The No Salt, No Fat, No Sugar Journal
Creating healthier food choices
I’ve written before that fast food is loaded with salt, you might as well go to a salt mine and start licking the walls as eat anything at McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, and even Subway which positions itself as healthier but still has much too much salt in its offerings.
So I wasn’t surprised by this latest list of America’s saltiest foods compiled by TheDailyMeal.com and reported by Fox News, among others. Continue reading “Who sells America’s saltiest fast foods?”
Baked goods like cakes and even snack cakes (i.e. HoHos) have been largely off my diet since having angioplasty in 2012. And I miss them terribly.
So I’m always looking for something baked that I can eat without too much presumed damage to my arteries. That means looking for low-fat, low-salt baked items, almost an impossibility. But there are some. Normally they’re smaller than anything I once ate, but at least they satisfy my cravings a bit.
One such product is VitaTops. They’re essentially muffin tops with chocolate chips in them so I can taste a bit of chocolate. Each is only 100 calories and has only 3 grams of fat and 170 mgs of sodium. So eating two means 340 mgs of sodium, about a fifth of my daily 1,500 mg limit. Continue reading “VitaTops — a quick snack but don’t believe the picture”
McDoanld’s is a difficult place to get anything low-salt, low-fat or low-sugar. These days all I eat there are salads and yogurt parfaits. The parfaits have come in for criticism for being high in sugar. The salads have a lot of salt, and an impossible amount if you add any of the dressing supplied, so I usually bring my own vinegar and oil packets instead.
I’m not the only one eating there less, Millennials who grew up with Ronald are turning away in droves. The Big Mac seems to be getting the message and is moving as fast as a major company can to change some things. I applaud the changes and say do more, more quickly, now.
A major recent change was announced for its chicken. “The biggest change is the removal of sodium phosphates, which it said was used to keep the chicken moist, in favor of vegetable starch. The new recipe also does not use maltodextrin, which McDonald’s said is generally used as a sugar to increase browning or as a carrier for seasoning,” reported Fox News, and other outlets, recently.
Anything to cut sodium is great for me. A McChicken sandwich at the moment has 650 mgs of sodium, about half what I can eat a day, which is why I never buy one.
McDonald’s new Artisan chicken also will be cooked in an olive oil blend instead of margarine, according to another report. That can only help as well.
“McDonald’s new grilled chicken sandwich recipe has been introduced in response to consumer demands for simple ingredients, the company said. By removing artificial ingredients consumers are not familiar with, the company is making an effort to simplify their recipes and respond to increasing demands for natural foods,” reported Olive Oil Times.
Keep it up McDonald’s keep it up.
John
If you’re like me, you’ve been cooking since the pre-dawn hours today. Hopefully you’ve tried some of my low-salt, low-fat recipes and you saw my warning about checking the sodium content of your turkey before buying one.
So all that’s left is to finish the cooking and enjoy. Thanksgiving is perhaps my favorite holiday of the year because it transcends all religions, or lack of religions, and celebrates the American family coming together to give thanks for each other.
We will be doing that in a very special way at our house this year, my son is with us from Minneapolis, my wife’s brother is coming over and she has relatives and friends here all the way from Holland to share our special feast.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
John
I was amused to see recently that insurance company Humana put out a list of so-called healthy food choices at Taste of Chicago, an annual mega-food fest here in the Windy City that ended last Sunday.
The last time I went to Taste was 1994, long before my heart surgery. The event is smaller and doesn’t last as long these days as it did then, but it’s still all about eating. Area restaurants set up tents and sell their specialties, so you can go wild trying everything in sight. I don’t even go near it now because I know it would throw me off my restricted diet. Continue reading “Healthy eating at Taste of Chicago? Think again”
Fresh black figs in the fall were one of my favorite treats as a child. My grandfather had a fig tree in his yard behind his Brookyln brownstone and, even after he died, the family maintained that tree so it produced wonderful figs every fall. 
An aunt took an offshoot of it and planted that in her yard, creating a second tree that also produced wonderful figs for many, many year until she sold that house and the tree along with it. Her grandson had an Italian restaurant in Brooklyn for years and he would use figs from her yard for special fall treats there. Continue reading “Fresh figs are a favorite food of mine”
Millennium Park has become the second most popular tourist attraction in Chicago, drawing millions of people every year to see the Bean and other sights. But as a recent Chicago Tribune article on the park notes, there are few food options inside the park. But several salad bar choices do exist within short walks of the popular outdoor venue.
My office is across the street from the park on Randolph and Michigan Avenue, so I’ve explored the salad options in the area. The best choice, and the cheapest per pound, is at the Mariano’s supermarket a few blocks north of the park. Just walk up Randolph Street toward the lake, past the sign that says no access to the lakefront, and keep walking until you see the sign to turn for Mariano’s on the north side of the street.
The store itself is tucked away behind high rises in the area. But it’s worth the hunt for it. The salad bar has a choice of container sizes into which you can put romaine lettuce, spring greens, fresh spinach and the popular kale. Accompaniments include the usual such as beets and mushroom slices. Several prepared salads also are present, but they all have too much salt for my restricted diet, so I avoid them.
I also avoid the hot food bar, but you may find something on that you can eat without getting too much salt, fat or sugar, let me know if you do.
At $5.49 per pound, Mariano’s also has the cheapest salad bar in the area. I regularly load up on two pounds of salad and cut up fruit there. I also sometimes splurge with some salmon sashimi and add it as well. My average lunch there runs about $13. Continue reading “Millennium Park salad bars: some healthy options outside the park”
I wrote last week about how after two years of starving myself for health’s sake, I decided this birthday would be a pig-out day for me, a day when I would leave my angioplasty mandated restricted diet behind and eat the way I did when I was young.
So the day started with my favorite potato chips and a giant chocolate chip cookie that I ate more than a third of. And my day went on to a dinner of what had once been a favorite ethnic food choice for me — Chinese food.
Chinese food is high in sodium and can be high in fat as well depending on the dish. I have not eaten it for almost two years and miss it a great deal since I once had it weekly. So I was determined to drive to a neighboring suburb, to what had been my favorite Chinese take-out place, to get all my old favorites — pork fried rice, Mongolian beef, egg rolls and crap Rangoon. Continue reading “Birthday pig-out, part II: Oh what a night”
Today is my birthday and, after nearly two years of basically starving myself on my angioplasty-induced low-fat, low-salt diet, I’m splurging today on some of my old, unhealthy favorites.
Pictured here is how I started my birthday, which I had taken a day off from work for. Wise potato chips are the chips of my youth in New York and still the best in the country, in my estimation. They remain thin, crispy and with just the right hint of oily lusciousness. It is difficult for me to resist buying them now that they’re sold in the Chicago area where I now live too. So today, I gave in and grabbed a bag. 
Of the seven ounces in the bag, I likely ate five in one sitting. That’s 750 calories and 50 grams of fat, plus 800 mgs of sodium! I easily could have finished the bag but resisted. Continue reading “A birthday with no salt and no fat? Forget it”
For many years now, popular thinking when it comes to eating has focused on having several smaller meals throughout the day to satisfy hunger but not to binge on big meals. I’m always skeptical of nutrition theories and so-called nutrition science because every theory that’s in vogue today is likely to change.
And now, the wisdom about eating smaller meals may be about to change as well. I came across this post recently, “Two big meals may be better than six small ones.”
“Eating two large meals early and skipping dinner may lead to more weight loss than eating six smaller meals throughout the day, the study suggests. Continue reading “How many meals a day should I eat?”
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The No Salt, No Fat, No Sugar Journal 