Frozen Foods That Are Not Worth It
Frozen foods offer convenience, but not all are created equal. This article highlights 17 frozen foods that you should avoid at all costs. From hidden sugars and unhealthy fats to high sodium levels and questionable ingredients, these selections can negatively impact your health. By shedding light on these notoriously bad options, we aim to help you make more informed choices and steer clear of the nutritional pitfalls lurking in the freezer aisle.
Deep-dish pizzas
If Italians realize we’re eating pizza straight from the freezer, they’ll probably disown us. But deep-dish pizza? Yep, we’re walking the plank.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with a deep-dish pizza. Except when it’s frozen, it’s bound to be bland, poorly made, and topped with chunks of old cheese, dry sauce, and stale meats.
Plus, many of these pizzas are loaded with sodium. Could it get any worse?
Fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy
Whoever invented frozen mashed potatoes seriously needs some therapy. But mashed potatoes with fried chicken and gravy in the freezer? That’s messed up.
While fried chicken may survive for a while in the freezer, we can’t deny it loses its taste from the cold and ends up tasting weird, soggy, and bland.
And let’s not even get started on the gravy. Bland, gross, and overly salted, no one should eat this frozen food. No, thank you.
Frozen lasagna
Alright, we’re a sucker for pasta. And yes, making lasagna from scratch is a painstaking task, so we get the appeal with this one.
Frozen grocery store lasagna never tastes good. It lacks that homemade taste that is necessary in this classic Italian dish.
It’s also difficult to make a good frozen lasagna because the thawing waters down the pasta and makes it into a weird, mushy mess.
Frozen chicken wings
Yes, frozen chicken wings are a delight to eat. They’re among the best frozen meals you can get.
But best doesn’t always mean healthy, and sadly, frozen chicken wings are as bad as they can get. They often contain preservatives and additives we don’t want. You are much better off making your own fresh fried chicken without any fillers.
Breaded onion rings
The problem with onion rings is that they’re not really something that should exist as frozen food because they just taste better fresh.
You might have noticed frozen onion rings taste a bit like your freezer. That’s because they can pick up the scents and smells from their environment. This just sounds gross.
Chicken pot pies
Chicken pot pie is a classic dish, but the grocery store frozen versions just don’t taste that good.
Like other frozen foods, chicken pot pie contains chicken and vegetables that may be of poor quality. The crusts also get soggy because they’ve been sitting in the freezer. Baking may get rid of that, but it still tastes mushy or weird. Yuck.
Breakfast sandwiches
Pre-packaged breakfast sandwiches are bland, boring, and unhealthy. There, that’s the entire argument.
Most of these sandwiches contain near-expiry meat and other fillings, so they quickly spoil if left out accidentally.
They also may have a higher level of trans fat and sodium than a fresh breakfast sandwich, making them much more unhealthy and tasting gross.
Mac and cheese
Alright, this is one of the few dishes that everyone loves, right? Yet, being thrown in a freezer ruined the experience.
Mac and cheese is a fine dish, but it’s literally one of the easiest to make fresh. Even a boxed one needs just two steps, so a frozen one is lazy.
Frozen mac and cheese is also mushy in all the wrong ways, bland, and contains processed cheese, which can be quite unnatural.
Tv dinners
TV dinners come with a plethora of problems, so they’re not exactly Grade-A foods. They’re unhealthy, boring, and maybe super old.
TV dinners are made to survive longer than normal foods, so they contain a buttload of preservatives and additives. To make matters worse, most TV dinners have a low nutritional value, so they really don’t bring anything to the table in way of taste or nutrients.
Pattie
All kinds of processed foods are unhealthy to some extent, but frozen patties might just take the cake.
Frozen patties are often made with scraps and poor-quality meat parts that can’t be used anywhere else. They also contain additives, artificial flavorings, fillers, and harmful preservatives that severely devalue their nutrition.
Enchiladas
Who wouldn’t love to make enchiladas in just a few minutes, right? But what’s the use when they’re going to be soggy and taste mucky?
Frozen enchiladas are often loaded with meat and cheese, which sounds good until you realize they’re probably old, poor-quality, and highly processed.
If hitting that unholy trifecta wasn’t enough, frozen enchiladas lost their original texture, which drastically changed their quality and taste.
Seafood
When we say seafood, it doesn’t mean all seafood. But pre-packaged, marinated seafood is definitely on our ” do not buy” list because there’s a lot wrong with it.
Marinated seafood gives out a lot of water when thawing, which waters down the sauce, ruining the taste and texture. Who wants to eat bland, lousy seafood? Not me!
Burritos
A frozen burrito is just a disaster waiting to happen. The filling inside never heats properly, and the tortilla on the outside gets too hot, even when touched.
While freezing extra burritos may seem like a good idea at the time, you will regret it the moment you take a bite. And don’t even get us started on those frozen burritos in the grocery store that taste like pure cardboard. Yuck!
Avocados
Avocados should not be frozen, ever. They might look nice and green inside the cold package, but when they thaw, they turn mushy and brown. The idea of making avocados last longer is nice, but freezing them really doesn’t work.
Chicken Nuggets
Chicken nuggets are often made with mashed up, leftover pieces of chicken that are then shaped, cut with a cookie cutter, and deep fried. Sounds pretty awful, right?
Skip the chicken nuggets in the frozen food aisle and look for real chicken tenders instead. At least chicken tenders are whole pieces of real chicken rather than chicken mush!
Frozen Waffles
Frozen waffles may sound like a convenient breakfast but they are never good. You pop them in the microwave and they come out overly chewy and sometimes very dry. They also have no real flavor and make for a very disappointing breakfast.
