Lean Cuisine Pasta Romano with Bacon

The pasta romano with bacon is a new dish from Lean Cuisine. It's primarily bow-tie pasta in a rich tomato sauce. Whenever you see "with .." in a title, you know it means meager sprinkles and this dish matches that pattern. The bacon was a light touch, adding more to the aroma than to the actual taste. What is in this dish, though, is a strong tomato sauce which produces a lot of taste for what is ultimately just pasta in sauce.

Tastiness: 3 1/2
What is there is very good, the tomato sauce has a lot of flavor and the bacon pieces, while small, lend a lot to the over-all feel of this dish.

Fillingness: 2 1/2 Microwaves
What there isn't a lot of is this dish. As are most of the healthier fares (Lean Cuisine, Weight Watchers, etc.) you should know going in that keeping the calories down is a focus, so portion sizes will be limited. In this case, the lack of a meat probably hurts the overall feeling of done-ness.

Healthiness: 3 1/2 Microwaves
Like nearly all frozen dinners, this dish is relatively high in salt (650 mg of Sodium) and potassium (880 mg). 280 calories place this on the low end, with 7g of total fat. For those on Weight Watchers, this dish is 5 points.

Overall: 3 1/2 Microwaves

I liked this dish. Strong taste and originality are always pluses in these dishes and this one met both. It could do with adding some chicken or sausage to really spice it up but given this is targeted at the dieting crowd it's a pretty strong competitor.