Well Fed Network

Posted by Cate O’Malley on Fit Fare.

You didn’t know they made frozen pizza? Yeah, neither did I until the friendly folks at Kashi offered to send us some samples for review. In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll admit two things:

1. We very rarely eat frozen pizza (love homemade much better)

2. When we do, it’s Stouffer’s French Bread Pizza (love the crunch it has)

So that being said, I didn’t necessarily go into this with the highest of hopes or perhaps the most objectivity. Kashi? Making pizza? Remember when McDonald’s made pizza years back? Yeah, it wasn’t pretty, and they’re not doing it anymore. Clear enough message? Stick with what you know.

The first time I heated up the Kashi pizza in the oven, I was surprised that you could actually smell it. Smell the ingredients, that is. Frozen pizza doesn’t usually have a smell when it’s heating up, least of all something that makes you raise an eyebrow in a good way. I started with a piece of their Roasted Garlic Pizza and was pleasantly surprised. The stuff is not half bad. It won’t take the place of a traditional slice from your favorite pizza joint, but it is a healthier alternative when a craving hits.

The all-natural pizzas have a Seven Whole Grain and Sesame blend crust with flax seeds, and each serving gets you between 4 and 5 grams of fiber, 8 grams of whole grains and 15 to 19 grams of protein. That’s certainly something you can feel good about.

But now the truer test. Could I pass off Kashi’s Five Cheese Tomato Pizza on our four-year-old son? I’ve learned with him that if it isn’t a traditional slice from the local pizzeria, you have to just put it in front of him and not say a word. Most definitely don’t call it pizza, because you will undoubtedly be met with shrieks of “That’s not pizza!” To him and his girlfriend, if it doesn’t look like a regular slice of pizza, it’s not pizza. And that’s that.

So at dinner time, I placed it in front of him. He looked at it, turning his plate slowly and completely all the way around, looked at me, and then picked it up and started eating it. And eating it. And eating it. Until the whole slice was gone.

And that, my dear friends, is perhaps the most important review of all … kid-approved.