Easy Ways to Lower Fat in your Diet

Easy Ways to Lower Fat in your Diet
By: Chef Cristian Feher
www.tampabaychef.com

Most doctors, nutritionists and fitness experts agree that lowering your intake of fats and oils can go a long way towards achieving a healthier weight and lowering your risk of heart disease and other annoying body complications. For those with a sedentary lifestyle, taking in too many calories can be detrimental. And fats (and oils) contain way more calories than carbohydrates or protein.

I look at it like this; When I eat too much fat, I get too fat. And this prevents me from performing vital tasks like running for more than 100 feet without losing my lunch (as in the case of a zombie outbreak or escaping from a flash mob at the mall). My graceful David-Hasselhoff-run on the beach becomes more like a sweaty scene from Biggest Loser, and it now takes three YMCA employees to hoist my rotund behind up the rock climbing wall as children look on in dismay.

If you don’t share my concerns, maybe you can agree with the fact that there are virtually no old people over the age of 70 that are fat. Have you noticed that? Really old people are all skinny.  Being a Florida resident, you can trust my observation.

The choice is yours. You can go out like Elvis with a peanut butter and bacon sandwich, or you can tweak your diet and live a longer, albeit less glamorous, life.

Cutting fat out of your diet does not mean checking your happiness at the door and conceding to an insipid life of celery sticks, yoga and canned tuna. You can still enjoy most of the foods you eat by making low fat substitutions. Let me show you a few tricks to cut the fat and keep the taste.

Oils and Fats. Yes, many oils are “healthy” for you. But we’re talking about pure mathematics here - too many calories. A little bit of oil goes a long way. Oils, cheeses and fats are very high in calories. Even a little tablespoon of olive oil packs a whopping 120 calories (that’s the same as two slices of white bread). So the first and most effective thing you can do if you’re packing too much fat, is to stop eating it. Just stop using oils.

Instead of frying with oils, butter or fat, just use a non-stick pan. For mashed potatoes, just add skim milk, garlic and herbs. For salads just use herbs, garlic, sea salt, pepper and red wine vinegar. Steamed rice goes great with a little soy sauce instead of butter. You can thicken sauces with corn starch and water (called a “slurry”) instead of oil and flour. And instead of mayonnaise in your sandwich, use Dijon mustard, or ketchup. And keep the cheese to a minimum.

Meats. We all love a nice fatty steak, pork chop, meat sauce, chili, fajitas, sausages, etc. But the next time you grill, use a lean beef tenderloin steak. Use pork tenderloin instead of pork chops on the grill, or season it with soy sauce, cumin and fresh pepper for low-fat fajitas. Grilled chicken breasts are fat-free and juicy if you don’t overcook them. Fat-free hot dogs still taste great. And I use lean ground turkey in most recipes that call for ground beef (I add a little bit of egg whites to the mixture for added moisture in the case of burgers or meatloaf).

Fish and Seafood. You can make tasty, gourmet dishes using white fish, fresh tuna, shrimp, scallop, and clams. Sushi (if not eaten with mayonnaise-based sauces) is actually a really low-fat and tasty food that you can enjoy often.

Starches and Pastas. I’m sure the low-carb junkies are squirming. Don’t worry, pasta is actually very low in fat, and has way less calories than oils or fats. If you skip the fatty ground beef, cream sauces (made with cream, butter and oil) and skip the olive oil in the tomato sauce, pasta can be enjoyed daily. And if you’re still worried, you can use low-carb and whole wheat pastas to combine the benefits of low-carb and low-fat eating. Whole wheat breads are also good to eat.

Potatoes, sweet potato, and all types of rice are also virtually free of fats.

Basically,  if you are carrying with you a supply of body fat, you don’t need to eat any more of it. Let your body use the fat it already has. And if you use the tips and ideas above, you can still enjoy your meals.

Is Propylene Glycol making you fat?

Is Propylene Glycol making you fat?
By: Cristian Feher

Most of you are probably wondering, "What the heck is propylene glycol?". Propylene glycol may sound fancy and scientific, but it's really just a clear, odorless liquid made from petroleum. It's used as a stabilizer (to keep things held together, and keep them from evaporating), and to keep foods moist. It's used in many of the foods that we eat, and the FDA deems it safe for human consumption. Sounds harmless enough, right? But I stumbled upon a little something that you may not know about propylene glycol.

I promise this is the only other scientific word I will use - Ketosis. Ketosis is simply nerd-talk for when your body burns fat. So if you're overweight, and you start to lose fat, it's called ketosis. I'm sure most of us can agree that ketosis is a good thing - especially in America, where we have the most overweight population on the planet!

So what do ketosis and propylene glycol have to do with being fat? Good question! There is an industry where fat is money. It's the cattle industry. Simply put, the cattle ranchers don't want cows to get skinny. When an overweight American goes into ketosis, we congratulate them and tell them how good they're looking! But when a cow starts to lose fat, the veterinarian is called immediately. According to the Merck Veterinary Manual "Ketosis is a common disease of adult cattle." And according to this manual, one of the treatments for this condition is Propylene Glycol. The cow is injected twice per day with propylene glycol until it gets fat again. This stops the cow from losing fat and keeps them nice and plump. The cow can then be sold, butchered, and a beautiful, fatty, rib eye steak can be enjoyed.

I am definitely not against a big fatty steak with proper marbling (the fatty beads throughout the steak). But I do wonder if propylene glycol is having the same effect on humans, and making it harder for a person to go into ketosis and lose fat. North Americans probably eat more propylene glycol than any other people on the planet, and we happen to be very fat. Coincidence? I am not saying that propylene glycol makes people fat - I can't, the FDA wouldn't let me say that. But it certainly poses an interesting question. By the way, here's another little tidbit; the Merck Veterinary Manual also states, "Overdosing propylene glycol leads to CNS depression [central nervous system failure]." But again, they're talking about cows here, and it's very unlikely that a human being would eat that much propylene glycol in one sitting. However, I wasn't able to find out how much propylene glycol it would take to kill a cow or give it brain damage. I also was not able to find if propylene glycol taken over time can have a damaging effect.

Here are some common foods that contain propylene glycol: certain mustards, food coloring, artificial flavors, certain chips, certain soy sauce, fried onions, certain strawberry and chocolate syrups, certain icing, canned coconut milk, certain salad dressings, certain ice creams, maple flavored bacon, certain juices, certain sodas, certain cake mixes, certain chicken bullion, fast food burgers and dipping sauces, certain yogurts and the list keeps going. After only 10 minutes of research I was able to find over 1200 food items that contain propylene glycol. And not all of them listed it as an ingredient. For example, a food's ingredient list may include "artificial butter flavor". The butter flavor is made with propylene glycol, but since it came into the factory pre-made and was added as an ingredient in the process of another food, that manufacturer is not obligated to list sub-ingredients.

So we come again to the big question; is propylene glycol making you fat? I can't answer that. All I can do is present you with very interesting information and let you think for yourself.