Lean Cuisine used to be incredibly snide about low carb diets, saying outright lies about low carb on their boxes. They are toning down their stance with current products.

In the past they had actual wording on their packaging both saying "eat this we're low carb" and "low carb diets suck - here is why". It struck me as quite bizarre. Their current box is much more sane. They have "Carb Conscious?" on the front and explain that the steak tips portabello has 10g net carbs, 7g fat, 180 calories and 0g trans fat. They cover all their bases.

The back, instead of bashing low carb, now further promotes the health. They have up to 700mg of sodium which they claim is 29% of your daily amount. Of course most doctors want you to stay under 500g a day, but at least they're trying. They have no preservatives and no artificial flavors. These are all good things. they cook up super easy in a microwave in under eight minutes.

So, how do these frozen meals taste?

This dish only has two things - steak chunks (in a sauce) and broccoli. There wasn't much for them to get wrong. The steak chunks were tasty, and the sauce was tasty. So far so good.

Ah, but the broccoli! For some reason over half of the broccoli pieces had brown parts on them! It ranged from brown marks on the stems to half of the head being brown and crinkly. I'm not talking about "burnt" - it was brown as in too old. This wasn't something that had been sitting in my freezer - I brought it home and ate it in the next few days. I really like broccoli so I was quite disappointed.

I had really hoped that the new packaging for Lean Cuisine might mean a better product inside that I could eat as quick, easy meals. I do have some other Lean Cuisines that I bought to try out, we will see if those end up being any better.

I want to caveat that it's always better to eat fresh food. I'm not an advocate of living on frozen food every day. Still, I also accept that there are times that there simply aren't better choices. Maybe a family emergency meant you missed dinner and now you're exhausted and starving. It's far better to have frozen alternatives waiting than to go with an unhealthy choice.


Lisa Shea's Library of Low Carb Books