Healthy Choice Sweet and Sour Chicken Versus Marie Callender's Sweet and Sour Chicken Frozen Dinners

For many people who like Asian food, both Healthy Choice and Marie Callender's make a sweet and sour chicken entrée. These are both sold in the frozen food section and while the name implies a person is getting the same meal, both are entirely different. The Healthy Choice and Marie Callender's meals are approximately the same price and offer chicken, rice, and vegetables. To gain a fair perspective on both products, I cooked three separate dinners and analyzed them. All three times, each company's dinner provided the same results. Here is what I found after cooking a total of six dinners:

Marie Callender's Sweet and Sour Chicken - The Marie Callender's product was by far the worst of the two tested. I thoroughly enjoyed the broccoli and carrots medley, which tasted great. The rice was also excellent and the sweet and sour sauce, which was mixed in with the rice, was perfect. For people who are like me and do not care for some vegetables, be warned, the sauce contained red and green peppers, onions, and pineapple. The chicken was less than desirable. Advertised on the box, the sweet and sour chicken was supposed to be breast meat, although it tasted more like "mystery meat". I had pieces that were not white and tasted not like chicken. Out of five pieces in every meal, only two or three were decent tasting. The other had to be thrown away. After picking out vegetables and bad pieces of chicken, I was left hungry, which defeated the purpose of buying a frozen dinner.

Healthy Choice Sweet and Sour Chicken - Healthy Choice's product was the better of the two. While comparable in the offerings as the Marie Callender's product, there were some variations. First, the vegetable medley was only a side of broccoli. Also, the sweet and sour sauce was a bit on the spicy or hot side and had many more of the same types of vegetables. A pleasant added bonus though was the peach crisp. The peach crisp was a side of chopped peaches in a sauce that were topped with oatmeal. After picking out the unwanted vegetables, I decided to cut the pieces of chicken with a knife to inspect them. Healthy Choice also advertises that their sweet and sour chicken is made with breast meat. All of the pieces that were cooked were white, contained no skin or fat, and tasted the same. It felt like I was eating real chicken, which made me more comfortable with the dinner.

Another good thing about the Healthy Choice frozen dinner was its calorie count. While all Healthy Choice dinners are approved by the American Heart Association, the Healthy Choice Sweet and Sour Chicken Dinner is over one hundred calories less than the Marie Callender's Sweet and Sour Chicken. In addition, while being lower in calories, it is also lower in other areas such as fat, saturated fat, and provides diet exchanges. This makes it easy for people who are on diets to know how much of the day's required servings of each food group the meal provides.

While the sauce is a little stronger, I would have to say hands-down that the Healthy Choice Sweet and Sour Chicken is far superior in taste to the Marie Callender's Sweet and Sour Chicken. One important thing to note though is that when cooking the chicken, be sure to stop the cooking halfway through and turn your chicken over in the sweet and sour sauce. This way, your chicken will come out moist on both sides. So the next time you are in the market for a frozen dinner, try the Healthy Choice Sweet and Sour Chicken Dinner; you will be pleasantly surprised how something not only good for you, tastes great too.