At Your Service

If you are having a craving for Asian, Indian, Italian, or Mexican for dinner, chances are you can find something to satisfy your craving no farther than the frozen food section at your local supermarket. You can take your pick from a growing selection of heat-'em-and eat-'em ethnic dinners. Granted, they may not all be authentic in taste, but more than a few qualify as healthful meals-low in fat and calories with a decent amount of fiber to boot. In fact the biggest problem with the frozen meals are the amounts of sodium.

These single-serving dinners are actually good for those counting calories, I have used them myself for lunch at the office, or those who are single and don't want to cook for just one. The only dinners that were found to be over-the-top on calories were the Hungry Man. But that is what they boast about their dinners, the one-pound serving sizes. On the other hand, some of the smaller dinners may not be enough to keep an active young man or woman full for long.

One bonus from instant ethnic dining is that several of the dinners are surprisingly high in fiber. Just be careful, for example, Hungry Man offers up to 9 grams of fiber per serving, but you also get 780 calories and 13 grams of fat.

Some good advice if you are watching your sodium, none of the frozen dinners are actually low in sodium. The best thing to do is look for the dinners with the lowest sodium content and try to stick with those. Then you can watch your sodium intake for the rest of the day.

Choose those that are highest in fiber. A dinner that provides 7 or 8 grams of fiber can go a long way in meeting your daily fiber goal of 20 to 35 grams.

Keep an eye out for fat content because they can vary widely. Choose a dinner that has no more than 11 grams of fat.

It is an excellent idea to add a salad and a serving of fruit in order to balance the meal and get those oh so very important phytonutrients.

Still, taste is very important, so trying several different ones to find the right combination of low fat, low calories, low sodium, and tastes good can be part of the fun of food test tasting!

Some good choices are: Lean Cuisine Chicken Chow Main, Healthy Choice Beef Teriyaki, Lean Cuisine Shrimp and Angel Hair Pasta, Healthy Choice Chicken Fettucini Alfredo, Weight Watchers Smart One's Lasagna Florentine, and Healthy Choice Chicken Enchilada

Jennifer Mayfield is a nutrition specialist with University Outreach and Extension in Southeast Missouri.