of these (among others) for us kids to heat up on days we didn’t feel like a sandwich for lunch or had to fend for ourselves for dinner. Actually, these really were more likely lunch fare — for dinner, it was usually the stocks of Marie Callendar’s chicken pot pie and frozen entrées that would get tapped.

Marie Callendar’s frozen food takes way too much prep time for lunch (or, frankly, dinner) most of the time, in my opinion. Plus, some have nutritional stats that make you wonder why you’re not just picking up a to-go meal from Olive Garden.

Anyway, onward to the review.

Michelina’s Lean Gourmet

Macaroni & Cheese

I realize the convenience factor is small here, as it’s not so difficult to whip up a box of mac and cheese and stuff it in Tupperware. However, when I was a kid and less familiar with the stove, this was definitely a freezer favorite. I don’t find any of the more expensive frozen mac and cheese dinners to be at all superior to my taste buds, so if I felt a desire to pack myself a plate for lunch, I bought this. The serving is definitely way small, but it’s only 270 calories.

I don’t remember most of the other meals listed on the Lean Gourmet home page — Albertson’s fails me again. Some look promising, such as this Vegetable Rice Pilaf that looks chock-full of colorful veggies, if the picture is to be believed.

Favorite Frozen Meals: Smart Ones

Visit Pennies & Pounds for a revised and updated version of this Smart Ones article, along with more posts on weight loss and healthy eating on a budget!

Weight Watchers endorses a lot of foods in the grocery store, both from its own branded lines and other producers. You can now find Weight Watchers cheeses and snack cakes along with the older Smart Ones frozen products, and Progresso recently introduced a line of Weight Watchers-endorsed light soups.

However, buying the food does not buy you the weight-loss support. I wonder how much they promote all these branded foods at those meetings?

I haven’t tried a lot of the Smart Ones frozen meals. My Albertson’s didn’t carry all that many in the freezer case, so I’m afraid I might have missed out on the tastier selections. Here is what I did try and enjoy.

Weight Watchers Smart Ones

Santa Fe Style Rice & Beans

This rice and beans plate is kind of like enchiladas deconstructed. A pile of mostly rice is doused in a light but creamy sauce and sprinkled with cheese. The sauce is kind of odd — I couldn’t quite figure out what it was made of — but it tasted satisfyingly rich. A good choice, though as always small. It’ll cost you 310 calories, also known as six Weight Watchers points, if you’re counting. There’s a good four grams of fiber, too, as a bonus!

Like I said, though, I never sampled most of this line. I remember a few others, but they were merely satisfactory (or bad). I do hope the new line of Weight Watchers cheeses catches on, though. It can be hard to find reduced-fat shredded cheeses, especially in the Mexican blend (my preference for sprinkling).

Favorite Frozen Meals: South Beach Living (and More from Kraft)

Thank you for reading my reviews of South Beach Living and other Kraft products. Please keep in mind that these reviews were written quite a while ago, so the products featured may no longer exist. I am not affiliated with Kraft or any grocer, so I don’t know what is still available. I’m sorry, but I can’t help you find products that have vanished from your local supermarket. To find more recent information or to find a product, please visit Kraft’s web site or talk to the manager of your local grocery store. Local managers are the ones who can decide what products to carry in the store, and they value customer input.

Visit Pennies & Pounds for a revised and updated version of this South Beach Living article, along with more posts on weight loss and healthy eating on a budget!

Kraft changed the name just recently for its line of packaged foods that follow the South Beach Diet guidelines, reflecting a growing anti-”diet” trend in America. Weight Watchers (another brand we’ll be visiting in this series) is telling all who’ll listen that they’re not a diet, and Jenny Craig has signed up Queen Latifah to lose a few pounds as part of their new health-improvement advertising message.

So South Beach Living it is. I’m branching out a bit in my favorites today, though. The truth is, the few South Beach frozen meals I tried back in my school-going days were abysmal. Looking at the products listed on Kraft’s site, I’m guessing I wasn’t alone in that opinion, as a lot of the products have changed or been pushed aside by new entrées. I won’t condemn the new ones flavors untasted, but I wouldn’t load up my freezer before testing how weird-tasting the chicken is now.

So, I present my favorite meal in their refrigerated line instead. Don’t take my endorsement of only one as a knock on the others, though — I just was obsessed with this particular one so much that I never really got my teeth into the rest.

South Beach Living

Sesame Chicken Wrap Sandwich Kit

How good is this refrigerated meal kit? I was so obsessed that I actually bought the ingredients separately and started making these wraps myself. I needed to, anyway — the grocery store where I shopped was almost always out of this particular Asian-themed variety. I’d walk up to the cooler case, note the label on the shelf, look into the gaping hole, and (just in case) stick my hand in to see if there might be some goodness hiding in the back. Obviously, these weren’t just popular with me.

These Lunchable-like kits contain two whole-wheat mini tortillas, a packet of cooked chicken pieces, whole-wheat crunchy noodles, and yummy Mandarin orange and sesame dressing to make the wraps, along with a little cup of sugar-free gelatin for dessert. That dressing introduced me to the low-calorie wonders of Asian-flavored vinaigrettes, which I used to make my own knockoff version when, sadly, these were out of stock.

Note that this 220-calorie pack has got to be the smallest of the small when it comes to packaged meals. You get two wraps, true, but they are tiny. Bring an apple, banana, something or you will faint before you leave work. Even when I used to have those cheese-and-cracker Lunchables packed in my bag as a kid, my mom supplemented with other healthy foods.

Other Kraft Refrigerated Meals

Since I don’t have much to write about in the South Beach line, I thought I’d take this opportunity to recommend a few other reasonable refrigerated lunch kits I enjoy.

An advantage to these refrigerated kits is that they don’t require much prep time. Some frozen meals require a third or more of your half-hour lunch bread to heat up, which is killer on days when perhaps you did not run out the door with breakfast in the belly.

Lunchables Maxed Out Chicken Strips

OK, so some kid habits I’ve never quite outgrown. Though I find the packaging has become somewhat obnoxious, the meal offerings in the Lunchables line have evolved in ways both good and bad since I was a kid and your choices were either turkey or ham with your cheese and crackers.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed cold chicken fingers. You could always pack a few homemade ones, I suppose, but I generally bought these kind of meals for the convenience. The calories are kind of hefty at 480 per box, but if you ditch the sugary Kool-Aid packet they want you to mix into the spring water and the candy, it’s not so bad for you. Again — bring a healthy supplement to ward off hunger pangs.

Lunchables Mini Tacos

You might have let me slide on the cold chicken fingers thing, but now I’m sure you must think I’ve gone off the deep end. Cold beef taco filling?!

Give it a chance, that’s all I can say. The spicy flavor makes up for the weird appearance. And they’re cute!

Kraft labels this box as a “Sensible Solution.” I think it would be more sensible if you pawned the candy off on a little kid to knock off a few of those 450 calories, but it’s not as bad as a Jack in the Box run. But keep in mind, these are mini tacos.

Oscar Mayer Deli Creations Steakhouse Cheddar

I got a coupon in the mail for a free one of these sandwiches, but had the school year not been at a close or nearly so by then, I likely would have bought a few more of these tasty sandwich kits. The size of the meal is a good deal more satisfying than any of the other choices on this page, though you might still want a piece of fruit if you’re a hearty eater and can stand to consume more than 450 calories for lunch.

Well, you could always leave off the mayo to slim it down — trust me, the sandwich doesn’t need it, what with the tangy steak sauce also provided. That sauce makes this sort of like a spicy cheesesteak. It’s good stuff.

Oscar Mayer Beef Fast Franks

Oscar Mayer has somehow figured out how to microwave bread without turning it into a rock, between the Deli Creations and these Fast Franks. These are nothing more or less than a hot dog on a bun, but they’re a hot, convenient, and satisfying meal for only 300 calories. Of course, there’s no need to stop with the hot dog alone — I always top mine with lots of low-cal additions, such as spicy mustard, a dill pickle wedge, and chopped onions. Mmm . . .

Favorite Frozen Meals: Healthy Choice

Visit Pennies & Pounds for a revised and updated version of this Healthy Choice article, along with more posts on weight loss and healthy eating on a budget!

Yesterday I started relaying my top picks from the freezer case for quick, portion-controlled meals that aren’t weight-loss setbacks. Today, the focus moves from Stouffer’s Lean Cuisine to that iconic green box, Healthy Choice.

Talking about the Healthy Choice brand provides me with the opportunity to discuss at least one particular nutrition claim you see in the supermarket — “healthy.” Unlike many of the words slapped onto packaging, “healthy” is actually about as heavily regulated as “organic.”

When a company claims this accolade for its product, it’s declaring that the food is low in fat, cholesterol, and, significantly for processed foods, sodium. “Healthy” foods also must contain certain levels of essential nutrients, according to the FDA.

Healthy Choice meals all have to be relatively low in sodium because of these regulations. For example, Healthy Choice’s mac and cheese (with veggies) has 600 mg of sodium per 9.1-oz serving, which is about 25% of the typical daily limit. On the other hand, Stouffer’s cheesy mac (which claimed on the web site to serve one person before I got to the nutrition facts) has 1,395 mg of sodium for an equivalent portion.

Overall, I like the Healthy Choice line’s creative entrée selections. Like many low-cal brands, Healthy Choice doesn’t stick to the usual fried chicken and Salisbury steak. They’ve also come up with a new method of heating some meals using steam, but I can’t evaluate how well that works as it arrived in stores after I stopped needing to buy the meals. Nonetheless, it’s evidence that this brand tries to innovate, like Lean Cuisine.

Healthy Choice

Country Breaded Chicken

I know I might have knocked fried chicken meals a bit above, but I have to say, this particular meal might well have become my number-one favorite choice for weekday lunches once I discovered it midway through the 06-07 school year. How decadent it feels to be eating two fried chicken breast portions (bigger than tenders, mind you), mashed potatoes, mixed veggies, and a delicious cherry crumble, all in one sitting! The chicken tastes so good you will wonder how on earth this meal could have only 370 calories and nine grams of fat.

Chicken Margherita

I hardly finish saying that I’ve never tried the Café Steamers, yet here I go posting one. As it happens, Healthy Choice has moved several of its past regular-tray offerings into this line, eliminating the old versions. Thus, if you want to try the tangy Chicken Margherita, with its balsamic sauce and sweet tomatoes and garlic, you’ll have to plunge into the brave new world of steaming. This meal has only 340 calories, though it obviously does not come with a built-in sweet treat.

Premium Fudge Bars

I know this doesn’t qualify as a meal, but these 80-calorie fudge bars are a yummy guilt-free dessert! They look satisfyingly huge as you eat, too.

Alas, I can’t pinpoint any other meals as particularly good enough to merit a recommendation. That’s not to say the rest of the meals are terrible; they’re just ordinary (or I haven’t tried them, being that Healthy Choice was usually more expensive than the others). No one’s getting too excited over yet another box of meatloaf.

Next time: South Beach!

Favorite Frozen Meals: Lean Cuisine

Visit Pennies & Pounds for a revised and updated version of this Lean Cuisine article, along with more posts on weight loss and healthy eating on a budget!

Writing about food-provided diet plans the other day got me thinking about frozen meals in general. I have sampled dozens over the past two years, as they were my (and many others) go-to choice for a lunch entrée at school. Sometimes I could pack leftovers, on rare occasion I made the effort to pack something different the night before, and as a last resort I ate what the kids were having (which, at a low-income public school, was never pretty), but most of the time I kept my freezer stocked with heat-and-eat platters.

While I’m going to recommend several on the basis of flavor, I have to warn anyone interested in picking these up that they likely won’t keep you full and satisfied all the way until dinner. I always felt that I’d had enough to eat at the time, but I rarely made it home from school not feeling ravenous. Since that can lead to some serious junk food binges or poor dinner choices (all those drive-thrus!), it’s best to either supplement the meal or plan on packing a healthy, filling snack to consume a few hours later.

For midday, think a ready-to-go, high-fiber fruit such as an apple or banana, a good source of protein such as string cheese or nuts, or even a low-cal meal-replacement bar as an add-on or snack. If I decided to consume one of these meals for dinner, I would always have a big salad on the side.

Lean Cuisine

Probably the first brand that pops to mind when anyone thinks of diet frozen meals. Lean Cuisine meals often feature delicious and unusual flavors for the freezer case, and the brand innovates by introducing new lines such as panini sandwiches and flat-bread pizzas.

Lean Cuisine’s offerings are divided into a number of categories, each of which is bursting with choice. No wonder they take over such a large chunk of space at the supermarket. On the downside, most of the meals are paltry in size and lack a significant amount of vegetables. Don’t expect a huge emphasis on whole grains, either.

On to the best of the bunch!

Asian-Style Pot Stickers

How fun is it to get to eat something that looks like naughty Chinese take-out and yet know that it has minimal waist impact? The sauce gives the cute (and generously sized) dumplings a lip-smacking Asian-food flavor, all for only 260 calories a box. The rice accompaniment isn’t a showstopper, but stir-fry some frozen veggies to add on top and it’s like you’re getting an appetizer and an entrée, making it a full dinner. These pot stickers are part of the “One-Dish Favorites” line, as is the similar Vegetable Eggroll meal. That one, though, comes with only one eggroll and thus seems eminently less satisfying.

Sesame Chicken

Sesame Chicken is my all-time favorite Lean Cuisine frozen meal. I stocked up on it whenever it went on sale, and it was one of the few frozen meals I actually craved enough to eat for dinner. I always wished they would make a bigger-sized portion (like those skillet-meal bags) so I could have it for days. Mostly I liked this meal because of its resemblance to sweet and sour chicken, a takeout favorite of mine. Sure, Lean Cuisine offers another meal dubbed Sweet and Sour Chicken, but it features roasted meat rather than fried and is thus infinitely inferior. The noodles on the side are OK — nothing special — but don’t expect the big pile in the box picture. Sesame Chicken belongs to the “Café Classics” line and contains 33o calories.

Lemongrass Chicken

The “Spa Cuisine” line features the meals that taste the most like “real” food, as in something you might prepare yourself or get at a restaurant. This Lemongrass Chicken bowls you over not with assertive flavors or mouthwatering saltiness but with its subtle yet distinctive taste. How can I describe it? It’s if they actually cooked up this one to nourish and satisfy you rather than merely to addict you to their product. The sauce featured on the chicken is delectable, and there’s actually whole grains and vegetables involved (although everything does come in a tiny portion). The meal weighs in at a spa-worthy 250 calories.

Chicken Club

I would feel that I must be doing something wrong biting into a crispy sandwich stuffed with melty cheese, ranch dressing, and bacon. Yet this sandwich only sets you back 320 calories, which is a perfectly reasonable lunch, maybe with a piece of fruit to fill it out. It somehow feels extra satisfying as a lunch, too, being a sandwich. You might be able to save some calories by discarding the bread topper and eating this open-faced — the frozen and microwave-”grilled” bread isn’t much to write home about anyway. Those grill marks are painted on before the sandwich leaves the factory; the little silver tray you heat these on does not produce them.

This is already getting a bit lengthy, and I’ve only covered one brand! I’ll continue this series later with a look at meals offered by Weight Watchers, Healthy Choice, and other low-cal brands.

Smokin’ Willie’s . . . Mmm . . .

At some point in the past couple of years, I visited a food trade show with Scott and his mom on a trip to California. We’d never been to such a thing before and did not know what to expect, but oh, we found great things.

The show was jam-packed with vendors hawking all sorts of high-end sauces, juices, and other delectable goodies, as well as a few hucksters trying to convince us we wanted their crummy pots or whatever. But mostly, we were having a grand old time sampling some of the freshest and most delicious tasting packaged products available on the market.

I remember we loved some fancy (and pricey) pasta sauce that was mostly chunks of cheese in good oil, and Scott’s mom was crazy over a line of pesto-like fresh herb sauces, including one made with Scott’s dad’s favorite herb, cilantro.

However, the most prevalent product at the show was barbecue sauce. We sampled dozens of varieties, and when we left the show that day, we were laden down with several bottles from a company called Smokin’ Willie’s.

This sauce is fabulous. It beats the pants off any other barbecue sauce I’ve ever tried. It’s light-years beyond any of those Kraft or KC Masterpiece bottles crowding the supermarket shelves in terms of flavor.

I admit to having had a certain fondness for Sweet Baby Ray’s sauce for dipping chicken nuggets in over the years, but Smokin’ Willie’s is way more flavorful than the typical sweet and tangy barbecue slop.

It’s spicy without an overwhelming heat, it has sweetness without being overly thick and gloppy, and it has a good hint of barbecue smokiness without knocking you out when using it for dipping.

Even better, Smokin’ Willie’s sauce manages to keep its flavor fresh and punchy without resorting to a ton of weird ingredients. It’s the real deal, the kind of sauce you might make yourself if, you know, you actually made barbecue sauce from scratch.

I love the original, but I also enjoy the two other varieties of sauce the company makes. The Fiesta with Chipotle sauce has some real kick to it if you like your barbecue spicy, and the Shanghai-Style sauce has that sort of lip-smacking Korean-barbecue flavor I am always trying to capture on my own.

Another great thing about Smokin’ Willie’s original sauce is that it’s less sugary than typical supermarket sauces (and there’s no high-fructose corn syrup!), so it’s not ruinous to your diet.

I’ve found Smokin’ Willie’s sauce at Whole Foods, and if you check the web site the company lists additional stores where you can find it. I (and Scott) highly recommend giving it a try. And if you’re coming to Slovakia in the next four months . . .

Best and Worst Processed Foods of 2007

Even though I cook mostly from scratch just about every night, I am a bit of a processed foods junkie. Even if I’m not eating them (and I think I’ve only tried one of the products on this entire list), I like to learn more about them to see if they’re something I might want to try.

After all, frozen vegetables and many of the nutrition-oriented foods sold at health-food stores are processed foods themselves. Plus, back a few months ago when I was working at school five days a week, I often would pick up stacks of frozen dinners at the supermarket to pack as my lunches (hey, they were fast to pull out in the morning, didn’t require prep in the evenings when I was tired, and tasted a lot better than the slop they served the kids).

So below I’ve linked to this year’s best- and worst-of list from the newspaper column Supermarket Sampler. I started reading it back when I interned at the Orange County Register and had access to the wire feeds for spare-moment perusing. This list gives you a top ten from both a nutritionist’s perspective and a junk foodie’s perspective, so there’s something for everyone.

And also below, I’ve quoted the bit about the one product I’ve tried. I bought them earlier this year at Trader Joe’s, and though I think they had been store-branded, I know they were still the same. What this mini-review doesn’t mention is the show you get with these puppies — the spectacular “pop!” coming from your microwaves as the egg whites expand and even lift the lid off the little plastic tub. Much fun. They are tasty and convenient.

uExpress.com: Supermarket Sampler:

Eggology On-the-Go Eggs. Fresh, unadulterated egg whites in single-serve microwavable cups for on-the-go folks who are trying to cut down on the fat and cholesterol in whole eggs.

So Good Yet So Evil

Morningstar Farms has to be my favorite brand of frozen fake meat products. I used their beef- and sausage-style recipe crumbles a lot living in Vegas, and while I found their plain chicken-style strips to be noxious, I greatly enjoyed the fried chicken-style products. And boy, are those veggie corn dogs tasty, and with only 150 calories per stick, no less!

But sometime in the past couple of years they expanded from fake meats to purely vegetable-based products, and that must be when Satan took over the company.  Because it was then that Morningstar Farms brought out these:

Oh, yeah, baby!

I bought one box out of curiosity. I baked them up for Scott and myself to accompany our dinner one night.

Holy cow. They are full of molten cheesy broccoli goodness, and on top of it they sported a fried breaded coat. Naturally, they were delicious in that wonderful salty, savory way.

But then the evil comes in. Bloody where-Satan-lives, 190 calories for just three? I might as well be eating chicken nuggets.

Morningstar Farms, you have taken innocent, nutritious vegetables such as broccoli and spinach and turned them into foods not out of place on the menu at McDonald’s. And just as addictive.

I must warn you against serving these veggie pockets of evil at your New Year’s Eve celebration. They will bring you nothing but an oh-too-short joy and tight pants.

But if you have innocently purchased a few boxes before I had the chance to warn you of their inherent wickedness, fear not. Just pack them up and sent them by express international overnight mail to me, and I will properly dispose of them for you.

It’s the only way to save your soul.