By Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz
RedEye
June 12 2007
For hurried, health-conscious Americans, low-calorie frozen dinners look like manna from heaven. A tray of fettuccine Alfredo with fewer than 300 calories? Ready at the push of a button?
Sign. Us. Up.
Flocks of believers clog home and office freezers with these low-effort entrees, which last year saw a 3.6 percent increase in sales to $5.9 billion, continuing their reign as the best sellers in the frozen food industry, according to Chicago-based Information Resources Inc.
But are these meals healthy? Do you even know what's in them?
"I have never even looked at the ingredients," said 33-year-old Tanja Wagner of Evanston, an occasional consumer of Lean Cuisine pizzas and pastas. "I have two kids and I look at the labels so much for them, and here I put all this crap in me."
On most frozen dinners, the list of ingredients is long. The chicken alone in any given meal can contain 20 ingredients.
Some of those are seasonings, but some are additives that help the shelf stability and taste of the food, keep the fat and calorie content down and make it possible to freeze and reheat the meal, said Chicago-area registered dietitian Alicia Moag-Stahlberg.
Those additives, though not harmful, mean people are eating less real chicken and getting fewer real nutrients, she said. "I feel that if people are only eating processed foods, their bodies are lacking in certain nutrients, so they stay hungry and tend to overeat more," Moag-Stahlberg said.
Maybe so, but Jayne Hurley, senior nutritionist with Center for Science in the Public Interest, said she doesn't think the additives are a problem. "Artificial" does not necessarily mean "worse," she said, especially with so many Americans obese and dying of heart disease.
"Butter is 100 percent natural, and is that good for you? No," she said.
Hurley's biggest concern about frozen dinners is that many tend to be high in sodium, which causes bloating and can increase the risk of hypertension, heart disease and stroke. People should consume fewer than 2,300 milligrams of sodium a day, according to government dietary guidelines. The government considers some populations—including people with high blood pressure, African-Americans and anyone who has reached middle age—to be salt-sensitive and advises them to consume no more than 1,500 milligrams.
But Americans consume, on average, 3,300 milligrams of sodium daily, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 75 percent of our sodium intake comes from processed foods.
"I think the challenge is to fit [frozen dinners] into the diet without blowing the sodium," Hurley said. "You're probably going to have to watch what you're eating the rest of the day."
Hurley and Moag-Stahlberg agree the best health advantage of the leaner frozen dinners is that they are portion-controlled ways to limit fat and calories.
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign credited portion control in a 2005 study that found overweight men lost more weight following a frozen-entree diet (16.3 pounds over eight weeks) compared with subjects who made their own meals following the food pyramid (11.2 pounds).
For some, though, the small portions can backfire. South Side resident Anthony Mathews said one box rarely fills him up.
"You need to eat two or three of them," Mathews, 48, said. "I know I have eaten at least three at one time."
Nutritionists recommend supplementing frozen meals with a salad, fresh fruit or skim milk--and Roz O'Hearn, spokeswoman for Nestle Prepared Foods, which makes Stouffer's and Lean Cuisine frozen dinners, agrees, explaining that frozen entrees are meant to be rounded out.
O'Hearn says the products are nutritious. Most Lean Cuisines are preservative-free, none contain trans fats, and all but one type (chicken portobello) are free of artificial flavors, she said. The various chemical ingredients are "flavor enhancers, which are different from artificial flavors," she said, or they are used to thicken or moisten the food.
The Lean Cuisine line, launched in 1991, continues to grow, O'Hearn said, and now accounts for one-third of the company's frozen dinner sales.
Michael Sansolo, senior vice president at the Food Marketing Institute, said manufacturers are adapting as "nutrition has become so much bigger of an issue for Americans."
The result has been a frozen dinner culture that is perhaps best observed at the office. The dash to the freezer. The fight for the microwave. The potent, inescapable aromas pouring from steaming plastic trays.
"It always gets me to leave for lunch because it smells so good," said 23-year-old Sean Gill, who works downtown in health-care insurance.
"It smells bad!" his co-worker Tina Necasek, 29, scoffed as they took a break from work. Neither Gill, of Lincoln Park, nor Necasek, who lives downtown, eat frozen dinners because they think they're too artificial to be healthy.
Their co-worker Alexander Rebielak, 23—who said he once tried a Lean Cuisine roast turkey meal that tasted, in his opinion, like canned tuna—remembered being particularly disturbed when another co-worker ate a Lean Cuisine containing tomato sauce and could not rub the sauce off her face.
"I was staring at this red sauce on her face all day, and I'm thinking, 'What the hell's in there?'" said Rebielak, of Lincoln Park.
It may not be fair to finger frozen dinners for their chemical composition, as many foods we eat contain the same additives, said registered dietitian Diana Sowa, assistant director of clinical nutrition at Rush University Medical Center.
"Check the label on your standard deli items," Sowa said. "Unless you buy the chicken and cook it yourself, to get a nice, tender, juicy product you have to do some processing."
While eating fresh, homemade food is preferable, frozen dinners "have their place," she said. "We're all busy, we're all in a hurry," Sowa said. "This is certainly a better alternative than grabbing a Snickers bar." var trbcat="none:none";var tcdacmd="da;dt;rcid=";
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RedEye
June 12 2007
For hurried, health-conscious Americans, low-calorie frozen dinners look like manna from heaven. A tray of fettuccine Alfredo with fewer than 300 calories? Ready at the push of a button?
Sign. Us. Up.
Flocks of believers clog home and office freezers with these low-effort entrees, which last year saw a 3.6 percent increase in sales to $5.9 billion, continuing their reign as the best sellers in the frozen food industry, according to Chicago-based Information Resources Inc.
But are these meals healthy? Do you even know what's in them?
"I have never even looked at the ingredients," said 33-year-old Tanja Wagner of Evanston, an occasional consumer of Lean Cuisine pizzas and pastas. "I have two kids and I look at the labels so much for them, and here I put all this crap in me."
On most frozen dinners, the list of ingredients is long. The chicken alone in any given meal can contain 20 ingredients.
Some of those are seasonings, but some are additives that help the shelf stability and taste of the food, keep the fat and calorie content down and make it possible to freeze and reheat the meal, said Chicago-area registered dietitian Alicia Moag-Stahlberg.
Those additives, though not harmful, mean people are eating less real chicken and getting fewer real nutrients, she said. "I feel that if people are only eating processed foods, their bodies are lacking in certain nutrients, so they stay hungry and tend to overeat more," Moag-Stahlberg said.
Maybe so, but Jayne Hurley, senior nutritionist with Center for Science in the Public Interest, said she doesn't think the additives are a problem. "Artificial" does not necessarily mean "worse," she said, especially with so many Americans obese and dying of heart disease.
"Butter is 100 percent natural, and is that good for you? No," she said.
Hurley's biggest concern about frozen dinners is that many tend to be high in sodium, which causes bloating and can increase the risk of hypertension, heart disease and stroke. People should consume fewer than 2,300 milligrams of sodium a day, according to government dietary guidelines. The government considers some populations—including people with high blood pressure, African-Americans and anyone who has reached middle age—to be salt-sensitive and advises them to consume no more than 1,500 milligrams.
But Americans consume, on average, 3,300 milligrams of sodium daily, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 75 percent of our sodium intake comes from processed foods.
"I think the challenge is to fit [frozen dinners] into the diet without blowing the sodium," Hurley said. "You're probably going to have to watch what you're eating the rest of the day."
Hurley and Moag-Stahlberg agree the best health advantage of the leaner frozen dinners is that they are portion-controlled ways to limit fat and calories.
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign credited portion control in a 2005 study that found overweight men lost more weight following a frozen-entree diet (16.3 pounds over eight weeks) compared with subjects who made their own meals following the food pyramid (11.2 pounds).
For some, though, the small portions can backfire. South Side resident Anthony Mathews said one box rarely fills him up.
"You need to eat two or three of them," Mathews, 48, said. "I know I have eaten at least three at one time."
Nutritionists recommend supplementing frozen meals with a salad, fresh fruit or skim milk--and Roz O'Hearn, spokeswoman for Nestle Prepared Foods, which makes Stouffer's and Lean Cuisine frozen dinners, agrees, explaining that frozen entrees are meant to be rounded out.
O'Hearn says the products are nutritious. Most Lean Cuisines are preservative-free, none contain trans fats, and all but one type (chicken portobello) are free of artificial flavors, she said. The various chemical ingredients are "flavor enhancers, which are different from artificial flavors," she said, or they are used to thicken or moisten the food.
The Lean Cuisine line, launched in 1991, continues to grow, O'Hearn said, and now accounts for one-third of the company's frozen dinner sales.
Michael Sansolo, senior vice president at the Food Marketing Institute, said manufacturers are adapting as "nutrition has become so much bigger of an issue for Americans."
The result has been a frozen dinner culture that is perhaps best observed at the office. The dash to the freezer. The fight for the microwave. The potent, inescapable aromas pouring from steaming plastic trays.
"It always gets me to leave for lunch because it smells so good," said 23-year-old Sean Gill, who works downtown in health-care insurance.
"It smells bad!" his co-worker Tina Necasek, 29, scoffed as they took a break from work. Neither Gill, of Lincoln Park, nor Necasek, who lives downtown, eat frozen dinners because they think they're too artificial to be healthy.
Their co-worker Alexander Rebielak, 23—who said he once tried a Lean Cuisine roast turkey meal that tasted, in his opinion, like canned tuna—remembered being particularly disturbed when another co-worker ate a Lean Cuisine containing tomato sauce and could not rub the sauce off her face.
"I was staring at this red sauce on her face all day, and I'm thinking, 'What the hell's in there?'" said Rebielak, of Lincoln Park.
It may not be fair to finger frozen dinners for their chemical composition, as many foods we eat contain the same additives, said registered dietitian Diana Sowa, assistant director of clinical nutrition at Rush University Medical Center.
"Check the label on your standard deli items," Sowa said. "Unless you buy the chicken and cook it yourself, to get a nice, tender, juicy product you have to do some processing."
While eating fresh, homemade food is preferable, frozen dinners "have their place," she said. "We're all busy, we're all in a hurry," Sowa said. "This is certainly a better alternative than grabbing a Snickers bar." var trbcat="none:none";var tcdacmd="da;dt;rcid=";
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