If you’ve ever been to Whole Foods, you probably recognize the 365 Everyday Value brand of food. In case you’re unfamiliar with it, this is Whole Foods’ proprietary brand. The line contains a lot of items across a wide variety of categories, but at Freezer Meal Frenzy we’re focused exclusively on frozen meals (with an exception or two, of course). So we picked up a box of the 365 Everyday Value Lightly Breaded Fish Strips to see what they’re all about.
While the marketing folks at 365 Everyday Value were careful to use the word Stips in the title, we’re not fooled; these are actually fish sticks. We’re not sure why they felt ashamed of the term fish sticks. Perhaps they felt they serve a more upscale demographic than those lowly fish-stick-eating paupers. (Of course, they seem content to call them Fish Sticks when they package them in a bag, which we find even more curious. Maybe the ones in the bag are smaller?) But either way, we’re going to keep calling them fish sticks, because that’s exactly what they are.
These come without microwave directions, so we heated them up in the oven. In fact, the back of the box even says, “Microwave cooking not recommended.” That’s probably for the best, because we’re not sure they’d cook very well in the microwave, and who wants to eat soggy fish sticks? Plus, we were happy to spare our microwave the humiliation of smelling of wet fish all day long.
According to the box, there should be five to eight fish sticks in a box. Ours had six, though one was quite a bit smaller than the others; we’ll call that one the runt of this fish stick litter. Other than Little Runty, though, these are actually pretty large. (Plus, Little Runty seems to have had a growth spurt in the oven!) If you compare them to, say, Trader Joe’s Fish Sticks, the 365 sticks are at least double the size.
With a cook time of almost 25 minutes, these come out of the oven piping hot. Please give them a few minutes to cool down before you pop one into your mouth. We’d really hate for any of our lovely readers to end up burning themselves!
These are made of pollock caught exclusively in the United States (or off the coast of the United States, we assume). Our guess for a more specific location would be Alaska, since Alaska pollock seems to be a popular fish for fish sticks. While we admire the sentiment of keeping these fishermen (and fisherwomen) in the States, we’re not sure that has any bearing on the flavor. Then again, we suspect that a true fish enthusiast might disagree with us on that.
These fish sticks end up pretty crispy on the outside, though they do the typical fish thing where the inside of the breading separates from the fish. This creates a bit of a moist, almost-slimy barrier between the breading and the fish. This isn’t unusual for fish, but we thought it’s worth pointing out, since someone out there might find this to be an unappealing quality.
The fish itself doesn’t actually have much flavor, though if you pull a piece of fish out of the breading you’ll detect the subtlest hint of fishiness. This means these sticks are completely dependent on the breading to provide the flavor. Thankfully, the breading tastes great. We would have loved to have dipped these in tarter sauce, as the box shows, but they taste just fine on their own.
A serving size is two fish sticks, which seems unreasonably small unless you’re eating these as a side dish rather than the main course. We don’t think it’s unusual to finish a box in a sitting, especially when there’s only six in a box. In fact, six seems like the perfect amount. If you take the box’s recommendation, two fish sticks contains about 190 calories (80 from fat). That means our serving of six contains about 570 calories, and about 240 from fat. The reasonable 350 mg of sodium them becomes a whopping 1,050, which is quite a lot.
The 365 Everyday Value Lightly Breaded Fish Strips really hit the spot. Just don’t be deceived by the large box; you won’t find multiple servings inside unless you take the box’s advice and only eat two at a time.
If you want to learn more about the ingredients or nutrition in these fish sticks, check out our package scan below.
