Guess the Food: Double Digits!
Guess the Food: Double Digits!
Jump to Recipe
I’ve been having horrible luck stumping you guys on Guess the Foods recently.
I think that’s about to change because this one is pretty hard.
There are tons of clues though and if you’ve ever had the pleasure of eating this “food”, then you might just be able to get it.
We have some strange nutritional facts and ingredients to cover so let’s dive right in!
Cooks In Bag!
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m probably a bit disconnected from the average American food purchaser. I know this is true because I go to the grocery store almost every day and I see what other people buy.
A lot of it is frozen or in boxes. A lot of it is brown. Many of the items are microwaveable.
That said, I was still blown away that this product was actually marketing it as a benefit that you cook the thing in the bag.
What could possibly be good about cooking your dinner in a plastic bag?
How could that be “Just right!”?
Of course, it must sell or they wouldn’t have it on the bag and it wouldn’t be in the stores.
Anyway, so if you’re playing along at home and trying to guess the “food”, you can cross off the list any foods that you cannot cook in the bag they come in – as weird as that might sound.
Nutritional Facts
These nutritional facts kind of blew me away.
For starters, notice the serving size: 1 bag. This is still beyond weird to me. This company really loves measuring, cooking, and delivering their “food” in bags.
I actually thought that this would have way more calories in it. After all, it’s a whole bag of food! It costs almost $4 for this single bag so it’s not even cheap!
It’s supposed to be a dinner (I think) so I was shocked that it only delivers under 20% of your daily calorie needs.
More shocking to me though was the other nutritional info. Every single category is in the double digits when it comes to percentage of recommended daily value.
I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen that before on a nutritional panel.
Generally, I look for double digits as a warning sign, but this food has them in every single category!
The sodium and saturated fat are very high levels.
I’m not really sure if this will help you or not, but I think I can safely go on record as not recommending that you eat this for every meal – if at all.
Ingredients Galore
This company did some amazing work with the packaging for this product. They start by giving you the “ingredients” right on the front of the package. This is what a consumer might believe they are eating:
Looks pretty good! I would eat that on occasion.
Of course, if you actually dig down and find the ingredients, you’ll find a different list:
So this list is large, but if you can break down all the parenthetical lists and sublists then these are the basic ingredients used: Cheese sauce, Potatoes, Cooked White Meat Chicken, Broccoli, Red Bell Peppers.
That actually looks pretty similar to what is above!
What’s shocking is the order of those ingredients. The FDA requires food manufacturers to list ingredients “in descending order by predominance of weight”. In other words, the ingredients that weigh the most are listed first.
So this food, by weight, is mostly cheese sauce.
Here’s a few other tidbits about the ingredient list:
1) The Cheese Sauce that comprises most of this bagged food has a whopping 27 ingredients in it including alcohol. I have no idea why you would need alcohol for a cheese sauce.
2) The chicken that is used has all kinds of added protein and food starch (rice) to it to bulk it up. You can bet that there’s very little actual chicken in this bag. The protein that you see on the nutritional facts panel is probably mostly from added soy protein.
3) The best things for you in this bag of food (broccoli and peppers) are dead last in the ingredients list. By weight, these aren’t really a major player in this food.
Guess The Food
I’m not sure if anyone will get this one. It’s pretty tough, but you guys have surprised me before.
So, do you know what this bagged delicacy is?
Can you guess the “Food”?
mmm…chicken casserole?
It sounds like one of those frozen chicken entrees that cooks in the bag, like Barilla microwavables or Wanchai Ferry in the freezer section. I’ve never bought them, but that’s what it sounds like!!
Pretty close! It’s the TGIF version. ;)
Totally had one of these the other night. They aren’t /that / bad :)
I’m going to guess it’s a Lean Cuisine type meal. Given the number of calories, I’m guessing that this is marketed as “healthy” or “diet” food.
Yea… i was shocked by the number of calories. It wasn’t actually marketed as low cal or anything. Weird.
Is this the T.G.I.F frozen entree meal in a bag? Loaded Chicken & Cheese?
Yep. that’s the one!
I agree with Matt, I think it’s a TGI Friday’s chicken & cheese meal. It’s marketed as a cheaper alternative to eating at the restaurant and people go crazy for these things when the economy is down!
Yep. That’s the one. I’m sure you aren’t exaggerating, but I seriously can’t imagine people going crazy for this. ;)
It’s true- in a down economy people have less money to eat at restaurants, so chain restaurants are trying to fill that gap by getting into people’s homes since they don’t go out as much. And a lot of people buy into it as cheaper, even if per ounce of food on the plate, the frozen stuff costs the same or maybe more than at the restaurant! The whole message is that they’re saving money on tip, gas, beverages, etc.
And another thing- those new laundry pods cost WAY more per load than the liquid in the bottle. Don’t buy into it! But now I’m off topic.
I work in CPG market research and e-mailed you a resource that might help you stump people. ;)
Thanks Kim. I can’t wait to get some insider info! :)
Yeah, this wasn’t difficult at all – TGIF meal.
Email me with a hard one if you know of something! It’s very hard to stump people. :)
I’m guessing one of those frozen entrees that cooks in the bag–I think Lean Cuisine makes them.
TIGF Loaded chicken and cheese
http://www.fridaysinyourfreezer.com/loaded-chicken-cheese.aspx
Nice work. That’s the one!
yep, Loaded Chicken & Cheese from TGI Fridays
Dare I say ” yuck”. I avoid all frozen foods, except vegetable and that’s only in the winter when the Farmers Market is not open.
My family’s lucky I enjoy cooking. It’s all from scratch in my house.
I have seen this stuff and know people who buy it, but it would never come in my house.
Ann, but can you cook your food IN A BAG?! I think you need to re-evaluate your priorities!
Sarcasm obviously…
At first I was a little worried it was a camping meal, but I don’t think a) they are that full of crap or b) they list the serving size as “one bag,” ever. So I’m going to have to follow the leader and say some kind of Sad and Bad Frozen Bag of Dinner for One. :(
Nah… camping meals you normally can’t cook in a bag because who takes a microwave camping? :)
I was thinking the “pour boiling water in and smoosh around ’till it’s rehydrated” type of stuff. They frequently follow the protein + veggies + sauce formula, but their nutritional numbers come in significantly better ;)
Also, I thought that it kind of looked like the Mountain House font, so now I’m going to have to dig into the gear locker and see if that’s all in my head or what….!
Its the TGIF meal. The sad thing is the marketing pictures don’t even look good! How do people see that and think, yum!
I’m going to go on record and say that no microwave cooking should be done in a bag! My mother-in-law is one of the worst cooks I know and one of her “company” meals is chunks of boneless/skinless chicken, a can of chunk pineapple and a chopped up green pepper, tossed in a ziploc bag and microwaved, then served over minute rice. Blegh.
That seriously sounds like an April Fool’s joke.
No joke. And what’s worse is that it’s not even in her top five “worst meals ever.”
But did you see that one huge number? How in the world can this provide 70% of your vitamin C??? Maybe the alcohol they use is a “screwdriver.”
I started laughing as soon as I saw the “Just right!” at the top of the post. Then the comments just made it better! I’m still giggling at the idea of tossing your microwave into a backpack for a camping trip.
Gotta say this makes me wonder what is in the food when you get to TGIF in person, instead of buying their stuff in the supermarket. Maybe it is reconstituted too…
I guess I don’t spend enough (any) time on the frozen food aisle, even after reading the answer, I still have never seen it.