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Sunday, November 27, 2011

Company Spotlight of the Day: Amy's Kitchen

Amy's Kitchen

According to their website:

Amy’s is sensitive to the dietary needs and concerns of our consumers. At Amy’s Kitchen we understand that 1 in 25 people in the United States suffer from a food allergy.While some common food allergies include: dairy, soy and tree nuts, several other allergies once thought to be uncommon are on the rise, especially among young infants and children In addition, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), it is estimated that 65% of US adults are either overweight or obese, which can lead to other serious chronic illnesses 
Amy’s understands that many of our customers follow special diets, whether for an allergy related illness or just simply to live a healthier lifestyle and avoid chronic illnesses.

I've not had the opportunity to try many of their products, mostly because their frozen dinners retail at about $5 around this area if you buy from the store, and I'm on a $1-$3-per-meal budget these days, and I confess I like me some frozen dinners, but I have had the pleasure of sampling Amy's Vegetable Lasagna. Speaking as a lifelong pastaholic (I used to go to the Pasta House once a week growing up, and I'd still ask for spaghetti at home and usually get it), I was really impressed with the flavor. It tasted exactly like ricotta and spinach lasagna that I would make myself or even order in a restaurant (in smaller portions). As a bonus, it's not only dairy-free, it's great for those who are gluten-free and who are vegan! I'm rather fond of meat, myself, but I do enjoy some vegan options, and this one definitely tops my list. It's also low-fat, kosher, tree-nut-free, and only 300 calories for the entire meal. It filled me up nicely, so I felt no need to, say, make whole-wheat garlic bread to tide me over a bit more. Pretty nice for those of us who want to lose weight.



Additionally, when you're researching the products on their website, they have a very convenient checklist for special dietary needs. So if you're someone who's not just lactose intolerant, but also has a gluten allergy (I'm wondering if that's one of my other issues as well right now, but I haven't been diagnosed), is vegan, etc., you can easily narrow the product list down without having to read through all the ingredients one-by-one. By narrowing it down to lactose-intolerant and dairy free, the product list that appeared still had 160 products. Nice.

For my local readers, I've found Amy's meals at MaMa Jean's Market, Akin's Natural Foods, Dillon's, and HyVee. I haven't looked for it in WalMart yet, mostly because WalMart is not always on top of the special diet needs market, and I don't even bother to look generally. Amy's does have vendor directory, and if it's not available in your area, Amy's has a list of online vendors, including Amazon.com (bonus for those of us who are Prime members!), which sells the non-perishable varieties. Amazon's prices are pretty good--you can get, for example, the Lentil and Minestrone variety pack with Subscribe and Save for only $15.57, and you get eight soups. Price-wise, that's pretty much on-par with brand name soups like Progresso and Healthy Choice, and this way you know it's not going to set you off if you have sensitive levels of lactose intolerance.

Definitely recommended!

Which Amy's Kitchen products have you sampled? What did you think? Which ones do you recommend most?

Correction: I used the wrong product image for the meal I ate. The meal I actually sampled was the Tofu Dairy-free Lasagna: 


Tofu Vegetable Lasagna

And it was fabulous. If I get a chance to sample the other and it's different than what I've claimed here, I'll let you know. For now, I have the same basic expectation of excellence. 

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