Posted on 14 Mar 2014
4 min read
When juggling a career and trying to keep in fairly reasonable shape, grabbing a quick meal that’s both highly nutritious & proteinous (that’s actually a word) becomes a military operation.
Trying to prepare beforehand can also seem arduous when you want all the key elements – poultry, complex carbs, lashings of fibrous vegetables, and ideally flavour.
Indeed, my current routine of pre-cooking chicken breasts twice a week at home and then fighting with the hormonal women in the kitchen over the microwave as I try to heat up rice and vegetables separately as they, while bemoaning having demolished a whole pizza on Saturday night, try to heat up a bowl of basically just spinach and water.
Looks, smells, and may as well be piss.
I think this dynamic is pretty common in work places up and down the country – all too often forcing me to grab a sandwich from the local supermarket.
And it was really starting to get on my tits.
So what are my options?
Supermarket ready meals can be nice, but anything that claims to be healthy is generally just packed full of e-numbers, i.e. not healthy.
So you can imagine my delight when MuscleFood thrusted (not literally) a hearty selection of healthy protein-rich ready meals upon me.
NPM, as I’ll call them, seeing as I’m writing this on free airport wifi and need to get to all the nutritional info before it runs out, produce high protein, natural ready meals
Aside from the health benefits, the big plus is that each of these meals comes in a convenient rice style sachet which also means they’re not taking up vital fridge/freezer space.
Particularly useful if you’ve just ordered a bucket load of MuscleFood chicken!
Price:
Nutritional Breakdown (Per Serving):
Kcal: 304
Protein: 35g
Carb: (of which simple): 29g (7g)
Fat: (of which saturated): 5g (1g)
Now that Nando’s have unfortunately gotten rid of their eminently scamable stamp card and bought in the e-version, getting your peri peri fix has become somewhat less enjoyable.
This meal, however, is a complete delight.
The chicken stays reasonably moist, which is not always the case for ready meals, and the sauce is not too runny.
Marvelous.
Click Here To Buy Peri Peri Chicken & Rice
Price:
Nutritional Breakdown (Per Serving):
Kcal: 371
Protein: 57g (I shit you not!)
Carb: 30g
Fat: (of which saturates): 2.8g
Now I like to pronounce Quinoa like an Australian – really exaggerating the oa bit.
Such was the abhorrence to my doing this that a colleague looked up the phonetics.
Queinour is how probably best to pronounce it.
Actually, this is bollocks, no-one cares, the stuff tastes great and it’s nice to have a different carb source to rice every now and then.
For me this is probably the best protein ready meal all round.
The taste is very different to any ready meal you’ll find and those nutritional stats are insane for someone looking for some lean(ish) gains.
Click Here To Buy Moroccan Style Chicken
Price:
Nutritional Breakdown (Per Serving):
Kcal: 367
Protein: 48g
Carb: 24g
Fat: 9g
At Gymk HQ we’re spice boys.
Now, having written that, it does rather sound like a gay porn troupe, but what I actually mean is we like our food (and our men) hot.
We’re not a gay porn troupe.
Be we do love spicy food.
The standard Friday night chicken platter order to Danyals is always accompanied with a request for ‘Extra Hot’ to be extra hotter.
With this in mind, Natural Performance Meals’ Thai Style Chicken is a favourite.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not overly spicy, but you do get a decent hit of chili in every mouthful.
Plus it really helps to put curries back on the acceptable meal list.
Indeed, MuscleFood also sell an Indian Style Beef meal which I’m keen to get my hands on.
The fat figure is a little higher with this ready meal but you need to consider that a lot of this comes from coconut which is of course a good source of fat.
Click Here To Buy Thai Chicken
For me, the real winning point in all this is that these meals will fill you up and prevent you from raiding Jane’s tuck box (sorry Jane) if lean muscle is your goal.
If it’s bulk you’re going for, then fuck it, have two.
Stop buying the supermarket meals that have a centimeter of oil sitting on top.
Natural Performance Meals are top quality, delicious, and ideal no matter what your goals are.
NB: if your goal is predatory dog bothering or voyeurism, please buy something else, we don’t want the association by proxy.
Head over to the MuscleFood website and shop here to get your hands on these brilliant Natural Performance Meals.
You will not be let down… or hungry ever again.
And don’t forget to use a MuscleFood discount code to save some money when you order.
Gymtalk out.
Having spent every waking hour of his childhood swimming, Greg now works, lifts, eats chicken and travels. He is our (un)masked Zorro of bodybuilding academia.
Posted on 14/10/2015
