I am going to have to change my ways

[LisaD0365]

I have to get used to eating heart healthy and all the healthy diets out there....but I grew up living with my grandparents' farm thru the summer...(loved it there)...and Grandma used to pretty much fry everything....using real butter....lard....(altho I still use lard for pie crusts)...Grandpa used to eat lard sandwiches....and he lived to ripe old age of 99....and the man smoked and chewed too.... ...but the idea of getting fat free...salt free....chol free...and everything else 'free'...just doesn't float my boat.....may have to ease into it....I grossed my hubby out the first time he say me eat bacon...hamburger raw...(I know....bad for me...but have done since 5)
actually....my whole family does that...
If I change my dietary ways....(which I love vegs...nothing like a ripe tomato and eat it like an apple)...my hubby won't follow suit....he is very picky and won't eat anything that isn't processed...
Some of the recipes I have already read sound good....I love zucchini...chicken ...any type of veg...Steve just doesn't..wonder if there is a way I can make heart healthy recipes without him knowing it...he doesn't like herbs....(what you sprinkle in the food before or after baking....)
May have to do some searching....

 

[Ross]

I know the feeling. Sometimes I just gotta break away from the mold and do as I please whether it's heart healthy or not. A man can take just so much.

 

[LisaD0365]

I know the feeling. Sometimes I just gotta break away from the mold and do as I please whether it's heart healthy or not. A man can take just so much.

Amen!.....Nothing like having a funnel cake at the State Fair....not to mention...(not sure about other State Fairs)....but Iowa even fries Twinkies....Snicker bars....haven't tried those yet.....but love to go to the fair a few times when it is going on and totally throw my diet out the window!!

 

[geebee]

Well, I have been doing some soul searching myself. On the one hand I have a cardio who wants me to lose 20 pounds. On the other hand, I have an appetite than demands certain fattening foods. My only addiction in this world is caffeine-free pepsi and, although I occasionally drink diet (aspartame gives me migraines), I am sure the soda is what is impeding some of my weight loss.

I also think two thoughts about my heart history. On the one hand, I feel an obligation to honor the gift I have been given - that of a second and third and fourth chance at life. On the other hand, I feel like I worked very hard to stay in this life and don't want to spend the rest of it on a diet and missing all the foods I love so well. In other words, did I stick around to be miserable (from a culinary side) the rest of my life?

I guess if I was more than 20 pounds overweight I would think differently. It's just difficult to control myself when I still fit into my clothes. Yet, I look at my older sister who is much larger than me and I worry.

"tis a puzzlement"

 

[Karlynn]

Gina, I heard that Pepsi One is now sweetened with Splenda. Most people who react to aspartame (my husband) don't react to Splenda.

 

[Wise]

Gina, I heard that Pepsi One is now sweetened with Splenda. Most people who react to aspartame (my husband) don't react to Splenda.

Yes, I like it! My sisters and mother said it isn't fizzy enough. But, I'm don't like a bunch of ice in my soft drink, so it's fine to me. I'm a splenda fan though, as I'm biased I guess.

 

[geebee]

Unfortunately, Splenda caused gastric upset (no more details) which I found strange since it is supposed to be from natural sugar. I guess there must be something else in the processing that gets me.

I am one of those annoying people that react negatively to a lot of processed foods. I guess good 'ol high fructose corn syrup agrees with me.

 

[tobagotwo]

In simplistic terms, Splenda is a reversed sugar molecule. The taste remains, but it is not assimilable as a sugar. However, I know that it often appears together with other sweeteners, such as maltodextrin, so their characteristics might be mistaken for Splenda's.

I'm really not very knowledgeable about the product, and I'm not qualified to speak or write about it. And I am not intending to advertise or recommend it, as it is a product of an affiliate of the corporation I work for.

However, as it is under discussion by others already, there is a company website for information about it. It does contain advertising: http://www.splenda.com/index.jhtml

and a Customer Service number: 1-800-7-SPLENDA

Best wishes,

 

[hensylee]

start by reading labels. That will give you a heads up - and a surprise when you find out what all is in there that might not be best for you. Then drop some of your 'baddies' a bit at the time. You will soon find that you are leaving out a lot of things you used to love, but don't like them now. Study some charts that give info as to content of fat, carbs, cholesterol, calories, etc.

I started using sweet n lo many yrs ago and now I hate sugar in coffee/tea, etc. Leaves sticky feeling - sugar, that is. Daughter gave me some sugar free ice cream the other night and I found that it was so sweet I could barely eat it - don't know which sweetener it was, but it was not sweet n lo; it was way too sweet. She cut sugar completely out of her regimen and lost MUCH weight.

 

[Nancy]

You surely wouldn't like my husband's dietary restrictions at all! He's on a 500mg a day low sodium diet, and if he strays from it he pays dearly with CHF.

That means that everything has to be cooked from scratch including all breads and pastries.

I do have to purchase items online to help with flavoring, but I have found ways around just about anything including pizza. And most of it tastes pretty darned good, even to me. I can always add salt at the table. Joe doesn't miss sodium now. It's hard to get used to, though.

 

[tobagotwo]

One of my responses to that is that I play with my food.

By that, I mean that I will eat bacon (although I like it cooked), but I will remove the fat first. You only need a very little fat to carry the flavor, so the taste isn't changed if you cut off all the visible fat after cooking. The fat itself has very little flavor, so it's no real loss.

Same with beef. I cut out a lot of the fat before cooking, and all of the visible fat after cooking. Once it has been cooked, there is already sufficient fat within the meat to spread the flavor across your tongue (that is really the benefit of fats, at least as far as the eating and flavor part goes).

Chicken - same deal. I like crunchy skin, so I take the skin off after baking, and scrape the fat off the inside of the skin. Then I only eat the crunchy parts of the skin, where the flavor is. Yes, I do miss fried chicken.

These methods don't get rid of all of the fat, but they do remove a shocking amount of it. And they do it without wrecking the flavor of the food.

Unfortunately, they're not generally good table manners. However, if dieters can plunk their personal, deionized water bottles on the table, scribble in their food intake diaries, and make a big show of putting out their special, vile-smelling, organo-macrobiotic gerbil food in front of everyone else, I guess I can scrape the fat off my chicken skin.

When I panfry (such as soft-shell crabs), I use a little macadamia nut oil in the pan, and add butter buds or similar, if I want butter taste. The macadamia nut oil doesn't flavor the food strongly like olive oil does, which makes it exceptional for seafood and other delicate flavors, including salads. It is also higher in monosaturates (healthier), and has a higher smokepoint temperature. I buy a case of 1-liter tins every year from Australia, as I wind up giving some out as gifts.

Best wishes,

 

[tommy]

Pepsi One has more caffeine that Mountain Dew. I was addicted to the stuff before I went de-caff. Try Diet Rite brand. Several flavors. Zero calories. Zero caffeine. Zero sodium.

To me, it's a matter of eliminating the bad stuff that you can eliminate. What you can't (or won't) eliminate, replace with stuff that is less bad. Reduce the quantity of what is left. Sill, I wish I had more willpower.

Replacement examples for me: Fat-free yogurt vs. ice cream. Chicken/fish vs. beef. V8 Splash vs carbonated soft drinks.

If your diet allows, drink lots of water. It helps you feel full (especially good before mealtime to reduce food intake), and helps keep your innards fresh. To me, it's like taking a bath on the inside.

BTW after 4 years of being decaffinated, I feel that I am "cured" of the addiction. Now I'll drink one caff drink max in a day. Most days I stay decaffed, but now at a restaurant, I'll relax and have a cup of real coffee or diet soda.

 

[Barry]

...I grossed my hubby out the first time he say me eat bacon...hamburger raw...(I know....bad for me...but have done since 5)
actually....my whole family does that...

While I wouldn't recommend eating pork (or bear meat, or any other omnivore's meat) because of risk of trichnosis, raw herbivore meat (e.g. beef, venison) is actually quite good for you and has many more nutrients than after it is cooked - source of this info is outdoorsy lore from folks living in the polar regions who lived on a diet comprised exclusively of meat. They often ate it raw, never cooked more than blood-rare. If they cooked it thoroughly, they came down with vitamin deficiencies.

The problem with hamburger isn't the meat itself but that it's subject to contamination (most notoriously with e-coli bacteria) as the butcher gathers up scraps to grind up.

In terms of coming up with something heart-healthy that your hubby will eat, does he like fish? I love fish, especially broiled salmon, halibut, and some kinds of shark (haven't yet figured it out - some shark is delicious, some is awful). And despite the current trendy style of serving fish with herbs, spices, and sauces, I find that the taste of fish is so delicate it's best cooked and served plain.

Your post reminded me of an ad I saw several years ago in a magazine. It was a photograph of the standard wholesome breakfast of the 50's and early 60's: Bacon and eggs, buttered toast, fried potatoes, and a glass of milk. Underneath was the caption: "You're getting old if you can remember being told this is a healthful breakfast."

 

[PJmomrunner]

I highly recommend Cooking Light magazine as a good source of recipes for lowfat versions of home cooking. They have put out yearly cookbooks that are compilations of the previous year's magazines for at least the last five years. They used to have a free searchable database of recipes online at www.cookinglight.com, but now it's only available to CL subscribers and AOL members. You can pick up the magazines at the grocery store. Your husband will not know they are lowfat because the recipes are generally very good. The website recipes are rated by users and I used to find the ratings very accurate.

 

[hensylee]

Although the main meat in our house is chicken, I read the other day that chicken now has more fat than most beef, except t-bone (which daughter and I plan to buy one of tonight and split between us). We rarely buy beef and pork but yesterday decided we can splurge and have a bit of good steak from time to time and devil take the hindmost. Beef is hard to digest and has more cholesterol than chicken. Well maybe not after what I just read. My dr told me to never eat pork. I love a good pork roast or pork chop, don't you? But at his urging, gave it up.

In the south, comfort food is THE thing (ask Bonnie), but not good for us. Mashed potatoes, fried chicken, gravy, pecan pie, biscuits with syrup and real butter, corn bread and sweet potatoes. 12 layer chocolate cake is on the list, along with coconut cake.

Anybody remember the half slice of pear, canned pear of course, on a lettuce leaf, with a dollop of cottage cheese, mayo and a cherry on top? Mother used to serve this in the 50s.

 

[Nancy]

I loved that pear salad, Hensylee, when I was young also.

 

[Barry]

Hadn't known that pork is generally bad for you. I had thought of it as better than beef because the fat isn't marbled throughout the meat, so you can cut it off.

Same deal with chicken - I'd thought that, again, the fat isn't marbled throughout the meat but instead is contained mostly in the skin, so you can just skin the chicken. I leave the skin on to baste the meat (roast chicken is one of my staples), but remove it while eating the chicken and feed it to the dog.

And, back to the fat being marbled throughout beef - I'm also under the impression that the cheaper cuts are better for you than the more expensive ones. The expensive ones (e.g. rib-eye steaks, New York steaks) have a lot of marbling and I'm pretty sure that the grading of "Choice" indicates a whole lot of marbling. Anyway, unlike pork or poultry, with beef (especially the more tender cuts) there is fat marbled throughout the meat, so even when you cut the fat off you're still eating a lot of fat.

(Language-freak that I am, as I wrote the above I was taken by the fact that we have different names for different kinds of fat: Schmaltz for chicken fat, lard for pork fat, and suet for beef fat.

Also that we have different names for the animal depending upon whether it's in the barnyard or the kitchen: fowl v/s poultry, swine v/s pork, cattle v/s beef. I read someplace that's because after the Norman Invasion the royalty of England had French cooks while the English peasants continued to raise the livestock, so the barnyard names are of Old English derivation while the kitchen names are of French derivation. And with that, I think I have established a new standard for tangential hijacking of a thread...)

 

[tobagotwo]

Fresh pork (meaning without the salt) actually should be better than most beef. It would, as Barry pointed out, have a lower fat content, assuming you do cut the fat off. It's often called "the other white meat."

I don't know what your doctor has against it, actually.

Again, I am always a little shocked when I see people cut meat into pieces and just eat it, without trimming the fat on their plate. It should be noted that most generalizatons of the fat content of various meats do not account for the simple tactic of trimming before eating.

Best wishes,

 

[perkicar]

While I wouldn't recommend eating pork (or bear meat, or any other omnivore's meat) because of risk of trichnosis, raw herbivore meat (e.g. beef, venison) is actually quite good for you and has many more nutrients than after it is cooked - source of this info is outdoorsy lore from folks living in the polar regions who lived on a diet comprised exclusively of meat. They often ate it raw, never cooked more than blood-rare. If they cooked it thoroughly, they came down with vitamin deficiencies.

The problem with hamburger isn't the meat itself but that it's subject to contamination (most notoriously with e-coli bacteria) as the butcher gathers up scraps to grind up.

In terms of coming up with something heart-healthy that your hubby will eat, does he like fish? I love fish, especially broiled salmon, halibut, and some kinds of shark (haven't yet figured it out - some shark is delicious, some is awful). And despite the current trendy style of serving fish with herbs, spices, and sauces, I find that the taste of fish is so delicate it's best cooked and served plain.

From www.cdc.gov:Is trichinellosis common in the United States?
Infection was once very common and usually caused by ingestion of undercooked pork. However, infection is now relatively rare. During 1997-2001, an average of 12 cases per year were reported. The number of cases has decreased because of legislation prohibiting the feeding of raw-meat garbage to hogs, commercial and home freezing of pork, and the public awareness of the danger of eating raw or undercooked pork products. Cases are less commonly associated with pork products and more often associated with eating raw or undercooked wild game meats.
Properly cooked meat of any type is safe. There are still many "old wive's tales" going around about pork. And yes, pork's fat content (internal, the "marbling" others have mentioned that you see in beef) is lower than other "red" meats. Pork has traditionally been fried, which makes it seen as unhealthy, but personally, I love a pork chop cooked on the grill.

 

[hensylee]

I love to prepare a pork pot roast. I love to prepare a beef pot roast. Both top stove. Ever compared the grease that comes out of the pork roast to the amount that comes out of the beef roast? I have some old thick waterless cook pots that I use on top stove for these pot roasts, cook the meat very slow, allowing the fat to cook out, also keeping it tender and very moist. I have a microwave that is also a convection; you can use both at the same time or separately, automatically going from one to the other for a single cooking time if you set it that way. It cooks the most wonderful pork roast you ever want to taste. Nearly fork tender; all the flavor stays in because of the short cooking time. I think the pork industry has made many changes in the feed for the animal, thereby reducing the fat content. Same with beef. They were losing business to the chicken industry. Chickens, on the other hand, are force fed vitamins, fat diet, other things that aren't good for us in our meats, all making for heavier chickens; thus increasing profits. (I know this because they raise chickens round these parts - big business for locals). Chickens are ready for market a month after their birth (? ); how can this be? I was raised on a farm and none of our chickens were ready for the pot in a month. Since I have already given up pork, I will just stay away for the most part and eat it as a treat occasionally. Same with beef.

We did buy the steak last night except we got New York strip instead of T-bone because of the heavy fat content in t-bone. We won't cut the fat off before cooking because the fat helps the meat keep its flavor, however the fat will go to Miss Sally Sue, our loving old hound dog. As her treat. Incidentally, an added thought here - Miss SS refuses to eat chicken skin! We found that very interesting - cats won't eat it either. Any ideas why?