Cold comfort: a frozen dinner for every diet

In the 1950s, frozen-dinner eaters chose between entrees like turkey and stuffing or fried chicken and mashed potatoes. By the '80s, it was more a question of turkey tenderloins or chicken parmesan.

Nowadays, before you even think about chicken or turkey, you choose a diet.

You can boost protein with the South Beach Diet or Zone Perfect, count carbs with Cedarlane Carb Buster or Life Choice, or limit fat and calories with Healthy Choice, Michelina's Lean Gourmet, or Weight Watchers Smart Ones.

You can go vegetarian with Amy's, Linda McCartney, Green Guru, Celentano Vegetarian, Mon Cuisine, or Gardenburger Meals. And you can make your entree organic with Moosewood, Seeds of Change, or Organic Classics.

Amy's offers less sodium, Lean Cuisine Spa Cuisine serves up whole grains, and Lean Cuisine Dinnertime Selections pushes vegetables.

Makes you wonder if you're in the frozen-food aisle or the diet book section of Barnes & Noble.

It's not as though every company targets health-conscious consumers. Banquet, Swanson, Stouffer's, and newer brands like Boston Market and Marie Callender's sell frozen dinners that make no promises other than to satisfy your taste buds and hunger. Take that as a warning.

Marie Callender's meals are "still made with the care of Marie," as the labels point out. But Marie's Herb Roasted Chicken is also made with 530 calories, 12 grams of saturated fat, and 1,270 milligrams of sodium. Apparently, Marie couldn't care less about your arteries or waistline.

Boston Market offers "the finest ingredients creating great home-style taste that is always ready when you are." Ready with 23 grams of sat fat and 2,720 mg of sodium (more than a day's worth of both), in the case of its 880-calorie Meatloaf with Mashed Potatoes & Gravy. That's twice as damaging as a Swanson Hungry-Man Boneless Pork dinner.

The Best and the Brrr-ightest

We walked right past all the salty, fatty fare. Anything with more than 4 grams of saturated fat or 650 mg of sodium we left on the shelf (and out of our chart).

We limited Best Bites and Honorable Mentions to items with no more than 3 grams of saturated fat (that means about 10 percent of calories for a typical 300-calorie dinner). They weren't hard to find. Many Healthy Choice, Lean Cuisine, Michelina's Lean Gourmet, and Smart Ones fit the bill.

But all bets are off once you enter the health food store or aisle (see "Frozen Promises," p. 10). And wherever you shop, the bigger challenge is keeping a lid on sodium.

Lighten the Salt Load

Our sodium cutoffs--400 mg (for Best

Bites) and 600 mg (for Honorable Mentions)--are actually quite generous. Middle-aged and older people should get no more than 1,500 mg of sodium a day, and others shouldn't exceed 2,400 mg. Swallowing 400 mg to 600 mg in a 300-calorie frozen dinner means it's easy to go over the max by the time you hit a day's calories (2,000 for the average person).

Yet many companies make liberal use of the salt shaker. The entire South Beach Diet and Curry Classics lines had too much sodium to show up in our chart. So did just about every Life Choice, Ethnic Gourmet, and Green Guru entree.

In fact, only a few companies make an effort to cut the salt:

* Healthy Choice. According to the Food and Drug Administration, a "meal-type" food with the word "healthy" on the package can contain no more than 600 mg of sodium (or 480 mg for an individual food). What's more, all "healthy" foods have to be low in saturated fat. That's why every item in the Healthy Choice line was an Honorable Mention. (Exception: the Salisbury Steak just missed our saturated fat limit.)

While Healthy Choice takes up just one line in our chart (it's an average of all varieties), if you're a frozen-dinner fan it might well deserve a lot of space in your freezer.

* Amy's Light in Sodium. At 340 mg to 380 mg, Amy's three new Light in Sodium entrees--Black Bean Vegetable Enchilada, Veggie Loaf, and Vegetable Lasagna--have far less sodium than usual. (The lasagna, with 4 grams of saturated fat, just missed our cutoff.) Let's hope Amy is a trendsetter.

* Rest of the pack. Sixty-seven of Lean Cuisine's 87 frozen entrees had too much sodium for a Best Bite or Honorable Mention. Ditto for 46 of 58 Smart Ones and 17 of 20 Michelina's Lean Gourmet. They need to try harder.

Yet when those companies manage to trim the salt, they do it without sacrificing taste. In general, you can expect good flavor from any of the major brands. But once you get into smaller brands, especially those with veggie meats, taste is in the tongue of the beholder, as it were.

Vegetables, Grains, etc.

Salt and saturated fat are important, but they're not everything. Frozen dinners should also offer something worth eating.

Our Best Bite criteria didn't include a minimum for vegetables, fiber, protein, or other nutrients because that would unfairly penalize some entrees. For example, you can't expect vegetables in a (low-fat) fettuccine Alfredo or fiber in a macaroni and cheese.