The Kashi brand usually offers quality meals with top-notch ingredients. But this dish has a whopping 25 g of sugar -- which is more than what you'll find in two Krispy Kreme doughnuts.
For a less saccharine option, try Kashi's Lemongrass Coconut Chicken, which has a much more reasonable 6 g of sugar per meal.
Photo 0/11
The Worst: Hot Pockets Calzone, Pepperoni and Three Cheese
This frozen food may be bursting with flavor, but it's also bursting with ingredients -- well over 100 ingredients, in fact. How they made pizza so complicated is beyond us.
Cipullo suggests keeping it simpler with Amy's Cheese Pizza in a Pocket Sandwich, which has 15 ingredients, none of which are preservatives or GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms). "As a rule, the fewer ingredients in frozen dinners, the healthier," says Cipullo.
Take a stroll down the frozen food aisle at your local grocery store and you'll be surrounded by boxes with dishes that look deceptively appetizing (hello Photoshop) -- and have tempting labels like "low fat," "light," and "high protein." But are any of these "healthy" frozen dinners actually good for you?
As a smart shopper, you've hopefully learned to take all product packaging with a sizeable grain of salt, but frozen meals in particular can trip you up with misleading labels and hidden health horrors. "Most frozen meals are high in sugar and sodium, contain tons of preservatives, and don't have much to offer in terms of fruits, vegetables, or fiber," says Laura Cipullo, a registered dietician and certified diabetes instructor in New York City.
While that news is a bit depressing for all of us too time-crunched to do more than pop a frozen dinner in the microwave, there is some hope. For every chemical-laden, fat-filled meal out there, there is a comparable option with better ingredients, less fat, and even a few veggies thrown in for good measure. Check out this list of the 10 worst frozen food offenders, along with healthier frozen dinners that still taste delicious.
