If you must have salty snacks, pick these

Our edamame at Crave was a nice appetizer.

Salt has been a great demon in my life, routinely impacting my blood pressure and heart health. So I avoid it whenever and wherever I can. But some people insist they have to eat some salty snacks to satisfy occasional cravings.

If you’re in that group, at least opt for low-calorie, lower-salt snacks, such as those on this list from LoseIt!.

Edamame is on here, but I normally ask for that with no salt in restaurants. When you buy it pre-packaged in food stores, you normally get salt.

Another option here I like is Babybel low-fat cheese which comes in little rounds.

“Babybel’s mini cheese wheels are just 70 calories and provide 140 mg of calcium (10 percent of the Daily Value) per serving. Cheese also helps to balance blood sugar levels because it contains protein and fat,” LoseIt! reports.

I’m a little shocked to see beef jerky on the list. Whenever I sample that at Costco, I am flooded with salt.

Once you start cutting back on salt, you’ll taste it in the extreme when you do get food drenched in it.

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$6 beer? We’re a long way from the 1930s

The U.S. average cost for a beer at a restaurant or bar has reached $6.52! Wow, that tells me how long it’s been since I went out drinking.

“The most expensive city to buy a beer in is New York, at an average price of $9.16, and the most expensive states are New York, Hawaii, and California.

“The most affordable city to buy a beer in is San Antonio, and the places with the highest cost growth are New Mexico, at 4.8%, and Philadelphia at 3.3%,” The Food Institute recounts about findings by Toast.

Following the end of Prohibition in the early 1930s, nickel beer became common across the country. Often, in those tough times, free food came with the beer.

My dad would talk with joy about the free sandwiches. We even once went to an old bar in the pre-gentrified Washington, D.C. that still had that perk in the 1970s.

Those days are long gone now. I suppose the only upside to expensive beer is that it’s much tougher to get drunk on beer now than it was when I was in college in Milwaukee, the original beer town, where we were served free beer on campus once a year.

If you plan to belly up to the bar now, be sure your wallet is full first.

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My air-frying disaster: my perch didn’t fry

Air frying has gotten a lot of hype in recent years as a healthier way to get fried-like foods. But my first experience trying to air-fry some perch fillets was a disaster.

My wife theorizes our fryer isn’t powerful enough for what I tried to do. I think the perch was just too thick. I was following a fish air-0fry recipe I found but the breading didn’t;t stay on and more dramatically, the fish wasn’t cooking.

I ended up baking it in a regular oven where it turned out fine. The while sad affair is documented in a video on our new YouTube channel. Check it out and let me know what you think I did wrong.

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AHA vs. Federal Guidelines: Meat Consumption Debate

While the federal government is pushing red meat consumption these days, the American Heart Association remains committed to recommending limited meat consumption, according to its newly polished food guidelines.

The federal guidelines highlight animal sources like eggs, dairy, poultry, seafood, and meat as “safe and high-quality options,” offered alongside plant proteins. The AHA, on the other hand, recommends shifting from meat to plant sources (legumes and nuts) and seafood, with guidance to limit red meat and choose lean cuts if consumed,” reports Mindbodygreen.com.

Two other major areas of disagreement emerge as well, Mindbodygreen.com reports.

Continue reading “AHA vs. Federal Guidelines: Meat Consumption Debate” →
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Protein primer: How to find the protein you want

Know what you;re buying when you pick a yogurt to eat.

America seems a bit obsessed with protein these days. Those on the new weight-loss drugs think they need to eat it. Those trying to drop pounds the old-fashioned way think if they eat more rpotein,m they’ll basically eat less of everything else.

So how much protein is enough? American women eat an average of 69 grams a day, about 2.4 ounces, reports a piece on LoseIt.com. Some health types advocate eating as much as 100 grams a day, 2.5 ounces.

I tend to ignore food fads, but if you’re on the current protein quest, LoseIt.com has a list of 10 foods that provide at least 15 grams a serving.

Continue reading “Protein primer: How to find the protein you want” →
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Understanding Boy Kibble: A New Trend for Men

Men, especially young men, can do some pretty strange things. But eating kibble? Isn’t that for dogs?

Not exactly, according to a recent New York Times piece, Move Over, Girl Dinner. Boy Kibble Has Arrived.

“Boy kibble — also known as “human kibble” since women eat it, too — is a ruthlessly efficient, male-coded rejoinder to the extemporaneous charms of “girl dinner.” The latter is a TikTok term for the assemblage of light bites that women sometimes cobble together and eat as a meal, with little care for gastronomic coherence,” The Times reports.

“Boy kibble, in contrast, focuses on some nutritional ideal — here a mix of carbs, protein and fiber — that helps one achieve a specific body type or fitness goal. Pleasure-seeking details like flavor and aesthetics are tossed to the side.”

The person profiled in the article makes his boy kibble with rice, vegetables and ground beef, all cooked in the same pan.

Part of the ongoing effort by men to define what being a man means these days? Perhaps, the article suggests. Or just another goofy fad? Time, as always will tell.

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Visit the No Salt, No Fat, No Sugar Journal’s new Youtube channel

A friend and former journalism coworker contacted me via LinkedIn recently with a simply question, why don’t I start a YouTube channel for this blog? Good question!

I’ve launched YouTube channels for the theater I ran for 10 years and for my local chapter of a heart-patient support group, Mended Hearts.

But this blog, started in 2013 as a way to cope with the massive eating changes I needed to make in response to my first stet, has never made the leap to YouTube. I have posted videos here, but not there.

Well, that’s been corrected, so check out the new No Salt, No Fat, No Sugar Journal YouTube channel. Just click here.

And expect more videos, here and there. And I’m open to suggestions of where to post videos next. TickTock? Instagram? Elsewhere?

This blog is the last vestige of my journalism career, the only way really, that I still know I’m a contributing member of society and not just a zombie waiting for my weakened heart to stop.

So all suggestions are appreciated.

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McDonald adding insult to injury?

McDonald’s in recent years has been systematically eliminating any menu items that were even remotely healthy. Gone are yogurt parfaits (which were still high in sugar) and McDonald salads (which packed a lot of salt if you used the store dressing).

Stuck at a fast food outlet? Try to find one still offering salads like this one at Buona Beef in Chicago.

Now, according to a report by TastingTable, McD’s is adding insult to the very real injury its menu can cause your health by charging small order fees for delivery. I’m assuming this is in addition to any fees the delivery app charges you too.

My days of loving it at McDonald’s are long gone, In its salad days, pre-Covid, I would have salads and yogurt there two or three days a week. Then I could feel like a normal human being instead of one with heart issues that had changed all my eating habits.

I could just blend in instead of thinking about the two stents holding my arteries open. No more, though.

So I’ve been testing out other fast-food salads and found two I’m enjoying at Chicago’s Buona Beef chain and at the Potbelly sandwich shop chain.

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Experience Unique Waffle Flights at Elly’s Pancake House

Pancake house menus are pretty much all the same right — lots of pancakes, eggs, waffles, you know the drill.

When I go to one, I look for something heart-healthy, like an egg-white veggie omelet.

But recently I discovered a place near my father-in-law’s new retirement home that had a non-heart-healthy dish I simply could not pass up — waffle flights!

If you’ve ever done a beer or whiskey flight, you know the concept — four varieties of something in smaller sizes than normal but each with a very distinctive and wonderful flavor.

That’s exactly what Elly’s Pancake House in Glenview, Ill., is doing with waffles! Exclamation point? Yes, because this flight was really that amazing.

The waffles included are called s’mores, fruitopia, dalmation and apple pecans. You have to look back to the pancake section of the menu to find out what those include, namely:

  • S’mores — oreo, marshmallow spread, graham cracker crumbles
  • Fruitopia — strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, bananas, mascarpone sauce
  • Dalmatian — white chocolate chips, milk chocolate chips

Regular readers know I don’t eat nuts, so I asked for the apple pecan without the pecans and our waitress was very accommodating about that.

Continue reading “Experience Unique Waffle Flights at Elly’s Pancake House” →
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Contaminated Oysters and Clams: What You Need to Know

My incredible oyster plate at Pearl Tavern.

Oysters and clams distributed in nine states are being recalled because they could make you violently ill, reports the Food and Drug Administration. The suspect products went to restaurants and food retailers in Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Nevada, New York, Oregon and Washington.

They may be contaminated with norovirus, which sickens millions each year.

Involved are oysters from Washington-based Drayton Harbor Oyster Co. and manila clams from the Lummi Indian Business Council from Feb. 13 to March 3. Given the time that’s past, those should not be on fresh fish counters any longer regardless of the recall.

It’s still unclear if the contaminated products were sent to other states, so avoid raw oysters and clams for a bit. They’re an acquired taste for some anyway.

I grew up near a clam bar in Brooklyn and watched my cousins compete in contests to see who could down the most. But I never ate them raw myself until years later when I moved to the Midwest and was anxious to find any dishes I had been familiar with in New York.

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