Evol has launched a new line of bowls that they’re calling Modern Nutrition Bowls. It feels a little bit like a combination of Sweet Earth’s cleverly named line of healthy burritos and Frontera’s line of Mexican-inspired bowls designed by chef Rick Bayless. So it definitely has our interest piqued.
Today, we’re checking out the Evol Balance Bowl — which instructs us to “be centered” — because we wanted to see how it stacks up against the competition.
The cook time on this is nice and short, at just three and a half minutes of microwave time. The box also lists oven instructions, but that recommends 40 minutes of cook time. We opted for the much shorter microwave cooking method, because we were quite hungry by the time we pulled this frozen meal out of the freezer.
This meal is mostly rice. In fact, we’d say that about 2/3 of the contents of this frozen food are rice. Now, normally that would be a bad thing, but this rice has a really interesting flavor. First off, it’s a red rice — instead of the more common white or brown rices — and it has a strong citrusy flavor. That comes courtesy of a fair helping of lemon juice concentrate.
Unfortunately, the rice is the most interesting part of this meal. The chicken is bland and a bit too dry. The asparagus has a great flavor, but it’s too crunchy and there’s hardly any of it in this dish. The carrots are chopped too small to be all that noticeable. The yellow bell peppers are scant, and they barely add anything to this mix.
Now, the idea here is that you’ll mix all this together rather than eat each individual piece separately, and that definitely makes everything work. Of course, that’s because the lemon-flavored rice is doing so much of the heavy lifting here.
Perhaps the closest item to this in the Frontera line is the Chicken Fajita Bowl. Unfortunately, the Evol Balance Bowl has almost double the calories, at 460 (as opposed to 260), making it less fit for the calorie-conscious. There’s a reason the slogan here is simply “be centered” and not “be centered and keep those calories low.” It does contain less sodium than its Frontera-branded competitor, however, at a mere 390 mg. That’s actually really low for a frozen meal. This meal also contains 13 g of protein and 41 g of whole grains, which is worth mentioning as well, and that makes it a pretty filling frozen meal.
The Evol Balance Bowl is decent, but it’s nothing special. It’s worth trying if you’re curious about the citrusy rice flavor, but the rest of the meal is rather unexciting. It also has too many calories to be considered a diet-friendly meal, which it seems to be disguising itself as.
Rather than eating the Evol Balance Bowl, we recommend trying one of Frontera’s Bowls instead. Try the Barbacoa Taco Bowl or the Chicken and Chorizo Taco Bowl and you’ll see why we prefer those meals to Evol’s version.
If you’re interested in learning more about the nutrition content or ingredients in this Evol bowl, check out our package scan below.
