YouTube's king of frozen foods achieves viral success

Gregory Ng was a self-proclaimed king of frozen food reviews.

His web videos would average just a few thousand visitors each month.

But it was a surprising moment of candor that turned his last video into a viral sensation, reports CBS News correspondent Don Dahler.

"Hi, welcome to 'Freezerburns.' I'm you're host, Greg - the frozen food master," each video begins.

Gregory Ng is one of the lucky ones who has been able to carve out a money-making niche creating videos for the web.

"There was really no one out there taking frozen meals and actually saying which ones are better than others," Ng said. "And so I wanted to be that resource."

The married father-of-three works full-time as a chief marketing officer in Raleigh, North Carolina. He started reviewing frozen food on the side in 2008 and his show, "Freezerburns," gradually grew into a second job.

Before long, companies were paying him to feature their products.

While ice cream and frozen dinners were showing up at the doorstep and stuffing his freezers, Greg says all his reviews were objective.

But the hours spent every day shooting and editing were burning him out. He also realized the unhealthier the food he reviewed, the more people would watch.

His trips to the freezer aisle came with a side of personal conflict.

"I didn't like supporting that type of food," Ng admitted.

He had a conflict. As unhealthy as the food was, it was reining in an audience.

"Once I started taking a look and saying I really don't want to review that, but I know it's going to get a lot of views, that's when I knew I wasn't doing it for the right reasons," Ng said.

So after six years of tasting more than 1,000 frozen foods, he warmed to the idea of calling it quits.

It happened - impulsively, he said - while reviewing a chicken nugget meal from Kid Cuisine.

"This just isn't good, guys," he said.

"I took my first bite, tried to give it a chance, and it was not good," Ng said. "And just something in me snapped and I just ran with it."

"I'm reading these ingredients," he said to his YouTube audience. "I don't recognize half of them."

And it didn't stop there.

"This is horrible," he continued. "You know what, I can't do this anymore. This is horrible. We should not be feeding our kids this. We should not be eating this frozen food anymore. I'm done with this."

He posted the episode and it went viral.

"All of a sudden, it just went nuts," Ng said. "I had 274,000 views in one day!"

Websites and blogs picked it up, thinking he was slamming all frozen foods.

"I think people wanted a reason, frankly, to kind of condemn the frozen food industry," Ng explained. "That was not my intention. That's not what I think people should take out of it."

Truth is, he's still feeding his family frozen food. Just not the kinds he's used to reviewing.

"If it causes someone to take a second look or think twice about how they're feeding their kids or how they're feeding themselves - to me that's a small victory," Ng said.

The makers of the Kid Cuisine entree that bore the brunt of the review reached out to Ng and they discussed how to make the food better and healthier.

Some online viewers say Ng staged the moment, but that's a claim he strongly refutes.