Great takeaway meal from Aldi

 I am not promoting any supermarkets in this post (or any post whatsoever) but I would like to talk about a takeaway meal I bought in the supermarket Aldi the other day. 

I was heading home after work, and I noticed that a new supermarket Aldi had opened in the local area near to where I live. I went in to see what offers they had, and anything that caught my eye. I then came across a ready meal which intrigued me called beef and 3 green chilli. 

The price was really reasonable  (£2.19, in comparison to other takeaways that I have mentioned in the past, this is the cheapest so far) plus there was a discount on top  of that as well, so really it was £1. £1 for a takeaway is not bad at all. 

This came with white and wild rice, and on the front it states that it only contains 369 calories. In all my posts I never promote calories anyway, so that was the least important to me. What is important is the is details at the back of the packet so lets have a look and get into the details. 

First off lets look at the ingredients. As I have mentioned in my previous post, which I will link here: food labelling

The first item mostly contains that ingredient, so going back to the beef and 3 green chilli; the first ingredient was cooked rice. The next item then was the beef, then tomato, red pepper, onion. The further along the ingredients the lesser the food product is in there. The last ingredient I saw was black pepper. Rice being at the top of the ingredients list is ideal, as rice contains a nutrient called carbohydrates, which gives us energy. We need energy all the time to do our daily activities, which also includes sleeping. Therefore it is important to make sure we take enough carbohydrates that our bodies need. The problem is that sometimes we take far too many carbohydrates, and unfortunately we do not do enough exercise to burn this off, leading to obesity and other lifestyle diseases. To manage this we either have enough carbohydrates or we slightly reduce the carbohydrates that we are consuming, but at the same time increase the amount of exercise we are doing every day. The second item on the ingredients list was beef. It does not give any further details on the type of beef it is, however this is rich in protein. Protein is great for building and repairing new cells. It also contains the mineral Iron, which is used to produce red blood cells, and works in partnership with the heart and the rest of the body, for efficiency. The third item is tomato, which contains vitamin c, which help to absorb Iron, and can help to improve immunity. 

When looking at the ingredients list, look out for the first five items, and then make your judgement. If this contains anything ending with "ose", then it contains sugar. For example if glucose is shown on the second item, then the product mainly contains sugar. 

Then what I would do next is look at the nutritional information at the back. For me personally I only look at five items on the table: fat, saturated fat, sugar, salt and fibre. The product contains a high amount of fibre, which is expected because of the tomatoes, onions and peppers. It is low in salt. A high salt content is not recommended as this can increase high blood pressure. It is low in fat, sugar and saturated fat. 

Aldi even made this easier by adding the traffic light labelling system to the front of the packet. You can see it there that each nutrient has been given a green, which means that each are low in that nutrient. 

Overall the food tasted nice, it was not spicy, and I can specifically taste the tomato and the other spices, finally  I was stuffed when I finished it, so the portion was reasonable. 

Definitely recommend this product, especially for the price of £2.19, with the bonus that it is a healthy product