New Season of HG...Opening Episode Review

Well, a new season of Hungry Girl has debuted on Food Channel today. I watched the first episode, titled "Under 200", to see what sort of "guilt-free", "healthy" recipes and tips she would come up with this time. Well, there's some good, some bad, and some ugly.

First the good. Three out of the four recipes were mostly made from natural, un-processed ingredients. The only potential stumbling blocks were as follows:

• Ketchup (in the Cheeseburger Mac Attack and BBQ Mango Tilapia) which can be loaded with HFCS if you don't read the label. Look for the natural varieties. 
• Cauliflower with Cheese Sauce (found in the Cheeseburger Mac Attack) which usually contains modified starches and artificial colors/flavors in the cheese sauce. Not a huge red light, but something to keep in mind.
• Hot Dogs (in Fresh and Fruity Hot Dog Skewers): make sure to get an all-natural brand that doesn't include nitrates like Applegate Farms.
• Ground Turkey (in Cheeseburger Mac Attack): I almost forgot about this, but who hasn't heard the news about 36 MILLION pounds of ground turkey being recalled? Argh! Just one more reason to try to buy local, humanely-raised meat whenever you can. 

None of these are huge deal-breakers and have easy substitutions, so it's a refreshing change to see that all of the entrees are not mixtures of various processed, artificial foods.
Also, her "Shopping Survival Guide" portion didn't have anything in it that just made me cringe. Watch out for sodium levels in soups and be on the look-out for artificial ingredients. Also, if you want shrimp with cocktail sauce, try to see if they have any that are packaged fresh from the seafood department, not ones that have possibly been on the truck for a bit and are probably loaded with preservatives.

Next we get to the bad. Unfortunately, this is where HG seems to always fall short: sweets. In an effort to lower calories and fat, she almost inevitably strips away most natural ingredients in favor of chemically-enhanced "low-fat" and/or "lo-cal" substitutions (or "swaps" as she calls them). The recipe is Banana Split Pie and is loaded with the usual culprits we've seen in her other sweet "treats":

• Light Vanilla Ice Cream: This is one of those yellow light items where it's not that hard to make an all-natural substitute if you're cafeful about your label-reading. Breyer's Double-Churned Light Creamy Vanilla is a great and easy-to-find all-natural option.
• Cool Whip Free: This is nothing more than a cocktail of chemicals made to look and taste like whipped cream. Do your body a favor and whip up some of your own whipped cream. All you need is some light whipping cream, a bowl and a whisk...along with a desire to give your arm a good workout. But you are trying to lose weight and get healthier, right? Exercise is all part of that.
• Sugar-free Chocolate Pudding Snack: These are loaded with artificial sweeteners, artificial colors and flavors, as well as hydrogenated oils (the source of trans fats). For just a few more calories (and if you're splitting the pie up 8 ways, it only ends up to about 5 extra calories a serving), go for Kozy Shack's Cowrageous Pudding Snacks instead. They have sugar, but this only adjusts the carbs 8g over the whole pie...that's 1g a slice.
• Light Chocolate Syrup: Loaded with preservatives, artificial colors and flavors. Since you're just drizzling it over the top of the pie, do yourself a huge favor and get a good fair-trade chocolate bar and melt it. The calorie/fat/carb difference isn't going to be huge with such a small amount (unless your "drizzle"="pour"), especially since it's going to be divided 8 ways.
• Maraschino Cherries: I hate these things, so I'm going to suggest using real cherries. If you have to have maraschino, then make sure to read the label. That gooey, red fluid they're floating in often contains HFCS and artificial color. If fresh cherries aren't available, then you can use frozen or even canned (but watch out for more of the same culprits if you're using canned).

Overall, this dessert, while containing alot of potential red flags, isn't too difficult to make into something all-natural and truly healthy, while maintaining its sweet decedance. It does make me continue to wonder, though, why HG doesn't use the healthier ingredients when they don't make that much of a difference calorie- or fat-wise?

Now, onto the ugly. We've covered the recipes and the shopping guide, what's left? Holy Neon Blazes Batman...it's the set! Yes, I realize it's supposed to be "fun" and "funky", but it made my eyes bleed a little. Orange and hot pink and every other color of the rainbow. It looks like iCarly on LSD. Maybe it's cute for teenagers (and I realize her husband makes tween and teen shows...so maybe he stole the set designer from them), but for a cooking show for adults, it just looks obnoxious and over-the-top. If Miranda Cosgrove was hosting the show, I might understand it...or even more likely, Cat from Victorious...she'd feel right at home. But between the set and Lisa's completely inane "Chew this", "Put his in your face", "Humans will love this" silly-talk, it's hard to take the show (or her) at all seriously.

Overall, it's an okay start to the new season, but still shows the usual signs of being the same-ole, same-ole of recipes cobbled together with processed convenience foods, silly talk, and lame skits. We'll see....