Today we watched a video that was introduced to Katie in her nutrition class last term: "Supersize Me." It was about as sickening as I expected. The premise was that a healthy young man, Morgan Spurlock, decided to feed himself only McDonalds food for one month. His health was assessed beforehand and afterward and the vast difference that transpired in that one month shocked even the three doctors he consulted, all of whom kept urging him throughout to quit, or to modify the diet in some way or another so as to assure that he would not cause permanent damage or bring about his own death in the process.
Our family occasionally eats fast food, but most of our meals are at home. Still, when I consider the nutrition of our homemade food, I go through peaks and valleys in the nutritional effort of making it healthy. I think overall that I do pretty well; however I still have a weight problem, but I think that it is primarily due to insufficient exercise. There are a number of nutritional components that we have paid attention to for years, and a few that we have added as a result of Katie's nutrition class. I thought I would enumerate these here so that if you wanted you could implement them for your family's good health.
1. Look for low-fat and high-fiber recipes. Look at the nutritional assessments of the recipes you find. If the fat content is 9 grams per serving or less, I consider that to be low-fat. The higher the fiber, the better. Fiber binds up fat before it is absorbed into the bloodstream and helps keep a person feel full for longer.I rarely serve a recipe that is listed to have over 15 grams of fat per serving.
2. Add any vegetables you can that are suitable to the recipe. I found a recipe that had ham, pineapple, and brown sugar. This would be too sweet and too low in nutrients, but not so bad if one adds bell pepper, onion, celery, and carrots. If you can add canned beans, drained, to a recipe, that will add a great deal of fiber--I find many Mexican recipes are receptive to black beans, which take on seasonings nicely. I also look for any opportunity to add parsley to a recipe. It is very high in minerals and other nutrients. Adding vegetables also minimizes the opportunity for fat and salt to prevail per serving, and raises the fiber content.
3. Avoid too much use of beef or pork and include more recipes that call for chicken. Beef and pork fat is nastier than chicken fat; it is more solid at a lower temperature, and therefore more harmful. Beef and pork are also very likely to have a lot more fat within the muscle than chicken does. If you skin the chicken (best before cooking, but flavor is improved if you wait until after cooking) that helps lower the fat a great deal as well.
4. Skim or blot the fat before serving. First of all, I remove fat from the pan after browning the meat, pouring it out or blotting it with a paper towel. I don't brown meat and vegetables together, because I don't want to coat the vegetables with meat fat; I brown the vegetables in canola oil or cook them in water. Sometimes I even rinse the browned meat under water, but that will reduce flavor somewhat. You can use a paper towel and squeeze the fat out of ground beef or pork. Fat tends to rise to the top, especially after a dish is simmered and/or refrigerated. You can skim it from liquid using a ladle or spoon, or a thin layer of floating fat will stick to a lettuce leaf which you can rinse off in hot water a few times in the sink. If you simmer a meaty dish and see fat pooling in areas, it is a good opportunity to take a spoon and remove the fat. I throw the fat if significant into the wastebasket because when it hardens in the drain it will clog it (but it's better in the drain than in your arteries!). If I serve a casserole or pizza coated with cheese, I take a napkin or paper towel and blot it until very little comes off. It's amazing how much there is; cheese is a very fatty food!
5. Avoid using too much cheese. I still probably use too much, but I try these days to use it more for flavor than for a main source of protein or filler. I don't make main dishes calling for cream cheese, and if I use a recipe of any sort calling for cream cheese, I use Neufchatel. I don't find that it has any distinguishable difference except in fat content. For main dishes, you may get a satisfactory similar effect by adding sour cream (which you can get in reduced fat form). I don't find that no-fat hard cheese substitutes are acceptable; you need a saw to cut them when they have melted.
6. Use non-fat milk (also known as skim or fat-free). I started drinking it at age 7, when my dad had his first heart attack. Even though 2% sounds like only a little bit of fat, somehow this 2% is a major misnomer. In an 8-oz. serving, 2% has 5 grams of fat! Non-fat has none. The 2% has 120 cal.; non-fat has 90. Non-fat has 9 grams protein; 2% has only 8. You can easily wean yourself off higher fat milk by mixing it more and more with non-fat.
7. Lately, we have started to avoid high-fructose corn syrup. Katie learned that the liver turns it directly to fat. And we discover it's in almost all prepared food! Pop, jam, canned fruit, gel fruit snacks, barbecue sauce, peanut butter, yogurt. But there are often alternatives that don't have it; still you may have to do some searching.
8. Don't think that other forms of sugar are healthier than white. They're no different, not even honey. Your saliva immediately breaks sugars down; that's why honey is no longer sticky when your saliva hits it.
9. Mix extra egg whites in when using eggs. Or when baking, substitute two egg whites for every whole egg. The fat and therefore extreme cholesterol is in the yolks, and you won't miss the density of flavor if you start with one egg white and add more of them as you get used to it. And while we're here, brown eggs have no inherent advantage in nutrition over white eggs; the shell color makes no impact.
10. Replace some of the oil with applesauce or pureed prunes in baked goods. You can find low-fat cookbooks that specialize in this at the library, or experiment around with some of your recipes. Start with a little and gradually increase the substitution each time until you maximize its good effect.
11. Serve oats whenever possible; add flax seed to oatmeal for breakfast and to some baked goods. Oats are high in soluble fiber and are beneficial for reducing cholesterol; flax seed reduces cholesterol and is high in fiber. This is another opportunity for experimentation. I make our meatloaf and meatballs using oatmeal rather than crushed crackers or bread crumbs.
12. Use whole-grain breads and flours, brown rice, and wild rice rather than white. These have much advantage over the white refined versions, in that the most nutritious elements are still there. They are higher in fiber, b vitamins, minerals; they are more filling, too as they're more slowly digested. Don't expect that "enriched" flour replaces it all--it doesn't.
13. Buy the lower-fat versions of ice cream rather than the full-fat version. In doing so you can eat twice as much! Just kidding. After a while you become used to the lower-fat type and they become more appealing than the high-fat version.
These are the things that come to mind. I might think of others later! I hope you find all these things helpful. Enjoy and eat in good health, and with thanks to God for His abundant provision of all this beautiful variety to which we have access. Is He not good, and are we not greatly blessed?
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