This is a Jenny Craig frozen meal: Crumbed Fish & Wedges. It comprises a portion of crumbed fish, topped with a cheese sauce, a portion of seasoned potato wedges, julienned carrots, steamed broccoli and a squeeze of fresh lemon.
Fish and veggies? What could be more nutritious? Well, the truth is, almost anything, say three of Australia’s leading nutritionists and dietitians.
Following the release of a British research study last month that found some WeightWatchers products contain more kilojoules than standard brands, The Australian Women’s Weekly decided to put Australia’s biggest weight-loss companies under the microscope to find out how their food product fares nutritionally.
In a bid to discover just what is in the frozen meals, The Weekly cooked, plated, photographed and dissected pre-packaged foods into their constituent components and weighed by our staff at The Weekly’s Test Kitchen.
All this information was then sent to academic Fiona Willer at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane. And the results weren’t good. “What is vitally important in good food is what it contains, not what is taken out of it,” Fiona tells The Weekly.
According to the latest figures, 15 per cent of women and 11 per cent of men are already participating in weight-loss diets in Australia, either on their own or with Jenny Craig or one of the other weight-loss companies – Lite n’Easy or WeightWatchers, for example – in this industry. That represents about 2.3 million Australians.
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