Healthy and taste-tested convenience foods

Healthy and taste-tested convenience foods

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Story Published: Dec 31, 2008 at 5:28 PM PDT

Story Updated: Dec 31, 2008 at 6:34 PM PDT

By Good Housekeeping

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Supermarkets are loaded with products designed to save you time in the kitchen. In many cases, these convenience items are not all that good for you; they're loaded with fat or salt, or sugar.

The nutrition experts at the Good Housekeeping Research Institute shopped, then cooked to find convenience foods that taste good and are healthful.

Delia Hammock, the institute's senior nutrition advisor, said the team looked at nutrition labels of over a thousand products, and then picked out the 300 top choices and put those to the taste test to find which ones really were delicious.

"Healthy Choice Fresh Mixers Ziti and Meat Sauce was one of the favorites," said Hammock. "It comes in a plastic container with its own little strainer so you can cook the pasta and the sauce separately and mix them together."

For a quick snack, Good Housekeeping recommends Blue Horizon Organic Spring Rolls.

"These spring rolls cook very quickly in the microwave, and we found three varieties that really taste great too. three of them only have about 150 calories," said Hammock.

And Cedar's Chickpea Salad was a surprise favorite side dish. It has chickpeas, vegetables and dried cranberries. A half cup provides almost one-fourth of your daily fiber.

So how many convenience foods do you eat? It's estimated that the average American eats six convenience foods every day.

Do you buy pre-washed salad greens at the supermarket? If so, here's a tip. Look for darker greens such as romaine, arugula and watercress. They offer more nutrition than lighter greens.

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