We are live from the headquarters of veganunderground.com for this epic battle between two vegan dinner stalwarts.  When you talk about convenience, when you talk about tastiness, frozen vegan pizza immediately comes to mind.  And when you talk about frozen vegan pizza, you talk about Amy’s.   Tonight a new challenger will step up to face the current champion, Amy’s, and that is Life Choices Organicuisine. 

 

Here we have a relative unknown, a Canadian challenger to the champ.  Life Choices’ stats are there and it seems an impressive package, but the lineage and the experience are question marks.  Going up against a veteran like Amy’s will be a true test.  Amy’s has solid numbers, proven success – the whole package.  And on top of all that, it has a secret weapon...

 

Caramelized onions.

The Champion:
Amy’s Roasted Vegetable Pizza
Out of Petaluma, CA, USA
Weighed in at 12 oz (340g)
$7.99
83% organic ingredients

The Challenger:
Life Choices Organicuisine Thin Crust Organic Pizza Vegetable No Cheese
Out of Toronto, ON, Canada
Weighed in at 11.6 oz (328g)
$7.89
98% Organic Ingredients

 

From the outside there isn’t much to tell these two apart.  They are similarly priced, almost the same size, both boasting of organic ingredients and the lack of cheese.  From the photos on the box, the Life Choices version appears to have a greater variety of veggies, but the yellowish cast to the photo and weak graphic design are obvious next to the Amy’s box.  The Amy’s photo has more pleasing color and does the food inside more justice.  It also lists the toppings tantalizingly as “organic shiitake mushrooms, sweet onions and roasted red peppers.”  Also, not inconsequently, the word ‘vegan’ appears on the Amy’s box, even if only in the ingredients, as well as the K/Parve and QAI symbols. Life Choices?  No mention of it being vegan.  In this market segment, the word ‘vegan’ is important comfort – far more important than exhaustive claims of being organic, healthy and tasty.  Points for Amy’s, points deducted from Life Choices.

  

It’s time!  How did they taste?  

Life Choices:  The first thing we noticed was the oddly crunchy crust.  It seemed to be crispy by some artificial, chemical induced texture polymer, or some such laboratory witchery you’d expect from a food corp like McCain’s.  It resembled a closed-cell melba toast.  Very strange.  The veggie toppings all seemed like frozen veggies – they were tasteless and watery.  Actually, the mushrooms had a taste – they were sour and a bit rancid tasting.  We gave them to the dog.  I felt bad about that.

 

 

Overall the Life Choices pizza tasted as bland as it looked.  The sauce was too sugary and tasted like a factory food.  It was just a bad TV dinner.

Amy’s:  In contrast to its challenger, the Amy’s pizza was savoury and sweet at the same time, thanks to the caramelized onions (which kind of form the sauce/cheese substitute) and tangy, courtesy of the artichoke hearts.  The crust went a bit spongy as it cooled, but it’s really a minor complaint for what was an excellent frozen crust.

 

Although, the Amy’s pizza is a little light on toppings variety, it has the right texture, great overall flavour and just hits that comfort food craving.  It’s the perfect lunch on a rainy Autumn day.  

 

The result:  The winner, and still Champion:  Amy’s via 1st round K.O.  Life Choices is in over its head here and has a lot of work to do but will not likely get a second shot.