Grilled Chicken Club

The grilled chicken club is part of lean Cuisine’s “panini” line, a collection of toasted sandwiches with meat and cheese in them. Stouffer’s Lean Cuisine also offers the Spa menu (“almost all the meals are preservative free”, according to LeanCuisine.ca) and Sélections, touted as “low fat” .

Lean Cuisine meals work to control your weight by being a means of portion control. By having one of these pre-packaged meals you know how many calories you’re eating. At 340 Calories the grilled chicken club is one of the higher-calorie offerings from Stouffer’s Lean Cuisine, but even eating 3 of these a day would only be 1,020 calories – about 1/2 the recommended diet for women and 40% for men when trying to stay at a given weight.

For losing fat, eating fewer calories than the recommended amount is one effective method – hence portion control.

If you’re used to diets such as low carb, the advantage of prepackaged foods such as Lean Cuisine and Weight Watchers are that you can have desserts, sandwiches, and so on. These paninis are a good example.

As usual, Lean Cuisine posts the Weight Watcher’s points value on the package – something Lean Cuisine does even though they’re not affiliated with Weight Watchers. At 7 points these paninis are towards the high end of the scale (most Lean Cuisine fare is in the 4 or 5 range, with a few like the meat lasagna clocking in at 6 points.

Prepackaged paninis take slightly more effort than most chuck-in-the-microwave-for-a-few-minutes frozen dinners, but only a bit. You open the box, take out the panini, fold the box lid back to make a platform, place the unwrapped panini on it, zap it, then fold the two halves together to make the assembled sandwich.

This results in a non-soggy sandwich, so the extra 15 seconds of origami is well worth it in my opinion.

The sandwich itself I found slightly salty – the result of the high sodium in most prepackaged foods, this one being no exception. I suspect its for the salt’s preservative qualities.

I emphasize slightly, though. The sandwich was actually quite delicious. The cheese melted well, the sanwich was thoroughly thawed and heated, and you could taste and feel the textures of the chicken and veggies.

As frozen, prepackaged food goes this one is pretty good. I’d recommend it, but keep that 7 point, 340 calorie count in mind. If you’re a Lean Cuisine fan they have other items in their lineup that are equally good but with fewer points / calories. Think of this as a “sometimes” meal, but one you’ll most likely enjoy. I did.

If you’ve tried this product, what do you think? Agree or disagree? Let me know below.

Do you have an item you’d like me to review? Click here to find out how.