Sometimes you just can't make it into the kitchen to cook. Dr. Gourmet has reviewed over 1,000 common convenience foods, ingredients, and restaurant selections so that you know what's worth eating - and what's not. View the Index of all Dr. Gourmet's Food Reviews
Just Tell Me What to Eat!
The Delicious 6-Week Weight Loss Plan for the Real World
Timothy S. Harlan, MD, FACP has counseled thousands of his patients on healthy, sustainable weight loss. Now he's compiled his best tips and recipes into a six-week plan for you to learn how to eat great food that just happens to be great for you.
Get the prescription for better health as well as healthy weight loss, including:
- What to eat
- How to cook it
- When to eat it
- What to eat at a restaurant
- What to eat if you're in a hurry
- and best of all....
- Why eating great food is the best health decision you'll ever make.
Dr. Gourmet's Food Reviews
Lean Pockets
Meatballs and Mozzarella, Pepperoni Pizza, and Ham & Cheddar
I was convinced recently by one of my co-workers to give Lean Pockets another chance. We had reviewed two of these some time back and my criteria for choosing them was that they have some veggies in them. Neither of those were any good at all - in fact they were pretty terrible. But they are popular so here’s another try at them.
This time I went for the three popular flavors without regard to whether they were ideal or not -- Meatballs and Mozzarella, Ham and Cheddar and Pepperoni Pizza.
The first two tasted were the Meatballs
and Mozzarella and the Pepperoni
Pizza. This wasn’t intentional, it just worked out that way. Both
suffer from the main problem with Lean Pockets, a chewy crust and a very
high dough to filling ratio (too much dough and too little filling). The
crust isn’t awful but it’s not all that great, and the microwave
just makes it even more doughy. This is in spite of little “browning
sleeves” that come with the lean pockets that are designed to help
crisp up the outside.
The little bit of filling in the Meatballs version as well as the Pepperoni Pizza just makes this worse. The fillings are predictable for frozen food and if there weren’t little tiny meatballs in the Meatballs and Mozzarella to give it some texture, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between these two. They taste exactly alike. Bland, typical, boring and doughy.
There was some surprise in the Ham and Cheddar. The filling to crust
ratio is a little better and the ham has a smoked flavor. The cheese melted
well and overall this just barely gets a Dr. Gourmet thumbs up.
That said, there are so many better choices in the freezer case including Amy’s Black Bean Burrito and Lean Cuisine Paninis. Here are all the Dr. Gourmet reviews.
Reviewed: May 16, 2008