Natural food shouldn't have to taste bad

I'm a firm believer that natural foods should taste better than their processed, chemical filled brothers and sisters. After all, in my mind, natural = good. So I had some high hopes when I tried a few of the Healthy Choice All Natural Entrees.

The first entree I tried was the Pumpkin Squash Ravioli. I like pumpkin, I like squash, and I like ravioli, so I thought all three of those things would be a good mix. But boy, was I wrong. This was literally the worst frozen meal I've had in a really long time. Maybe it was because the ravioli were paired with asparagus and apples, two items that I wouldn't ever put together, but the entire combination tasted like rotting garbage in my mouth, to put it mildly. After a few bites, I gave up on the meal (which I rarely do) and threw away the rest, drinking as much water as I could find in my kitchen to get the awful taste out of my mouth.

After my incident with the ravioli, I kept seeing commercials for Healthy Choice and thought that maybe I'd just tried the one awful entree. So I bought the Tomato Basil Penne, hoping it would at least be edible. And it was. I wouldn't say it was the best frozen meal I've ever had, but at 280 calories with 6 grams of fat and a really filling portion size, I was pleased with my meal.

The other day, feeling like my Healthy Choice entree "luck" was improving, I tried the Portabella Spinach Parmesan entree. I was a little skeptical about this entree from the get-go because I feel like it's hard to freeze and reheat mushrooms without taking some sort of mushroom-y funkiness. And unfortunately for me, I was right. Not only did this entree look pretty unappetizing, but it didn't taste all that great, either. The spinach was greenish-brown and the mushrooms looked old. See the picture below. I was really hungry, so I managed to eat the entire entree, but I felt gross afterwards.

This last entree killed any sort of desire I might ever have to eat a Healthy Choice Entree - natural or not - on the future. I don't care how cutesy the commercials are - I won't buy into the marketing hype for this brand ever again!

***UPDATE*** Although I SWEAR I didn't see chicken in the ingredients for this entree (I obsessively read them), it has been reported that this entree has chicken fat in it, as listed at the end of the ingredients. GROSS! This was what probably made me sick! Vegetarians beware.