The pre made meal section is one of the fastest growing areas of the supermarket, with busy lifestyles relying more and more on time and cost effective options for both singles and families. Today we take a closer look at the lasagnas that are commonly available in the fresh and freezer section of supermarkets, and you may be surprised in
the differences between different brands that we find. Hi I'm Susi Burrel and Emily and Wood and as two of us jay Is leading dieticians, we bring you the Nutrition Couch Product Review, a weekly chat on new products and old favorites you can find at supermarkets. Nelly and why little boys who are six love to eat lasagna? And in the good old days, I would sort of do a big cookout with my mum and we would layer a whole lot of vegetables and extra le mints and
perhaps freeze it. But I can't even tell you the last time I've had time or energy to do that. But it can be a really nutritious, great meal to tack away if you do have time. But I guess in current times also not inexpensive when you take into account the cost of veggies and good quality meat to make a lasagna. So I haven't done it for ages and ages. What about you, guys? Are you regularly making your own? Are you more likely to pick up something at the supermarket?
No, I never buy lasagna. I just don't find that that sort of satisfying. I'm not big into mints, and if I do, I have to buy the super lean type because I just I don't know. If I bought a lasagna in the supermarket. To me, I just wouldn't feel great after eating that. I just feel like it's a bit too sort of heavy and rich. So I am a fan of a zanni. We don't need a lot of pasture in my household with big potato rice, you know Mexican type people with me like you know,
our tacos and that sort of thing. We don't need a whole lot of pasta. But if we do, we do. I do love to build my in lasagna. And you know, I put the lean mince shield, I put lots of legumes, and like some lentils, I love substituting the sort of what is it that bechamel cream layer for something like rocotta cheese or cottage cheese. And then of course I'm like you, I layer and a ton of vegguice real as well, and I always do a double bachelor of Zangnie,
Like it takes so long to make that. If I'm gonna be here, I'm gonna make it. I'm going to make two or three serves, So I'll make two massive lasagna dishes. You know, might get out sixteen serves it or something and box it up and it all goes into the freezer. And that's something we might have occasionally on like a Friday night when we're just like, oh, can't be bothered cooking, but also we're like kind of want to keep our tails on track, won't get takeaway,
I want to save some money. We'll pull out some frozen lasagna, hit it up like it with a side salad, and it's just a really easy quick dinner. We've always got some sort of lasagna or curry in the freezer that I've sort of meal prepped in advance.
You're right, it is really time consuming. And I remember living with Italians that they would literally cook it for a day by the time that they did the sauce and got the flavor. So it can be amazing, and like you, I tend to prefer the quality of when you make yourself, because the meat contents tend to be
much higher and much leaner. But I know that there's a lot of people who do need quick and easy options, and there's quite a number of different Lasaignians with quite a range of nutritional profile, so we thought it was a really good one to share today for busy families. So the first one we're going to take a look at is one from AUDI. Now, I'm a big fan of the frozen food section at AUDI in general. I find they're really cost effective options and in general some
very nutritionally sound options. Dumplings come to mind as one of my favorite products, and a lot of the veggies. But we've chosen the design here today obviously, and this is a four hundred gram individual section of a frozen variety which retails for just two dollars twenty five. So that is an extremely cost effective option. You know, you add some veggies to that and it's a filling, tasty meal,
But how does it look nutritionally? So for the four hundred grams serving, it clocks in it just over five hundred calories or twenty two hundred and eighty kilodel, so quite a substantial load. As a reference, at least a dinner meal would be at least four five hundred calories for a female. It's probably a little bit small for a male. Twenty five point two grams of protein, which I have to say is a nice amount. Twenty four point eight grams of fat. Now it isn't a low
fat food here. It's got six point two grams of overall fat. It would need to be less than three grams to be a low fat product. So saturated fat's pretty good though. You know, it's almost less than three percent saturated fat, which is suggesting the meat is reasonable quality. Fifty two point eight grams of carbohydrate per serving, six point four grams of sugars, which is actually pretty low for that gram so per percentage, that's almost less than
one percent sugars, which is a good sign. Massive whack of salt in their twelve hundred milligrams, which is more than half hour recommended daily intake of sodium, so they're
certainly not going light on the salt. If we look at the ingredients, and they're pretty long in a product like lasagna, so it's twenty four percent cooked pasta the sauce is coming in at twenty three percent SPECIML, which is the creamy sauce with a mixture of milk, some cream as well, a little bit of butter, some vegetable oil,
so giving it I would say a reasonable taste in texture. Now, the number I'm always looking for on a lasagnie Leian is the percentage of meat in it, because ultimately that's what we're spending money on. And it is fourteen percent beef, which when we compare it to some of the other brands you'll see is actually pretty good. And as I said, I would infer the quality to be quite good since
the fat of it is pretty good. Profile seven percent tomatoes, some ferming agent, tomato paste, some red wine, some cheddar, and then we go down the least onion, carrots, very thickeners, et cetera to fill it out. So it's quite a long list, but you would expect that from a mixed dish like a lasagna. Now, I have to be honestly, and I reckon it's pretty good for the price two bucks for fourteen percent beef. I would buy this product. You know, I would recommend this product. I think it's sound.
I think for the price, you can't go wrong with that, you know. The sodium probably is the only thing that stands out to me is a bit of concern, Like that is really a lot, mind you, that kind of Italian food. It is going to be difficult to get it much lower than say eight hundred. But yeah, I certainly would be recommending it for my busy young guys, my women perhaps who needed a filling, carbohydrate rich meal, particularly if they teamed it with loads of salad or
edge and pleasantly surprised with this Audi lasagna. What do you think?
Yeah, I'm fifty to fifty like, I wouldn't call us. I'm big on volume based eating, so you'd have to add a lot of veggies and salad onto the side of that. I think if you just would have warmed that up, I feel like it's a fair like a carbo hydrate. You know, fifty three grams of carbs that serves great protein twenty five grams and you know, five forty calories. It's pretty light for most people. I mean, if you're small and you're not that active, it's probably
a little bit too much. But for most of our you know, active, relatively average weight people and above. I think it's It's pretty good calorie wise, isn't it. But
I'm just I don't know. It absolutely needs some more veggies and salad on the side, and the sodium, as you said, is kind of concerning if you're eating a lot of package based, pre made products, right, But if the rest of your diet it's pretty whole food and this is an occasional thing that you're going to keep in the freezer for just an occasional busy night where
you don't want to cook. I think that's fine. But if you're having this multiple times a week, or you're relying on frozen meals heavily, I would probably rethink this from a sodium perspective, and even just a volume based perspective. I don't think it's going to be that billing. I would think that if I heated this up, it wouldn't be enough for me. I'd need some more, whether it was extra you know, veggies or salad on the side.
Or something like that.
But otherwise it's not it's not too bad overall. There's nothing in there, you know, as she said, ingredient list is pretty long and pretty hardy, but there's nothing in there. That's overly you know, would be overly cautious of put it that way, Like it's just the standard products that you'd make lasagni from pasta, cream, water, butter, milk, a
little bit of red wine, tomato paste, some veggies and mince. Yeah, so I'm like you, I would sort of give it maybe I don't know, six or seven out of ten. I'd hasten to think i'd give any sort of pre made lazangnia or ten. So six or seven is pretty good from my side of things.
Oh, no, I would agree. I would give it probably seven, maybe seven and a half. Because it is a process food, you know, it's certainly not as good as a homemade I think the reason I think it's quite good for the price. Yeah, the price is great, but it's a four hundred gram serve, Like that's quite a good whack of lasagna. Like if I was eating that on my plate, I don't think I'd eat four hundred grams. So I think you're right, of course you need two three cups
of salad or bitch with it. But for fifty grams a carb that I think for two bucks, like twenty five grams of protein, that's a pretty wide spend. Yeah, in general, particularly when we have a look at a second some of the others which are a bit underwhelming.
The cost is definitely a winner. And you're for twenty five grams of protein.
Yeah, pause that thought for a second. We'll go on to the wo West beef lasagna. Now, they're about three or four different types of Woolies branded lasagna in supermarket. And the reason I know that is that I recently bought one for the family, so I spent quite a lot of time going through them. So there's the frozen one, and then there's kind of the gourmet one, and then
there's the quick and easy one. So this the best way to describe this one is the family sized pack, which you know, I think it is packaged a just kind of a premium product, and so when I have a look at it, I have to be honest, I'm a bit disappointed. So the first ingredients water twenty two percent pasta, and the reason I'm so disappointed is that the beef is only sitting at nine percent, which is incredibly low for a product that you would say is
heavily meat based. Tomato pays seven, so that's compared to the Audi which was what was that fourteen percent? And we'll look at the price points in a second. So tomato pays seven percent, tapioka flower, carrot butter, and ya celery milk dried whole milk. So the labels better. It gives us a lot greater insight into what's going into it than we can infer from Aldi's. Is it clean, I don't know it's I don't think it's that much cleaner.
It just looks at the way they've written it. But wheat flour, texted vegetable protein, so that's got some sort of bulking agent there. Canola oil, onion, seasoning, beef powder, garlic, salt, sugar, propica, natural preservative. So even though it looks like a cleaner list, when you actually take a closer look, the actual strong ingredients are much lower overall, and that is inferred by
the nutrition. So the serving size recommended here is one undred and fifty grams, so that gives you just over four hundred calories, So you have to kind of do the maths a little bit in your head with that, but basically it's giving you quite a lot of calories for a lot less nutrition. So we're getting on twelve grams of protein perserve. Now, admittedly the ALDI say four hundred and you're getting twenty five, and this is two fifty.
You're only getting twelve, So still less protein overall, similar fat, I should say, three percent of that traded fat as well, thirty grams of carbs, three grams of sugars a little tiny bit more, three grams of fiber, sodium five sixty three, So it is lower in sodium than the AUDI product. But I'm just underwhelmed ley and in general that it's sort of a significant like a third less meat in that product that you're getting.
Yeah, but you know what they've done. Tell me, I've swift that what they've done. So that textual vegetable protein that you know, how you ever seen that in the vegetarian section, Like you add water too and it fluffs up. It sort of looks like minced meat, like it's a vegetarian protein alternative. So the protein content is actually quite high. When you look at the ALDI product, right, that is per serving four hundred grams. This is perserving two fifty grams.
If you match that four hundred grams and four hundred grams, the protein's actually nineteen point two, so it's a lot higher, like it's only you know, five grams less than the other ones. Although it's very low beef. They've actually added in textured vegetable protein to boost the overall protein. That's what they've done. And the fiber is a little bit better as well, because the texted vegetable protein has some good fiber in it. So they're giving you a relatively
like nineteen grams per serves. You know, it's pretty good for a frozen meal. They're giving you a relatively higher protein based product. But they're saving themselves money because they're adding less beef and they're using some vegetable protein to.
Top it up.
So from a wolf's perspective, I think they've done quite well. But if you're paying more for it compared to the ALDI one, you're not paying for the beef, So you know, Wolworst is done all right. They're saving themselves some money, and nutritionally it's not too bad, Like you're right. The ingredient list is probably oh, it's a little bit cleaner than the Aldi one, but nutritionally I don't think it stacks up quite as well, and price wise, I think it's a little bit more expensive, isn't it.
Yeah, So I'm just doing the numbers now in it. So it's about so the Woolies for two kilows, so it's a big tray retails at thirteen dollars fifty and so the equivalent amount, so five hundred grams times four is giving you about nine dollars. So it's actually cheaper to buy four audis for better nutritional profile and no
fillers that it is to pay thirteen dollars. You're going to say five four dollars by doing that, and you're getting better nutritional quality and more meat, significantly more meat than the Williese brand, which to me is a bit horrifying. I don't like it. I'm not happy with that at all.
Yeah. I was going to say the perks of the worst one would be if you're actively trying to cut down the amount of animal product you have, or like the saturated fat profile is lower as well, that would be a benefit. But I like the Aldi one because
it is single serve and portion controlled as well. Right, Like, it's better if somebody if you had a big trailers on you in front of you and you cut it up into I don't know what eight ten twelve slices, and you kept going back for more and more, just putting your spoon through, and you know, just you know how you do. It's on the counter. You just have
another spoon and another spoon and another spoon. Then you've not only eaten a serve, you've eaten like a serve and a half because you keep going back for more. I do like that the Audi one is preportioned as well.
I do, and I like it comparatively. And to be honest, if I was buying or when I bought a lasagna, the only thing I went for was the percentage of meat. I basically paid for the product that had the highest proportion of meat overall, and I think I ended up getting like an individual sort of gourmet one in the front of the supermarket rather than any of these family packs because I was underwhelmed. So it's really I'm finding
this really fascinatingly, all right. So the third one we're going to take a look at is the Cole's Kitchen Beef Lasagna. Now, Leanne and I've had to get our mats out because the way the label is listed is a little bit on the confusing side. So we think we've got the numbers right for you now. So this is an individual portion pack of four hundred grams, so it's slightly less than smaller in size than the AUDI one, and it reach outs for seven dollars eighty. So certainly
the AUDI was four hundred. It was the auty four hundred size. Yes, yeah, it's the same size or not five hundred. Okay, So the cost of the AUDI is or like eleven dollars but still cheaper. Sorry, but this is certainly positioned as more of a gourmet you know, this is in that section of the supermarket at the front where the individual meals are sold at premium prices. So this is seven dollars eighty, which is, you know what,
three times what you're paying for the AUDI. Amount of a lasagna certainly looks very beautiful on the label per serve, certainly not low calorie. So it's two thousand, two hundred killogels, which is again over five hundred calories per serve, so not insignificant. Thirty five grams of protein, so that would be suggesting that there's a good amount of meat in that.
Twenty six point eight grams are fat and very similar overall fat profile to both the Audi and woollies from what we can infer of the meat in terms of relatively low saturated fat for bees, thirty three point two grams of carbohydrate land so that's actually would suggest a lot less carbohydrate or pasta in that product compared to the Audi which is coming in at fifty So you would assume perhaps less past and more meat in this product, getting six point four grams of fiber, which is interesting,
that's actually really high for lasagna, and the sodium is incredibly low at four hundred and eighty and that is incredibly low. So certainly if one of your goals is to reduce sodium intake, this would be the product for you. Now, this is where we're getting a little bit confused, so we're going to do our best to get these numbers
right for you. So it's listed as the bee fra goose sauce is fifty four percent of the overall product, the bescher more sauce, so the creamy sauce is twenty four percent and the lasagna just twenty nineteen percent, which is why that carbohydrate load of this Lasagni is much lower than the AUDI product. And then we've got cheddar cheese beefra goose sauce which contains thirty two percent Australian beef.
Now we are then taking that to be thirty two percent of fifty four percent, which we worked out coming in at ten percent meat, which is still lower than the AUDI product, A tiny tad bit higher than will It's not much still for me, lean a little bit on the law low side, Tomato City Regulator, mineral salt, water, Tomato past regulators, sery, onion, carrot, red wine, canola oil, cornstars, crush, garlic.
Very similar ingredients that we're seeing across the board in terms of a baseline lasagna, beef, flavor, salt, time, oregano, vesteraal source, et cetera, et cetera. Now I am struggling a little bit. Maybe I'm not seeing something. To see how this product has got thirty five grams of protein per four hundred grams, which is a huge amount more than the Woollies brand, which came in at just twelve MND. You the serving size is small, but still even double
the serving size, it's still significantly less. And the AUDI product, which comes at at twenty five grams with that meat load at ten percent, maybe we're not calculating it right, I don't know, what do you think?
I think thirty two percent of the beef Frogo saurce, which is fifty four percent. Like if you go fifty four percent timeser point three too, it's seventeen percent. I think the bee for seventeen percent, not ten pers seventeen, and that would make much better sense for me. I think it's better quality bea. Look, it's no Australian, it's no hormone added Austraian beef versus the Ali one is just beef, so I think, but I think it's just a bit better quality beef as well.
And you would hope solely, and you're paying a lot more for us. You're eight dollars like you would want it to be. And certainly in the past when we've looked at these meals, Coals have come up time and time again. And this podcast isn't sponsored by Coals. We will be always very transparent if we are sponsored on any episode about products. So but we have time and time again found that in these pre made type meals that Coals are outdoing the market in terms of what
they're offering quality wise. So you know, seventeen percent is high. You're getting what you pay for. The carbs are much lower. Can you're getting Astraian beach. Is it a low calorie meal. No, But for someone who's active or not actively trying to lose weight or adding plenty of salad or vege with a sodium of just four hundred and eighty, this is a great product. This is you know, I would give this an eight nine out of ten as a Lasign your product, with the exception of ideally you'd sort of
serve it with plenty of veggies. But for me, this is a standout in terms of a family product. If you are going to buy Lasign, you're pre made, you're much better to spend and get this, or head over to Aldi and get something that's much more cost effective because you're basically getting good quality beef and a much lower sodium content.
Yeah, I really like this one. I mean the price is a lot more like seven dollars already compared to two dollars, which, if you're resting the money happy you spend for quality, this one is far better because okay, we've got Australian beef for one, we know it's coming from it's Aussie, whereas the beef coming from. In the ALDI product, we don't know. It just says beef. I
would assume it's overseas. It's no hormone added. As well, when you look at the regulations within beef with an Australia compared to the rest of the world, they inject hormones, there's a lot of antibodic use and that sort of thing. Austraian beef is very tightly regulated. I really wouldn't be recommending beef or meat from anywhere else but Astraya if you can buy it. And also if you look at SUSI the protein is so high. Look at the chetta
cheese amount. You've got ingredient lists be fragu sauce, besha maal sauce design its sheets, then cheddar cheese. It's pretty high up the ingredient list, whereas in the Aldi one it's only three percent of chetta cheese. So I think there's a larger percentage of cheese in this one as well, which would boost up our protein as well. And I'm just having a look to see if you can buy it as a family pack at coals. I know there's
a larger vegetable lasagna in that coal's kitchen range. I'm not finding online a family variety that's larger, because if you had to feed a family with this, like, you know, that's going to be what thirty two dollars worth of lasagna, that's not going to be affordable for many families, So much better suited as a lunch meal or for a
singles as opposed to feeding a family. You know, maybe you get the this sounds terrible, Maybe you get the more expensive one for mom and dad, and you get the kids the two dollars one from Audi.
Yeah.
Yeah, But I think if you're looking at clinical health conditions, if you have heart disease or failure, if you're looking at the sodium content, you definitely want this coals be it's a beef ragu lasagna. I'll make that specific as well. And also if you're looking at you know your carbohydrate distribution, you're insulin resistant, you're a type two diabetic or a
type one diabetic. The carbohydrate content, so per hundred grams of the coals beef ragu one is only eight grams per hundred grams compared to the Aldi one is thirteen grams per hundred grams, so you're getting an extra four grams per hundred grams, and by four hundred you know what, an extra sixteen grams basically for the same serving size.
So it's about a serving of carbohydrates extra. And that reflects in the ingredient lists, where the cook pasta is twenty four percent in the Aldi one compared to only nineteen percent in the pasta in the Coals one. So I think overall, better ingredient lists, better macronutrient distribution, but the price point is a bit of a kicker. I would ditch the wil West one. I probably wouldn't even go near that. I'll ever recommend that. And honestly, SUSI,
if you look at it, I wouldn't. I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot fold. It looks horrible to me. I wouldn't buy that. It doesn't look appealing whatsoever. Whereas I think the Aldi and the Coals one are far better presented, at least in the front of packeted package serving size sort of thing. So I think coals would be number one for me Thanaludi.
True, and I've just had a look. See they've got the large one point TiO quilo vegetable coals kitcheners. I knew that retails for twelve dollars, so again quite affordable for families. I'm not seeing the family size of this same profile for Coals Kitchen, so hopefully they may consider bringing it into a larger serve that's more family friendly. You know, even if it was retailing for say fifteen dollars for the family, that's a really affordable, nutritionally rich meal.
But that may be preventing them doing it. They can't do it cheap enough for supermarket pricing with the quality, and hence they're just keeping it as a standalone and all those factors come into play with supermarkets, what they can sell for and whether people can actually afford it, and they may have found that they can only run it as an individual serve.
I would just say, yeah, a family size would be like thirty five dollars.
Certainly a lot of benefits there. So for me, yeah, I'd be giving it an eight or nine. For a Lasagnia product, I'd give the Audi you know, seven seven and a half purely just from a cost perspective and what you do get. But yeah, I would buy the Woollies one either. I'm pretty disappointed in that and yeah, we can only try and encourage our supermarkets to be making better quality food and have that available at affordable
prices for Australian families. But I thought this has really certainly been very eye opening for me todayly and looking at these because I, as I said, spent a significant amount of time getting dinner for my family and couldn't believe the differences in some of these products.
And I just want to bring home the point about when we're saying, you know, nine out of ten, seven out of ten, I want people, I just want to reiterate what SUSI said. For a lasagna. We're not saying that this product is a nine out of ten and it beats a salad pack or making some salmon and
veggies by yourself. Absolutely not. But when we're comparing just you know, frozen pre made lasagnas with a fresh or frozen from only the lasagne section pre made ones, we're giving it a nine, and we're giving it a seven, and we're giving it a six. It doesn't mean that overrule this product is a nine out of ten from a health perspective. It just means that based on all of the lasagnas within range, that we looked at this
is one of the better ones. So I just want to make that very clear people going away, saying Susan Leanne said that eating lasagna for dinner's a nine out of ten choice. It's not it's definitely an occasional option. It's probably not a great thing for health if you're going to do that really regularly, but definitely, you know, once a week or a couple of times a month or something, it's absolutely okay to do as part of a balanced, you know, family meal. I just really wanted to make that clip.
And certainly better than any kind of takeaway or fast food option, much much better than that when you're getting deep fried and fast food meal deals. So that's another good way of looking at it, and probably more cost effective too. All right, Well, that brings us to the end of the Nutrition Couch product review for another week.
Remember we are currently on tour and about to hit Sydney on September third and Melbourne on September seventeenth, So if you're in one of those cities and would love to come and see us live and get a fantastic goodie bag which probably won't contain lasagna, but plenty of other goodies. We would love to meet you and see you one of our live events and you'll find tickets at the nutritioncouch dot com. Have a great week and we will see you on Sunday for our regular weekly
aside drawn catch you guys next week. H