Review of Lean Cuisine Flatbread Melts Sun Dried Tomato Basil Chicken

The last four months have been a steady progress of weight loss for me. I have had the fortune of losing twenty pounds without having to sacrifice too much. The weekday lunch break has been one area that I have cut back on calories. My weekly lunch diet has been a mix of homemade whole grain turkey sandwiches, six inch Subway subs, and even low calorie dinner leftovers. One of the other convenient items for lunch has been the frozen food product lines by Lean Cuisine, Stouffers and Healthy Choice. I have tried the lean cuisine Panini products and found them tasty. I found a close cousin of this Panini known as the sun dried tomato chicken flatbread melt for which I evaluated based on preparation, taste, price, and overall satisfaction.

Preparation

With a fast paced work week ahead of me, I don't always have time to prepare a sandwich or have leftovers to bring to work. My next best healthy option is to pack a low calorie microwavable meal. The lean cuisine product line is pretty simple, especially the flatbread melts and Panini products. First, the frozen product is removed from plastic wrap and placed on a small silver tray that will rest on top of the paper box. The whole box then gets placed in microwave, and cooked on high for about two and a half minutes with a minute to rest. The crisping tray does help the sandwich maintain a surprisingly delicate crispiness that is often lacking in most microwave sandwiches.

Taste

Even after the minute rest in the microwave, this sandwich will be super hot so use caution. I recommend another few minutes to cool down. Once cool enough to eat, the sandwich has a crisp firm bite with a good amount of mozzarella cheese and bread that had a decent taste. The product is sold as a sundried tomato Basil chicken sandwich. I had to scramble to really taste the basil and sun dried tomato. I don't think there really is a basil "sauce" as it most likely congealed with the low fat mozzarella. I think lean cuisine missed a golden opportunity on this sandwich by not using more basil and sun dried tomato to enhance the flavor. I would have also taken this product one step further and added some roasted garlic.

Price

The cost of one package of this flatbread meal was $2.89. I have seen these costs even lower when the grocery store has lean cuisine products on sale for $2.50 and even lower. I think $2.89 is a reasonable price for a low calorie meal, though I much prefer the sale prices when I can load up on four to five boxes for ten bucks. One must also consider there will be an extra cost to the meal as this sandwich is pretty tiny and there will be a need to purchase an apple or banana to accompany this.

Overall Satisfaction

I like the simplicity of preparation and low cost of the lean cuisine products. I also like the fact that this particular sandwich only tallied up to 360 calories. I had a small bag of chips which took my lunch to about 520 calories which is allowable. The price was decent and still considerably much lower than eating out as well as trying to find a low calorie item that is not a salad. Despite the ease of preparation and great price, I found the taste of this sandwich bland. Unless one wants to take the time to add things to this melt to make it taste better, I would not recommend this sandwich.