Bowled Over - nutritional content of frozen food bowls - Brief Article

Pot pies and casseroles are out. One-dish bowls are in. Just ask Uncle Ben. His line of Rice Bowls was named the sixth best-selling new product for the year 2000 by IRI, a market research company that tracks supermarket sales.

And rice is just the beginning. The bowl universe includes pastas, chilis, and more. Most come with vegetables and just about all have chicken, beef, shrimp, beans, or tofu in their handy one-serving microwaveable bowls.

If you think that bowls are just frozen dinners in round containers, you're right ... and wrong. At first blush, the food inside looks the same. And the bowls' fat and calories (fairly low) mimic what you'll find in light frozen entrees or dinners, while their sodium (often high) makes them more like any frozen entrees or dinners. The difference: with bowls you have a better shot at getting a serving or two of vegetables.

Our Best Bites had at least half a cup of vegetables, fruit, or beans. (We didn't count nutrient-poor white potatoes.) They also had no more than three grams of saturated fat and 600 milligrams of sodium (that's the government's ceiling for a "healthy" main dish). Honorable Mentions could have up to 700 mg.

Just keep in mind that a bowl (like most light frozen entrees or dinners) doesn't make a meal. Most have only around 250 to 400 calories--about the same as a bagel without cream cheese. And although half a cup of vegetables or fruit is praiseworthy, it's just one of the eight to ten servings you should eat each day. Bowls might be okay for a light lunch, but to turn one into dinner, you'll need to add a hearty salad, or maybe some fruit for dessert.

The Good News

If a bowl made our sat fat and sodium cutoffs, we hauled out our measuring cups, spoons, and scales and put it through the ultimate challenge--the Veggie Hunt. Our prey: at least 1/2 cup of vegetables. We didn't have to look far.

After we picked out the peas, tallied the tomatoes, and counted the carrots, only seven of the 38 Best Bite and Honorable Mention candidates didn't make the grade. The rest passed with flying peppers. In fact, 19 of them had at least 3/4 cup of vegetables. (Not bad, when you consider that most bowls contain less than two cups of food.)

Weight Watchers' scrumptious Smart Ones Bean & Beef Salsa Verde Bowl, for example, had almost a cup of black, pinto, and red beans and 1/2 cup of salsa (tomatoes, bell peppers, tomatillos, chili peppers, and onion).

Another winner: Healthy Choice's Roasted Red Pepper Chicken Bowl, which had a cup of red peppers and carrots and 1/3 cup of sugar snap peas. All the Healthy Choice bowls except the Sweet and Sour Chicken (only a few veggies) were Best Bites. That's no coincidence: The entire line meets the government's criteria for a "healthy" food, which limits fat and sodium.

If you're a fan of Asian food, try Ethnic Gourmet's spicy Kung Pao Chicken Rice Bowl. And Seapoint Farms Edamame Soybean Rice Bowls are the perfect chance for you to see what all the fuss over edamame (parboiled soybeans) is about.

Of course, not all bowls are tasty. Cascadian Farm's Bowls were mushy and flavorless. Even though eight of its 12 varieties were either Best Bites or Honorable Mentions, all but the Pasta Primavera were disappointing.

One way most bowls won't disappoint you: they're not loaded with saturated fat.

Even Marie Callender, who makes some of the fattiest bowls, was kind enough to put the sauce in a separate pouch, "so you can control the amount you use," as the package says. Good advice. If you use the entire packet, the Pasta Alfredo with Grilled Chicken Breast, for example, will dispatch half a day's sat fat to your arteries. That's more than a McDonald's Quarter Pounder.

You'll also be firmly in Quarter Pounder territory with Uncle Ben's Cheeseburger! Cheeseburger!, Cheesy Mac & Cheese, or Pepperoni Pizzeria Mini Bowls.

The Bad News

Sodium has always been the Achilles heel of frozen meals (and most other processed foods). Bowls are no exception.

Once you limit sodium to a generous 600 mg the field narrows dramatically. In fact, it narrowed so much that Uncle Ben, the Bowl King, all but disappeared. Only one of his 24 Pasta, Rice, Noodle, Chili, or Mexican Bowls, the Sweet & Sour Chicken Rice (was it ever sweet), was under our sodium cutoff. Too bad it was also under our vegetable cutoff. The Southwest Style Chicken Mexican Bowl (1,810 mg of sodium) and Honey Ginger Chicken Noodle Bowl (1,700 mg), on the other hand, each eat up about 3/4 of a day's sodium. Industry bigwig Betty Crocker also strains the sodium scales. Although the sat fat in her shelf-stable bowls (one to four grams) is reasonable, her sodium (850 to 990 mg) isn't. Four are just fancy macaroni and cheese. Vegetable count: 0. And in the other three, you'll need a magnifying glass to find the reconstituted dehydrated vegetables.

The information for this article was compiled by Beth Sumrell and Jackie Adriano.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Center for Science in the Public Interest
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group