eDiets Dinner Review: Meat & Cheese Lasagna

by Marianne Plunkert                                   

Overall rating:  4.0 out of 5.0

Meal Description and Cooking Instructions

The Meat & Cheese Lasagna dinner entrée arrived in a 2-compartment plastic tray, with a generous serving of lasagna in one section and about a 1-cup serving of peas and diced carrots in the other.

The heating instructions called for a microwave time of 1 ½ to 2 minutes.  As usual, I nuked mine for 15 seconds longer.  The entrée was suitably hot in that amount of time.

I was to provide items from the fruit and dairy food groups to accompany the entrée.  I decided to use the dairy component to make my lasagna extra cheesy by topping it with an ounce of shredded low-fat mozzarella cheese.  It melted nicely on the hot lasagna.  I chose strawberries as the fruit accompaniment.

Meat & Cheese Lasagna

My General Impressions

I had spooned the red meat sauce over the lasagna before I topped it with my mozzarella cheese. The meal had good visual appeal, with the dark red sauce, vibrant green peas, orange carrots, and bright red strawberries providing for a colorful plate.

I was glad that I had opted to top the lasagna with the low-fat mozzarella cheese because otherwise it wouldn’t have had much of a cheese flavor, regardless of the title of the dish.  The meat sauce was very flavorful, however, and there was a generous portion of ground beef evident within the noodle layers.  I appreciated the fact that the Italian-style sauce was seasoned just right and was not overly sweet.

The noodles were cooked to the perfect texture, as were the peas and carrots, I am happy to note.  If you’ve read some of my other eDiets meal reviews, you may recall that I have found the texture of the peas and/or carrots to be sadly lacking in many of them.

Nutritional Content

Sixty of this entrée’s 270 total calories—or slightly over 22%—are from fat.  The meal contains 16 grams of protein.  The carbohydrate content is much higher than suits my preference.  Total carbs are 37 grams, and although there are a healthy 7 grams of fiber, sugars are 10 grams, which is half the maximum daily sugar intake recommended for women by the American Heart Association.

The meal is nutrient-rich, however.  It provides 60% of the recommended average daily dose of Vitamin A, 10% of Vitamin C, and 15% each of calcium and iron.

All the food groups are represented in this meal:  protein (ground beef), starch (noodles), vegetables (peas and carrots), dairy (cheeses), fruit (strawberries), and fats (blended oils).

Food Rating/Quality

I am rating this entrée as a 4 on a scale of 1 to 5, primarily because the entrée itself didn’t seem to contain much cheese—at least, not that I could taste.  Had I not elected to top the lasagna with shredded low-fat mozzarella cheese, I think I would have enjoyed it less.

The meat sauce was very good, however, and the noodles were perfectly cooked and tasted fresh.  The side of peas and carrots had an excellent texture and was delicious.  The various elements of the meal made for a very attractive plate, too.