Eating Right Isn't Always Eating Good

Eating healthy is always a challenge.  We so often have such busy lives, that to carve out a chunk of time to make something nice at home is often replaced with a drive-thru window or a frozen thing out of the fridge.

A huge segment of the frozen meal segment has become one of "healthier" foods dominated by brands like Lean Cuisine, Weight Watchers and whatever fad diet is the rage this year.  Your local grocery store is in on this craze too.  Just like the off brand cereal, snacks and canned goods, grocery stores now have their own branded frozen meals.  Today, I figured that because i'm trying so many kinds of mac n' cheese that maybe I should make it a 'healthier' one.

The Review

Brand:
Eating Right Macaroni & Cheese (Safeway's Healtheir Brand)

Price:
$2.30 from Safeway **Note** This is a Safeway store brand

Packaging Description:
Uniting Flavor & Nutrition
We're dedicated to making every Eating Right product great tasting and better for you.  Created with your unique needs in mind, Eating Right is a line of flavorful foods that address a variety of nutritional needs.  Whether you are planning a meal or a quick snack, use our simple "Spot Your Needs" system to find the benefit unique to each individual product, and select the foods you need to live your best life.  We're committed to helping you make better-for-you choices that you can feel good about every day.

Preparation:
*Take the package out of the box.  Leave the plastic cover on the tray of food.

*Take out any anger you may have on the plastic wrap by stabbing three or four times for ventilation with whatever implement of destruction you've got close by.
*Put it in the microwave for four to five minutes (I cooked this one for 4:30 which resulted in a thoroughly heated meal).
*Remove the wrap, mix to distribute the cheese sauce and let sit for a minute.

I forgot to take a pic after I mixed the cheese and noodles up.  This picture shows the meal just out of the microwave before being mixed.  When mixed this looks like the other reviewed frozen cheese sauce based meals I've reviewed

*Commence with the nomming!

Taste:
Out of the microwave I didn't really smell much of anything as I mixed up the cheese sauce and noodles.  I still really didn't smell anything with it sitting on my desk while I waited for it to cool enough to eat.  Once I dug into it I noticed two things.  At first the noodles tasted very al dente (not in a good way) and the cheese was off.  And the cheese sauce... the cheese was gritty.  I know there wasn't sand in it, but it had a very granular texture.  That was strange.  As I ate more of it, the noodles got chewier (again, not in a good way) and the cheese kept up its slight granularity. 

Final Score:
I know that trying to make cheese healthier isn't easy and when some of that fat is removed it's not always very tasty.  This meal would have been alright if the cheese just didn't taste like it was mixed with small grains of sand/salt/sugar/cat sand.  By the second or third bite in I noticed a film sticking to my teeth.  After that I could just feel that grainyness with every bite and couldn't help but focus on that.  It tasted ok, but as the noodles got chewier it just sealed the deal.  Eat some apples and walk a bit more after a better mac n' cheese instead of relying on this.

Nutritional Facts:

Serving Size 1 Package (284g)

Calories  330  Calories From Fat 60
Total Fat 6g (10% Daily Value)
Saturated Fat 3.5g (18% DV)
Trans Fat 0g (0% DV)
Cholesterol 20mg (7% DV)
Sodium 690mg (29% DV)
Total Carbohydrates 48g (16% DV)
Dietary Fiber 2g (8% DV)
Sugar 5g
Protein 19g (38% DV)