June 17, 2013

Which Trader Joe’s Foods Are Healthiest?

In our latest food smackdown, we put TJ’s convenience meals to the test.

I’ve fessed up before about my takeout addiction, and now I’m ready to come clean about another dinner habit: Trader Joe’s frozen meals. Even when I have plenty of time to cook a real dinner, I sometimes opt for a bowl of veggie gyozas or a chicken burrito instead. I know that these meals probably aren’t exactly a juice cleanse, but I like to think they’re not junk food either. So how healthy are they really? We decided to put a few meals to the test.

And for the real nutrition nerds out there, here’s the full rundown on the dishes we tested:

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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