eDiets Lunch Review: Pasta Bolognese with Mozzarella Cheese

by Marianne Plunkert                                   

Overall rating:  3.5 of 5.0

Meal Description and Cooking Instructions

The Pasta Bolognese arrived in a single-compartment plastic tray.  It consisted of spaghetti noodles covered in a tomato-based sauce with a paltry amount of ground beef and shredded mozzarella cheese mixed in.

The instructions on the packaging indicated to microwave the entrée on high for 1 ½ to 2 minutes.  Adding an extra 15 seconds to this time proved to work with my lower-wattage microwave.

The dieter is supposed to add a serving of fruit. I chose to supplement the entrée with a half of a red grapefruit.

Pasta Bolognese with Mozzarella Cheese

My General Impressions

This meal wasn’t impressive from either a visual or a taste standpoint.  It looked like a lump of red-sauced noodles.  I suppose a different fruit selection might have added more color to the plate, but I don’t think anything would have improved the appearance all that much.

It tasted pretty much like a lump of red-sauced noodles, too.  Although the sauce seemed seasoned well enough, it contained only a scant amount of ground beef and cheese.  And it lacked some of the ingredients that are often found in Pasta Bolognese—ingredients that would add nutrition without adding many calories, such as mushrooms, carrots, and/or celery.  Moreover, the noodles had an unappealing, sticky texture.

Nutritional Content

Only 25% of this entrée’s calories are from fat—60 of the total 240.  It contains 12 grams of protein.  There are 34 grams of total carbs, which are too many for my liking.  Although it does offer 5 grams of dietary fiber, sugars are high at 7 grams.

It is a fairly nutrient-rich meal, supplying 20% of the recommended daily average doses of both Vitamin A and Vitamin C.  It also provides 10% of the daily average calcium requirement and 15% of the iron requirement.

While the entrée contains both milk and cheese, I’d be surprised to discover that there is a full serving of dairy in the meal.  The half a grapefruit I provided equated to one serving of fruit, and the tomatoes used in the sauce may equal one serving of the vegetable food group.  The noodles provide a serving of starch. 

The meal contains less than one serving from the protein food group; that would amount to about 3 ounces of meat, and I doubt there was even an ounce of ground beef in the sauce.

Food Rating/Quality

This meal only rates a 3.5 on a scale of 1 to 5 with me.  It was not at all visually appealing, and although I thought the sauce had the appropriate blend of spices, it contained only a few bits of ground beef and mozzarella cheese. And the latter is prominently mentioned in the title of the entrée, which I find a tad disconcerting. 

I have purchased the Weight Watcher’s Pasta Bolognese frozen entrée from time to time to have on hand for a quick lunch or dinner.  I consider it far superior to this eDiets’ offering.  The Weight Watchers pasta has a much better texture—it isn’t sticky—and the sauce contains a reasonable quantity of sliced mushrooms.