Tovala Family Meals Review: Good food, lots of salt

The garlic and herb salmon with risotto was probably the best of the family meals I’ve tried. The chopped asparagus was less visually appealing when drizzled with garlic butter, but it was still flavorful and a bit crisp. The salmon was tender and flaky. Sweet pea eaters had no choice but to be delicious. There was plenty of cheese, butter and lemon, and it was pretty much a rave of fats and acids.

This chicken parm was also a mountain of cheese and salt. It reminded me, pleasantly, of countless family meals I had as a kid in the 1980s: cheese-covered chicken, garlic bread, shells stuffed with ricotta and topped with more cheese. The big difference is that it is simply impossible for my mother to cook this meal without vegetables.

And nutrition is where Toval falters a little. Nutritional Notes Chicken meal contains 2,300 milligrams of sodium per serving, which is roughly equivalent to the full daily allowance of an adult human. This is also on par with similar servings of Stouffer’s Meat Lasagna. The Tovala meal also contains about 10 times the cholesterol as the Stouffer meal.

Many other meals followed a similar pattern, loading them with fat and salt to make the meals tasty. The net effect is that it looks more like rich restaurant food than what most people prepare at home. Whether this is a good or bad quality is up to you.

Only one of the seven meals I tried was a complete failure: I informed my editor that the teriyaki chicken dinner represented a potential cultural crime against Japan. The meal was sweet soybeans marinated in pale, steamed chicken, with an unbelievable side of thick egg rolls and some loose, unseasoned broccoli. It looked like the “Japanese” food you would eat in a mall food court in the 90s. But again, this was a rare big mistake.

A more serious problem, in meals designed for the whole family, is the almost universal content of fat, cholesterol and sodium. Many of those with income and a tendency to eat hearty, low-effort meals like those in Tovala are either parents with children, or people in the retirement category. Each has its own reasons for wanting more nutrition and less fat and salt.

By the end of two weeks of recipe testing, I’ll admit I felt a little relieved. I was grateful to feel my arteries slowly opening up. The Tovala cooking model makes a lot of sense to me, as a smart way to split the difference between prepared meals and fresh foods. The company has proven that it can cook well. It would be great if they could also cook up a diet that seems more sustainable.

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