Healthy Choice and Lean Cuisine are two lines of healthy food products that make frozen entrees. Both product lines tend to focus on getting a healthy meal, while not adding too many calories to the waist line. Healthy Choice has come up with a new type of frozen entree- the Cafe Steamers. Lean Cuisine already has a great line of dinners- the Dinner Time Selects.
Which is better- the Healthy Choice Cafe Steamers, or the Lean Cuisine Dinner Time Selects?
Price
As for the price, both are very similar in price. It costs about $3 per entree to buy either of these dishes, the Cafe Steamers or the Dinner Time Selects. The difference is that right now, because the Cafe Steamers are new, you can find various coupons around and specials, enticing people to try the entrees. I’ve seen coupons for $1 off a purchase of 5 Cafe Steamers, and even found a special at one grocery store for 5 for $10 of the Cafe Steamers. This would provide a short term advantage, but will certainly disappear once the Cafe Steamers have been on the market for awhile.
Size of Servings
The serving size of the Cafe Steamers is 10.4 oz. I found this to be an adequate size for an normal appetite for dinner. The serving size of the Dinner Time Selects is 12 oz. This is a bit more food for a similar price. I find this to be a better value. I also chose to eat both of these, the Cafe Steamers and the Dinner Time Selects, because I have a hearty appetite by dinner time and need more of a meal (as compared to some other smaller size frozen entrees.) Either way you look at it, both have a good size, but the Lean Cuisine wins this category. Some of the Dinner Time selects also come with dessert.
How it Cooks
I think you can tell just by the name that the Cafe Steamers are going to take the ribbon in the cooking process. Healthy Choice has found a way to steam cook a meal in the microwave! This is great. Don’t get me wrong, I eat microwaved food as much as the next gal, but I can’t believe the cooking genius of this new steaming process in the microwave. The Cafe Steamers, when they come out of the microwave, don’t have burnt edges of the food- everything seems to be cooked evenly. They separate the sauce from the rest of the dish, to keep the vegetables crunchy and the noodles firm. This works well! This may be the most innovative product in awhile. Lean Cuisine’s Dinner Time selects cook up fine, as any dish. They also come out fresh, but sometimes the edges get hard or burned unless you’re continuously stirring (which takes extra time.)
Selection
Both Healthy Choice and Lean Cuisine have offered many different options for the selection. Lean Cuisine Dinner Time selects probably right now have more choices, but I find that some of the choices aren’t available at all grocery stores. For instance, I love the Lean Cuisine Jumbo Rigatoni with Meatballs, but I can usually only find it at Walmart. There are plenty of choices with both to please almost anyone. The only thing is that the Cafe Steamers don’t have spaghetti with meatballs, one of my favorites.
Taste and Flavor
The Lean Cuisine Dinner Time Selects have the best flavor overall. The vegetables tend to have more flavor. I found the Cafe Steamer vegetables, especially the green beans, to be somewhat bland and really tasting like crunchy water. As for the sauces, I tend to favor the Lean Cuisine sauces. I particularly like the garlic herb sauce in the Grilled Chicken and Penne Pasta. The flavor of the Lean Cuisine sauces seems to be fresher, while the Cafe Steamer sauces taste a little more like something you would find in a jar, with preservatives. The noodles in both types seem very similar.
Nutritional Value and Calorie Content
Lean Cuisine Dinner Time Selects have no preservatives and 0 grams of trans fat. The Cafe Steamers by Healthy Choice don’t state that they don’t have preservatives, and I believe they do based on the taste, at least of the sauce. They hold their own with 0 grams of trans fat as well though.
The Cafe Steamers only have 250 calories, while the Dinner Time Selects have 300- 350. This gives the Cafe Steamers a calorie advantage. Sodium content is similar at around 550 grams. As for sugar content, the Cafe Steamers beat the competition with only 3 grams of sugar compared to Dinner Time Select’s 24 grams.
As for nutrition, the Cafe Steamers are somewhat lacking compared to the Dinner Time Selects. The Cafe Steamers have only 6% of Vitamin C daily requirements, 10% of Vitamin A, 6% of Iron, and 4% of Calcium. The Dinner Time Selects have 90% of Vitamin C, 35% of Vitamin A, 10% of Calcium, and 8% of Iron.
Overall Recommendation
I have to choose Lean Cuisine Dinner Time Selects as my first choice. They make two of my favorite entrees- the Jumbo Rigatoni and Grilled Chicken with Penne Pasta. These can’t be beat. They tend to have more nutritional content. They are a bit larger, and some have desserts. I’m not real big on calorie-counting, so don’t mind the added calories. I wish they would make these in the steaming dishes, because then there’d be the best of both worlds.
