What you can’t see CAN hurt you: trans fats.
Do not buy Marie Callender’s chicken pot pies if you don’t want artery-clogging trans fats that are linked to up to 27,000 heart disease deaths every year in the U.S.
It’s BS that Marie Callender’s trans fatty chicken pot pies are made from scratch, as the company’s TV commercial implies by the aproned actress rolling dough with a pin.
These heart disease pies are made one at a time by someone’s granny in a sunny kitchen with just a handful of ingredients. NOT!
Never mind that one whole Marie Callender’s chicken pot pie contains 1,040 calories and 1,600 mg of sodium (the package lists half these values because the indicated “serving size” is HALF the pie).
- If you don’t gain body fat easily you may not care about the calories.
- If your blood pressure is always normal you may not worry about an occasional sodium tsunami.
But if you want to avoid heart disease and heart attacks, then the partially hydrogenated soybean oil in Marie Callender’s chicken pot pie should be the deal breaker.
Any partially hydrogenated fat or oil is a trans fat—and this one element is all you need for the deal breaker.
“Trans fats are man-made fats and they are commonly used in processed foods to improve the texture, flavor and shelf life of the product,” says Prajakta Apte, RDN, owner and founder of Right Nutrition Works who helps people create a healthier lifestyle.
“Many studies have confirmed that trans fats can increase a person’s risk for cardiovascular disease, stroke and systemic inflammation.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control, trans fats increase the “bad” cholesterol and may lower the “good” cholesterol.
Marie Callender’s pot pies are NOT made from scratch.
They are made assembly line style in a factory and with the toxic trans fats—in a way that would have Grandma turning over in her grave.
The Marie Callender’s site says that this product has “HOMEMADE TASTE.”
There is a big difference between homemade taste and homemade ingredients. This “homemade taste” thing is the company’s way of playing tricks on the consumer’s mind.
In the 1940’s Marie Callender began baking her pies — from scratch.
The company has grown massively since. There is NO way that each modern-day pie is carefully made from scratch — unless the company has a few million robots somewhere doing this.
Grandma needs only about a dozen ingredients to make a chicken pot pie from scratch.
Whereas the Marie Callender’s product contains dozens of ingredients including the heart poisonous trans fats and another heart harming substance, interesterified soybean oil. I bet Grandma can’t even pronounce that.
Solutions to the Death Pie
“My advice would be to avoid trans fats completely in your diet, by reading nutrition labels and ingredients on the packaged foods carefully and by staying away from processed foods as much as possible,” says Apte.
If a chicken pot pie’s ingredients list says “partially hydrogenated,” or “shortening,” do not buy it. Seek out chicken pot pies that have fewer, easier-to-pronounce ingredients.
