Our Least Favorite Frozen Dinner Brand Churns Out Underwhelming Duds

Starting with a baseline criteria of "diet frozen food," Smart Ones brand isn't exactly set up for success. Still, when a health-conscious shopper scans the frozen premade dinner aisle on their grocery run, the choice to add a Smart Ones meal to the shopping cart is likely more about the brand's purported health benefits than for any knockout taste over competitor brands. In reality, however, the "healthy" factor that might draw shoppers in is ... questionable, at best. In a definitive Tasting Table ranking of 20 frozen dinner brands, Smart Ones landed decidedly at the bottom.

We're not docking points for variety. Frozen dinners in the Smart One oeuvre encompass a wide-ranging menu of pastas, pizzas, enchiladas, and more — and you might need one of each to actually feel full. The official Smart Ones website is emblazoned with the tagline, "The foods you love. The portions you need." Yet, as we mentioned in our review, "Most of the meals from this Kraft Heinz brand total less than 300 calories which is remarkably low for an entire meal." Their small serving size makes these "meals" about as fueling as a big snack. Don't be shocked if you're hungry again in an hour or two. Quoting our taste-tester, "[W]ith such a large restriction of calories comes a limit to the amount of flavor these meals can provide, and it's no surprise that the brand fails to deliver in the taste department [...] low calorie doesn't need to equate to dismal dining."

To illustrate our point, take a closer look at the three frozen meals that the brand's home page lists as its "top products" — the Broccoli Cheddar Roasted Potatoes, Chicken Fettuccine with Parmesan Sauce, and General Tso's Chicken. Despite packing an impressive 9 grams of protein (17% of the daily recommended value), that Broccoli Cheddar "dinner" contains just 200 calories. The Chicken Fettuccine ups the protein ante with 18 grams, but still only packs 300 calories of fuel; the General Tso's lands solidly middle with 13 grams of protein and 340 calories. If a foodie ate one of these meals for breakfast, one for lunch, and one for dinner, they would still be 760-2,160 calories shy of the 1,600-3,000 daily calories needed for a healthy adult, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

However, it's worth noting that Smart Ones does seem to offer lower sodium than competitor frozen meal brands. Smart Ones' Chicken Fettuccine contains 530 mg of sodium compared to 930 mg of sodium in the frozen chicken fettuccine dinner by Stouffer's. On the flip side, also worth noting is that, according to fans in a Reddit thread, Smart Ones frozen meals across the board don't taste as good as they used to. Despite its name, Smart Ones isn't the smartest pick for frozen dinners that actually deliver.