Maybe you’ve seen the commercials, “You hungry, you hungry, you mama says you hungry!”  The Hillshire Farms Entrée Salad is a salad kit complete with everything you need to add to your greens for a high-protein salad: meat, cheese, croutons, dressing. (Exact combinations vary.)  The kits are available in four different “flavors” – Chicken & Bacon, Turkey & Cranberry, Turkey & Ham Chef, and Chicken Caesar.  They come without greens to give them longer keeping power and you more options (because you can combine them with whichever greens you prefer).  Because I’m a BzzAgent, I was recently given a complimentary kit to try.

I was mildly disappointed in the available selection.  If you don’t eat pork products, either for health or religious reasons, the options are already reduced by half, and you’re left with Turkey & Cranberry (which is, in my opinion, a little “odd” – not your standard salad) or Chicken Caesar.  The Chicken Caesar being the only “normal” option I was left with, I tried it (although I substituted my own dressing, as I don’t care for Caesar dressing, either).

After preparing a base of baby romaine lettuce and baby spinach, I opened up the salad kit and began adding components to my salad.  I was pleasantly surprised at how much chicken and cheese were included; these were not skimpy portions!  It only took a few minutes to prepare my salad from start to finish, including getting out my greens and putting the leftovers back in the refrigerator.

The kit is certainly a convenient option, and healthier than many prepackaged options.  Unfortunately, it really cannot be classified as “healthy.”  The Caesar kit that I tried contained 1630 mg of sodium!  There is also partially hydrogenated soybean oil (that is, artificial, unhealthy “trans fat”) in the chicken.  (Why??  What is the purpose of shortening in meat?)  The croutons, of course, come from bread made with refined white flour, so this is hardly a “whole food.”

It tasted good, and I might pick this up if I were out and needed to grab something for lunch.  I am not, however, likely to make this a regular part of my diet unless significant changes are made to its overall healthfulness.