by Marianne Plunkert
Overall rating: 3.8 of 5
Meal Description and Cooking Instructions
There wasn’t much to my breakfast on Day 3 of the eDiets program. The meal consisted of a medium-sized cinnamon-raisin bagel accompanied by an ounce of yogurt-cream cheese spread. This being said, a half a bagel smeared with low-fat cream cheese is one of my usual go-to breakfasts. The 6 ounces of plain non-fat yogurt I supplied to complete the meal–in accordance with the eDiets instructions–was one more item than I normally consume in my first meal of the day.
The entrée was packaged in a 2-compartment plastic tray, with the bagel on one side and a small container of the yogurt-cream cheese spread on the other. (I’m unsure why they would use a 2-compartment tray for this meal, when they used a one-compartment tray for the Stuffed Shells meal, allowing the meat sauce to spill onto the broccoli. It doesn’t make sense to me.) The instructions indicated to remove the cream cheese container and nuke the bagel for 10 seconds.
My General Impressions
The bagel didn’t look very appealing after being nuked, and it ended up being very chewy. I don’t know why I didn’t simply ignore the instructions on the package and toast it, which is how I normally prepare my bagels. If this meal is on my menu again, that’s what I will do.
Despite its less-than-appealing texture, the bagel had a good cinnamon-raisin flavor and tasted similar to the ones I have purchased in my grocery store. The yogurt-cream cheese spread was smooth and creamy. It spread easily on the bagel and had a nice flavor to it. One ounce proved to be a generous serving, and I didn’t actually use all of it.
Nutritional Content
This breakfast contains 180 calories, with 30 of them—or about 17%–from fat. It has 9 grams of protein and 28 grams of carbohydrates. It has 5 grams of sugar and only 1 gram of dietary fiber. When I purchase bagels in my grocery store, I always look for ones that offer more fiber than this.
The meal isn’t especially nutrient-rich. It offers 4% of the recommended daily dose of Vitamin A, 5% of Vitamin C, and 8% each of iron and calcium. The yogurt I consumed with the meal provided another 20% of the calcium recommendation.
In fact, the meal consisted primarily of starch (bagel) and dairy (yogurt and cream cheese). I was surprised that a dieter-supplied fruit accompaniment wasn’t suggested, either in place of or in addition to the non-fat dairy accompaniment.
Food Rating/Quality
This meal rates a 3.8 out of 5 with me. The flavor of the bagel wasn’t especially good or bad, but the cooking instructions resulted in a chewy texture that wasn’t at all acceptable. The yogurt-cream cheese spread was good, but not outstanding by any means. And the meal wasn’t especially attractive on the plate, either. There wasn’t a lot of color, and given that a non-fat dairy product is the only accompaniment allowed, I don’t see how the appearance could be improved a lot. If I had opted to have an ounce of cheddar cheese with it, at least one more color would be introduced, I suppose.
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