January is traditionally the month when most diets begin as people start New Yar's Resolutions aimed at getting healthier and try to shift the extra pounds put on over Christmas. Most supermarkets now have their own range of diet ready meals, some linked to slimming organisations, and all suggesting they could help you lose weight as part of a balanced diet.
Dianne Bourne decided to try Aldi's SlimWell range, which has been expanding since it was first launched in 2017. She ate five of the meals - one each night - to see whether they tasted good, what the cost would be and, crucially, if she could lose weight.
Writing for the MEN, she said: "As I'm back on the dieting bandwagon for the new year, I thought I'd give the latest lunch pots, as well as two of the Aldi SlimWell main meals, a try over the course of a week's healthy eating."
Dianne is on a Slimming World plan, so the rest of her meals stuck to that and she used the syns value printed on the Aldi packets to stick within her diet. She said: "They're called SlimWell - so of course the obvious question you're going to ask me is did they help me slim well? The straight up answer is yes, they did.
"I tested these five Aldi SlimWell meals incorporated into my other home-made lunches and dinners over the course of a week. During this time I was also following a healthy, balanced diet with the aim of losing weight.
"For my other meals in the week I have been following the Slimming World plan, so eating a range of healthy foods - for example breakfast is fruit and yoghurt or eggs on wholemeal toast, lunches have been tuna on jacket potato or mozzarella, tomato and basil salad, while evening meals for me have ranged from beef stew, chicken roast dinner, homemade bolognaise and jerk chicken with rice.
"It was my first week of "dieting" after the Christmas deluge, so I was hoping to lose a decent amount of weight. And I did - I lost 4lbs at the end of this week.
"Now, clearly, most people won't be eating five ready meals in a week, and neither would I ordinarily, but I was doing this for the purpose of reviewing the dishes for this feature.
"These ready meals are all calorie-controlled meals, but as with everything like this, they can only support weight loss if you're following a healthy balanced diet for the rest of your week too. Priced at £1.99 to £2.19 they are at the cheaper end of the supermarket ready meal stakes, although naturally I know you'll all be sat there shouting 'it would be cheaper to batch cook your own'.
"Moving forward, I'll continue to have the chicken tikka masala in my freezer as a healthier option to takeaway when I fancy a quick curry fix. And I did really, really enjoy the chicken satay pot which I'll try again. However, the others probably won't be ones I will personally choose to keep in my freezer."
Here is what Dianne ate, and what she thought...
Meatball Pasta Pot Lunch - £1.99
Aldi Slimwell meatball pasta - after microwaving (Image: MEN)
It looked a very small portion after cooking in the microwave. But on flavour I can't knock it, this one was delicious.
The meatballs had a great burger-y taste to them (all four of them that I counted). While the pasta sauce was rich, sweet with a decent streak of spinach through it all.
Considering the tiny portion size, I have to say it did fill me up by the end of it. So maybe there's a lesson there on keeping my portions a bit smaller when I make my own meals.
However, it seemed quite high in calories - 420 and fat 8.3g to me - although on the "traffic light" chart that still made it green and described as "low in saturated fat". While it was really tasty and enjoyable, I honestly think I could create something like this fairly easily at home so I'm not sure I'd buy again.
Calories: 420
Fat: 8.3g
Slimming World syns: 5.5
Taste rating: 4/5
Chicken Satay Lunch Pot - Aldi £1.99
Aldi Slimwell cajun pot - pictured after microwaving (Image: MEN)
Damn you Aldi. I didn't want to like this one - esepcially when I saw how much it shrank down to after being microwaved. It looked like such a small portion with not much substance given there was no rice or pasta in it so I was ready to hate it.
But one taste and it had won me over. It's just the most GORGEOUS tasting sauce - its rich and thick with a massively satisfying hit of that peanuty-curry Satay flavour.
It's like a thick, satisfying gloopy soup with big lumps of chicken and veg. But again, be warned it's really high in salt - 3.22g a portion, which is 54% of your recommended daily intake.
I have no idea how to make something taste this good, so I'll definitely be heading back to Aldi to have some of these in my freezer again. And it's pleasingly low on calories too.
Calories: 308 calories
Fat: 8.1g
Slimming World syns: 5
Taste rating: 5/5
Beef Burrito lunch pot - £1.99
The Aldi beef burrito lunch pot - pictured after microwaving (Image: MEN)
I quite liked the sound of this one, being a fan of a burrito. But I was a little troubled by the high fat content for a "slimming" meal - of 10.9g - as well as another massive salt hit of 2.98g- 50 % of your recommended daily allowance.
The taste was pleasant, although I could probably have taken more of a hit of spice in it. But the description of "tender beef chunks" was way off the mark - the pieces of meat I eventually found in it were tough and one piece so gristly I had to spit it out.
Not one, that for me, is worth the calories and fat hit (and 6.5 syns on Slimming World!), and so I won't personally be buying it again.
Calories: 393 calories
Fat: 10.9g
Slimming World syns: 6.5
Taste rating: 2/5
Smoky BBQ Chicken - Aldi £2.19
The Aldi Slimwell Smoky BBQ chicken - that we served with our own boiled rice (Image: MEN)
The Smoky BBQ chicken is a huge portion, described as a "single generous serving" but what's the use of that if you can only bear to eat about half of it? Although at least that's one way to cut your calories I suppose.
I found the chicken strips tasted dry, while the sauce tasted like a diet drink glooped over it all. You would probably need to add some rice or salad (as the box suggests) to make it look like a normal meal - I went for the rice option.
Despite having 43 per cent of your entire daily allowance of salt in it (2.58g), it tasted like it needed more salt, or spice, to give a better depth of flavour in my opinion. Yes, it's low in calories and fat, but that is its only redeeming feature for me.
All in all this was a big miss for me.
Calories: 348 (not including the rice)
Fat: 4.7g
Slimming World syns: 1
Taste rating: 1/5
Chicken tikka masala - £2.19
(Image: MEN)
I've tried this curry before when I was testing out all different supermarkets' diet versions of the classic chicken tikka masala. It impressed me then, and it still does now, with its yummy fragrance, as I microwaved it back to life.
You can see all the coriander that has been sprinkled in and it's a really rich, creamy tasty sauce with a decent spice kick. It doesn't come with any rice though, so you'll either have to add your own or maybe slap a low-calorie nan bread on to mop all that sauce up with.
What lets it down, like the other chicken meals here really, was the quality of the meat - many of the lumps felt tough and dry. The box, like the other Aldi SlimWell chicken dishes, sees fit to mention that it's "produced using Thai chicken" so maybe they're a tougher bird than the British ones I'm more used to eating.
But, in terms of flavour this is a belter - and an easy way to get your curry fix without the massive amounts of fat and calories you're likely to get with a takeaway. But yep, I noted that this one is again really high for its salt content at 3.21g - 53 per cent of your daily allowance.
Calories: 418
Fat: 7.4g
Slimming World syns: 2
Taste rating: 4/5
