Critique: Banquet Classic Fried Chicken Meal

Being the gluten for punishment that I am, after critiquing Banquet’s Homestyle Pot Roast which received less than stellar grades, I deiced the go ahead and give their Fried Chicken Meal a go also. As you can see, the picture looks very inviting. The meal is on the small side; only 228 grams in total. The three compartments held a round bread ball that is supposed to be the chicken thigh while the other two sported a helping of mashed potatoes and corn.

First, I would like to address the nutritional values before delving into the actual taste. OK. Hmm. Let’s see what we have here… the calories come in at 440 with half those coming from fat. Not to be out done, the cholesterol is an impressive 80 milligrams or one third of the average adults daily allowance… but wait! The real winner has got to be the sodium content! Over 1,110 milligrams or close to half an adult’s daily allowance. So, let’s review shall we? Seems we have a meal here of somewhat questionable nutritional value. For a few bucks, your body gets assaulted with a boatload of fat, cholesterol and salt! What a deal.

OK. Let’s move on to the big tamale shall we? The taste test is where it’s at, as they say. I microwaved the meal for the proscribed amount of time and was soon greeted with the smell of chicken, corn and potatoes all mixed up together. The end result is about what you’d expect from Banquet, not great, but also not all that bad considering the poor nutritional score. My grade for this meal is a C+ for taste and a D- for nutrition or a 5 on a scale of 10. (A slightly better grade than the one I gave the Pot Roast meal in a previous critique).