April 12th, 2007
You know those ads for Hungry Man frozen meals? The ones where the guys say things like, “Basically I’m a bottomless eating machine” and “It’s good to be full”?
Well, how about this for amusing: I checked those meals in the grocery store, because I’m kind of obsessed with media’s influlence on eating and the crisis of obesity. And guess what? The Hungry Man entree I looked at (turkey, mashed potatoes, some veg, gravy) contains just under 400 calories, which was the same amount of calories in the Weight Watchers frozen meal that was next to it on the shelf. Ha!
Come on. It’s hilarious. It’s a classic example of how we are being manipulated by advertisers. Dieters, feel free to buy Hungry Man entrees because they have no more calories than Weight Watchers entrees!* I am delighted at the thought of a bunch of anxious fat women buying the WW dinners, feeling virtuous because of the brand name, when in fact they might as well be loading up on Hungry Man. Who’s being suckered here, the fatties or the hungry men (for the record, I say the hungry men – 300 calories is a pretty skimpy dinner)? I didn’t check the prices so I don’t know which is the better deal, but who cares? Can anyone put a value on irony?
Someone should sue. Clearly this is misrepresentation.
Actually, it’s a bit more complicated than this. There is a Hungry Man version called the XXL which the internet says has up to 1000 calories per meal, so maybe the one I found (not XXL) was an unusually light meal. I tried to look up the data on Swanson’s website but they’re playing coy – there is no nutritional information there at all. I found some online reviews and while they are unofficial sources, it looks like most Hungry Man meals are closer to 800 calories a pop… okay, that’s pretty hearty.
But still. The fact that even one Hungry Man meal is comparable to a Weight Watchers meal… it just tickles me. Ha!
*Make sure you look at the calorie content yourself before buying.
“300 calories is a pretty skimpy dinner”
- not really.
And that lump in the pit of your stomach from the Hungry Man dinner will probably be more pronounced than with the WW dinner, which will likely be lighter. Also, check things like the salt content and such on the HM one. There has to be some hidden traps in HM, even if its amusing that they have the same calories.
That said, I wouldn’t eat either one of them.
Actually I’d argue 300 calories is a *very* skimpy dinner. Your average man, the nonhungry and moderately active variety, needs about 2000 calories a day to maintain his weight and energy needs. Assuming 3 meals a day, and assuming he follows the North American tradition of making dinner the biggest meal of the day, 300 is tiny. Even if all 3 meals are the same size he’s only having 900 calories that day, which is less than UN regulations for a starvation diet (that’s 1200). A more normal distribution might be 500 at breakfast, 500 at lunch, 700 at dinner, and a miscellaneous 300 for snacks during the day.
I eat about 1700 calories a day to stay at the same weight, and I’m a female on the smaller side who’s not super active. A 300 calorie dinner would be too small even for me.
As for the lightness of the WW dinner – that just doesn’t really make nutritional sense. The feeling of satiety is complicated, and relies on a subtle and elaborate system of chemical and mechanical signals. But in general, it’s tied to the amount (calories) of food you eat. It doesn’t matter much what kind of food it is. Whether or not you perceive a lump in your tummy after the HM meal (turkey) or the WW meal (pasta, I didn’t mention that in the entry) – who knows? My suspicion is that lump sensation is more tied to the amount of food you eat – we tend to gorge on the heavy stuff, ie Xmas dinner. If you’re the kind of person who wants salad for dinner, a much lighter meal, you’re probably also the kind of person who doesn’t want to stuff themselves until they ache. But I’m only guessing here.
And if you are concerned about your weight, it doesn’t matter in the slightest how “heavy” a meal feels. The only thing that counts if you’re weight watching is the calories. If you eat 1000 calories from carrots or 1000 calories from butter, it has the same effect on you body in terms of weight loss or gain (though you’ll get different micronutrients in each case, but it’s the macronutrients that count for weight).
As for salt content, that’s a whole other issue. Probably both dinners are loaded with it because salt makes things taste good, and prepackaged foods need all the help they can get. But that doesn’t really have a bearing on satiety. I guess it might spur you to drink more but other than that I’m not aware of any other salt related tricks.
I got a kick out of those commercials when they first hit the air. So, needless to say, I bought one of those things just to see what they were like. I can only assume that “Hungry Man” describes the consumer after the meal, not before. And it wasn’t what I’d call a taste sensation, either.
As for the calorie content, 300 calories is nowhere near enough, at least for me. For comparison, Subway’s 6″ turkey breast sub without cheese or any calorie-laden condiments comes in at just under 300. And even in full-blown weight loss mode, I’ll eat two of those for lunch.
some of the hungry man entrees have just under 1000 calories in them…so not such a good choice