Diet

(Photo: FoodGeekery.com via the Vancouver Sun.)

Huffington Post comments on KFC’s new sandwich, which uses two slices of chicken instead of bread.  The result: the highest calorie count of any fast food entree.  Estimates conflict, but based on published nutritional information, the Vancouver Sun predicts over 1,200 calories.  That’s more than half your daily calorie needs!

It’s being test marketed in Rhode Island and Nebraska– and one store says sales have far exceeded expectations.  And you wonder why there’s an obesity epidemic?

(Rachel A.K. photo.)

Yesterday I posted about the American Heart Association’s recommendation that we cut back on our added-sugar intake from 22 tsp per day to 6 for women and 9 for men. 

Sound impossible?  It’s not.  I’ve been sugar-free for years.  That is to say, I eat almost no added sugar in my diet.  And I try to watch my synthetic sweeteners, too, though it’s not always possible when you have an occasional craving for something sweet and sugar’s not on the menu.

Here are some of the dietary habits I’ve keep:

• For breakfast, I eat unfrosted cereal: Total, Corn Chex, and Special K are currently in my cupboard, offering 5 g, 3 g, and 4 g of sugar respectively.  That’s an average of one teaspoon per bowl.  If a cereal is particularly bland, I don’t add sweetener, I add raisins or other fruit.  Raisins add nearly as much sugar and table sugar, but with nutrients and fiber.
• I drink primarily water– filtered water that we get in refillable 3-gallon jugs for 25 cents a gallon at the local health food store.  When I do drink soda, it’s diet soda.
• I don’t eat candy, ever.  After years of skipping sugary foods, it tastes disgustingly sweet to me.  On the rare occasion when I crave something sweeter than fruit, maybe once a month, I go to the health food store and buy unsweetened carob-covered raisins or fruit-sweetened yogurt-covered almonds.
• I eat no-sugar added ice cream (Maggie Moos has the best, followed by Baskin Robbins).  Or I eat Rice Dream, which has no artifical sweeteners and only 10 g (2.5 tsp) of complex sugar from brown rice.
• On my (unsweetened) pancakes and waffles, I put fruit and nuts– or, for a sweeter taste, I use fruit-sweetened preserves.
• Pies and sweet breads: I bake my own.  The first rule of baking in my house is, Cut back.  Most recipes call for far more sugar than they need to taste good.  The second rule is, Substitute.  Concentrated apple juice works well (1/2 cup for each cup of sugar the recipe calls for) and contains no added sugar.  1/3 to 1/2 cup barley malt also works, which contains only 1/3 the amount of sugar as table sugar, yet tastes nearly as sweet.  A tablespoon of molasses contains 10 g of sugar, but adds much more flavor than a half cup (24 tsp or 96 g) of sugar.  Using 1/3 cup of barley malt and 1 tsp of molasses reduces the added sugar per slice of pie from 16 g to 4 g.  Using apple juice reduces the added sugar to zero.

Those are the basics.  For most foods, I look for added sugar (sugar, corn syrup, evaporated cane juice, honey) to be the fifth or lower ingredient.  It’s not always easy, because many foods do contain way too much sugar.

I know people who use the herb stevia for sweetening– I haven’t tried it.  Licorice root is another natural sweetener sometimes used in herb teas.  So the methods I’ve used for reducing sugar to a minimum are not the only ones available.