Thread: Chef's Choice?? Good or Bad??

Hi Everyone,

I just bought some of those new Chef's Choice low carb meals. Normally I don't buy quick prefab foods since I started LC back in June, but I just wanted to try them as a fast meal on those days I am in a hurry.

Anyways after you deduct the fiber they each have between 5 and 8 grams of carbs. However after bringing them home and reading the ingredients I am a bit concerned.

For instance the "Chicken Toscana" has "5g of sugar". The ingredients list is long and has these ingredients in it sugar, molasses, corn starch-modified (what ever that means).

Is this a product that I should stay away from?

Here is some of the Nutritional Facts:
<LI>Calories 370
<LI>Saturated Fat 9g
<LI>Poly.. Fat 2.5g
<LI>Mono.. Fat 4.5
<LI>Cholesterol 130mg
<LI>Sodium 1070mg
<LI>Total Carbs 10g (8 net carbs)
<LI>Dietary Fiber 2g
<LI>Sugars 5g
<LI>Protein 45g

I bought 4 and ate one this evening but don't want to eat the others until I know if I screwed up buy buying them. I can afford to give them away but cannot afford to mess my body up.

Thanks for any help in this matter.

Southernlady

251/228/150-130 (somewhere in there)

Low Carb Club

I haven't had a problem with them.. But I also use them as an "emergency" food when I just don't have time to cook, so I only eat them maybe twice a month...

They actually put sugar in it?

***********************
"Sometimes I think you have to march right in and demand your rights, even if you don't know what your rights are, or who the person is you're talking to. Then on the way out, slam the door."

Yep that is what the ingredients say "Sugar"

5 grams of it at that!!

Not sure this is such a good thing??

Southernlady

Also the whole meal was only about 1 cup. Very little veggies, some meat, and alot of sauce. They advertise "no rice, no pasta" but not sugar free.

I'm thinking that most of the carbs are coming from the sauce which has the sugar and cornstarch in it and the only way they lowered the carbs was to just omit the rice and pasta. The sauce is the same as all the others with the rice and noodles in it.

What does everyone else think??

Southernlady

I personally do not think I would eat them. After all, we should try and avoid sugar. And also , like you said I cup of food is not much for a dinner.
You would be better with real food.
For a quick dinner, I keep a bag of frozen buffalo chicken wings in the freezer and have some with celery & blue cheese dip.

Just my opinion.



Victors are really just temporary quitters who then regroup with a vengeance.

I think you happened to get an "end of the line" box, or something from a different packaging plant.. All of the bowls I've had have been loaded with meat, did need a few extra veggies added if I was *really* hungry, but were overall a very sizeable portion for the $2.50 it cost me.....

The sauce, I usually toss - I eat whatevers attached to the meat/veggies, but I eat it with a fork so it drips off, so I end up counting maybe half the sugars.

Using them as an emergency convenience thing means you won't overeat them, thus they really shouldn't have a negative impact on you..

I think you might be misunderstanding the difference between sugars listed in the ingredients (like corn syrup, fructose, etc.) and carbs grams that are broken down as "natural sugars".
For example, 1 cup of raw broccolli has 5.8 carbs; of which 2.4 grams are fiber, and 1.5 grams are "sugar".


You can check how much natural "sugar" is in different foods at this site: Sugar content of common foods

That said, if you are still doing induction, you shouldn't be having any of this type of food (prepared, prepacked type) anyway. But for OWL, I think they're perfect for the occaisional entree. Of course you would need to add some veggies like a big salad to make it a meal. I really like the 2 I've tried, the mexican style pork and the garlic beef and broccolli.

HTH



Always eat your veggies first!

[This message was edited by Brightlady on 09-12-03 at 08:58 AM.]

BTW - if you're well into OWL, you can take the leftover sauce, and put it over LC toast the next morning for breakfast. Yummy.

No I am not confused. It cleary says SUGAR in the ingredients and molasas, corn starch and about a thousand other ingredients.

Thanks Everyone for responding!!

Southernlady

I think there may be some hidden carbs that are not listed in the nutritional information. Calories are made up of fat, protein, and carbs, and the calories of each component has to add up to the total calories.

Each gram of protein has 4 calories...therefore, this meal has 45 x 4 = 180 calories from protein

Each gram of fat has 9 calories...so 9 x 4 = 32 calories from fat

Calories that are not attributed to protein or fat are carbohydrates... therefore 370 calories - 180 - 32 = 158 calories from carbohydrates.

Since each gram of carbohydrates has 4 calories, There must be 158/4 = 39.5 grams of carbohydrates, not 10 (of course, you would subtract fiber, so it would be 37.5...but still).

Unless you left out some nutritional information and there is more than 9g of fat or 45g of protein, I would think twice before eating this meal, as it may have as much as 37.5 net carbs!

I don't have any here, but if I remember right, the fat content was closer to 17 on my boxes.. I'm going to WalMart today - I can check, and write them down...but I specifically remember checking the fat content because hubby is on the WW point system, and wanted to know if he could eat it..

Don't know if this makes a differance but I had broke down the fat like this.
Saturated Fat 9g

Poly.. Fat 2.5g

Mono.. Fat 4.5

The total fat is 17g

Southernlady

Oops! Sorry, I misunderstood the fat grams as listed.

Well, that does make a difference, and now everything adds up as it should. Calories from fat are 17 x 9 = 153.

370 total calories - 153 fat calories - 180 protein calories = 37 carbohydrate calories.

37/4 = 9.25 grams of carbs. So, the label was correct in listing 10g of carbs.

Sorry to go into a math frenzy on you!

Also, you can't avoid sugar altogether. It happens. And remember, that even if "sugar" is listed on the label, and the nutritional label says 5g, it doesn't mean its all from the actual "sugar". Some of that may be from the veggies.

I'll give you a little lecture I give my LC group at work when they ask whether they should try something new...

You're in this for the long haul. Part of this WOE is experimenting with new foods and discerning your body's reaction to eating it. If you try a new LC bar, for instance, and it knocks you out of ketosis, causes you to retain water, and crave foods, then accept that in a clinical manner, go back on plan, and you've learned something. You may impact the scale for a day or two, but in the course of a lifelong commitment, it's a minor bump.

I always recommend they try these foods on a day in which they ONLY consume foods with which they are famaliar, and don't change any habits in anticipation of what they THINK may happen. Only then will they have a decent understanding of how the new food impacted their body.

Mikeyrat

Started Atkins 5/30/2003
337/283.5/237 - 6'2" 43 YO
Wife: 224/194/165 - 5'11"