Perhaps we shouldn’t mention this right at the beginning of a food review, but we’re honestly growing a bit tired of the Healthy Choice brand. In our defense, we’ve had some really bad experiences with the brand in the past (the Chicken Feta & Farro Power Bowl was a really messed-up experience for us).
Needless to say, we went into the Healthy Choice Sweet & Zesty BBQ Seasoned Pork Power Bowl with a bit of nervous hesitation. Will this be a disaster, or will it surprise us and end up being a tasty treat? There’s only one way to find out, so let’s dive in.
Now, the problem we had with the Chicken Feta & Farro Power Bowl was that it was all dried out when we heated it up — to the point that it was inedible. We were willing to call that a rare factory defect until it happened a second time. The Sweet & Zesty BBQ Seasoned Pork Power Bowl was a disaster when we pulled it out of the microwave.
Now, we have a suspicion that there’s something wrong with the packages here, and that it’s causing these to lose moisture over time. In fact, we think the cardboard dish might be absorbing it, but we’re not scientists, so who knows? By the time we cook one up (sometimes it’s been in the freezer for a while, though this meal was only in our freezer for about a month), the moisture is mostly gone. And that means that when we heat it up, it just gets dry and hard. Whenever we cook one up right away, it seems to turn out fine.
So we went out and got a fresh package, then tossed it straight into the microwave when we got home. The results were a bit better, though, as you can see in our image below, this was still less than impressive.
Everything is still dry, though at least it’s edible. There is some chunky BBQ sauce in the corner of the dish, and once you stir everything together, the meal actually starts resembling something you might want to eat. But even then, things just don’t go very well for this dish.
There are big chunks of sweet potato in the dish, and normally we’d think that was great. Here, they’re not a boon for the meal because they’re a bit dry. The pork is dry as well. And so are the pinto beans. In fact, the pinto beans are the worst part of the whole meal. They’re chalky on the inside and hard on the outside.
The only redeeming factor for this dish is that the BBQ sauce actually tastes pretty darn good. It has a sweet flavor, with a zesty kick underneath it. Now, if this were a thinner sauce, and if there were more of it present, it could have saved this meal entirely. Unfortunately, it’s a thick paste that doesn’t mix well into the rest of the ingredients.
This frozen meal has 350 calories, which is a bit more than we’d like. We understand that this is supposed be be a protein load rather than a low-calorie treat, but we really would have liked to see this top out at about 300 calories.
The Healthy Choice Sweet & Zesty BBQ Seasoned Pork Power Bowl is a mess. We tried twice to get this to come out right, and neither worked out for us. This meal is so dry that, if you choose to eat it, you should do so with a large bottle of water on hand. We recommend avoiding this one.
If you’re looking for something similar to this, you might want to try the Frontera Al Pastor Taco Bowl instead. Frontera’s pork bowl has a similar vibe, though it tastes incredible and has fewer calories. It’s also not a dry mess, like the Healthy Choice Sweet & Zesty BBQ Seasoned Pork Power Bowl.
So, as it turns out, we were right to be wary of Healthy Choice’s pork bowl.
To learn more about the nutrition content or ingredients in this Healthy Choice Power Bowl, check out our package scans below.
