Ok, I've had enough of this healthy options bullshit! It's gone too far! There was once a time when I would look over what I had just eaten and said to myself "Well, it might have tasted like crap, and I might feel terrible, but at least it'll kill me!". Those halcyon days seem far and away now, as I stare at the options in front of me.

The real problem with these healthy choices is that there isn't any variety to them. It's big on carbs, usually in the form of pasta, with a tiny amount of meat and smothered in something that they claim is cheese. Regardless of how far women's lib has come in the last hundred years, the primary purchasers of food are still women. I wonder: do fat women like cheese this much? If so, I might have a solution to the weight issue.

Like I said before, I'm getting real tired of this stuff now. I need to turn things around. I need a change. I need something different.

Ok, so instead of dinner, I'll have breakfast! Yeah, that's it! The perfect opposite. And instead of a lot of carbs...how about something with very little to offer in the starch department. So, this is where I've been led: WeightWatchers Smart Ones Breakfast Quesadilla.

Please don't suck.

But...quesadillas aren't for breakfast. Burritos are what's for breakfast. Big, full burritos, filled with spicy rice and chicken and...sorry, lost my train of thought there for a minute. So, WeightWatchers has decided to switch things up for breakfast. Instead of the traditional breakfast burrito, it's a breakfast quesadilla. It's not quite as portable, but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

I suppose that a quesadilla isn't too far off from a burrito. It's just flat instead of wrapped and it contains a lot of cheese instead of rice of potatoes.

The strangest thing is, I can't believe I waited this long to do a WeightWatchers meal! They're like the grand-daddy of all low-fat, high fibre, moderate sodium, low taste meal providers. Weight loss is all they do!

First started in 1963, WeightWatchers was started by a homemaker, Jean Nidetch of Brooklyn, New York. And if anybody knows fat, it's a homemaker from Brooklyn. In 1978, the company was owned by Heinz, the makers of ketchup and failed Democrat presidential nominees. Today its broken off from its former ketchupy masters and is trying to make it all on its own.

The first thing I did, aside from gawk at the horrifying phrase: bacon-style turkey, was to check the sodium content on the back of the box. I have to see how the quesadillas rank with everything else.

Well, there it is. Our little Tex-Mex breakfast treat has taken second place in the race to see which will harden my arteries first. Now as I open up the package, I should probably point out the rules to you once again.

Ok, so this should be an easy cooking...

Madness...

What the fuck is going on here. The package says that there are two quesadillas in here, but what's this? Do I get a prize? Is that why fat women buy these things?

So it turns out that I didn't bother to read the cooking instructions before I opened up the box. There are two quesadillas and they come with cooking sleeves! Wow, I haven't seen one of these since the Stouffer's Barbecue Chicken & Bacon Bistro Panini. It didn't work then, and I have my doubts that it will work now.

The instructions say that I have to put the quesadilla in the cooking sleeve, with the curved edge of the tortilla towards a pull off tab on the sleeve, then cook for exactly 2 minutes and 15 seconds. Then I can open up the sleeve and eat.

But there's more here. The first step says

Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa. Let's just hold on a minute here. I'm not going to listen to some little red box, with it's fancy cardboard and multicolored printing. You know what WeightWatchers? Fuck you! I'm going to have both of these stupid breakfast quesadillas! I'm going to eat both of them in one sitting, and do you know why? Because I am my own man. I am a rebel and I don't take no directions from no box!

And, now that I have my two piping hot breakfast quesadillas, it's time to see if they're any good.

That's right. Fuck you WeightWatchers. I'm eating both of them!

Fresh out of the microwave...and are those warts?

The quesadillas are hot when they come out of the microwave. I mean they're totally molten at this point. Try not to touch them with any part of your anatomy, especially that part. Also, you might want to wear protective eyewear before you look directly at it. It's that hot. Really.

Once you've got some flame retardant gloves on, you can open up the cooking sleeve and gingerly slide your quesadilla onto a plate, or if you're WeightWatchers' target demographic, directly into your gaping maw.

It's hard to describe the smell, other than to say that it's distinctly cheesy. I don't mean this in a bad way, like say the cheesy smell that can start to accumulate under rolls of sweaty fat. It's more like somebody had microwaved some kind of cheese spread, like Cheez Whiz and left the jar open on the counter for an hour or so.

I was having a hard time figuring out exactly what cheese it was until I decided to take a look at the ingredients list. Apparently it's a combination of reduced-fat mozzarella, reduced-fat cheddar, Monterey jack and processed cheese spread. Hey, look at that! One out of four!

Innards of a quesadilla or symptoms of venereal disease?

The taste is...well, cheesy. I can't overemphasize exactly how much cheese is in these things. The problem is, there's altogether too much, and it overpowers just about everything else in there. I can taste some of the vegetables. There's definitely some bell peppers in there. The box says that there are onions in here too, but I can't find them. I think there's corn in here too, but I don't see that on the list of ingredients, so I think it's either a special prize, or the eggs are really overcooked.

Now, the box says "bacon style turkey" is included, and I can sort-of, kind-of see it in there, but I definitely can't taste it. They might as well have removed the turkey bacon altogether. Not only does turkey bacon suck, but there's so little that if I hadn't read it on the box, I wouldn't have even known it was there.

Finally we come to the texture. The tortilla itself is actually quite crispy; score 1 for the cooking sleeve. Unfortunately, it's also very dry, and tends to gum up very quickly and adhere itself to all the nooks and crannies of your teeth. That's not a good feeling.

The insides are creamy. Very creamy. Almost cheesy. Have I used that word yet? The peppers add some much needed contrast to each bite. The eggs themselves, don't actually feel like eggs when you eat them, and thanks to the Brobdingnagian amounts of cheese used, don't taste like eggs either. Instead, I'm reminded of macaroni and cheese. If I close my eyes, it feels like I'm eating a tortilla full of cooked macaroni and cheese with bell peppers.

Smell: 6.0/10
Taste: 4.0/10
Mouthfeel: 6.0/10
Total Score: (5.3/10)

In the end, this is pretty disappointing, unless you happen to like copious amounts of cheese smothering everything you eat, and if you do, you probably need to get onto the WeightWatchers plan. Now, by sticking it to the man, and eating both quesadillas in one sitting, I managed to rack up a total of 8 points on the WeightWatchers scale. That's the equivalent of:

• 44 almonds
• 1/2 lb. of cooked armadillo meat
• Half a club sandwich
• 74 grams of taffy
• 8 pieces of sweet, delicious bacon
• 12 pieces of shitty turkey bacon
• All the low-fat borscht I can eat
• 1/2 lb. of pickled pig's feet
• 1/2 cup of lobster thermidor
• 1.6 oz of spam
• 2 oz. of pork rinds
• 8 tsp of butter

I can't believe I'd be just as well off eating almost 3 tablespoons of butter. That just doesn't seem right.

Bottom line is this: I love any excuse to figure out strange results when presented with an arbitrary points system. That and making jokes about the kind of people who won't eat anything unless it's swimming in a sea of cheese.

• Horrors of the Ice Box Archive
• Horrors of the Ice Box: WeightWatcher's Smart Ones Double Fudge Cake
• Horrors of the Ice Box: Michelina's Harmony Chicken Caesar
• Horrors of the Ice Box: Stouffer's Lean Cuisine Grilled Chicken Carbonara
• Horrors of the Ice Box: President's Choice Blue Menu Roast Turkey with Vegetables