The No Salt, No Fat, No Sugar Journal
Creating healthier food choices
The most popular page on my food blog, by far, is my no-salt, no-fat, no-sugar recipe page. People are hungry for healthy recipes and we do our best to supply them on that page. Check it out, we’ve just expanded it, adding a section of pandemic meals, recipes we’ve been trying during the pandemic when we’re all cooking more at home.
And we’ve also added a slide show of some of our favorite dishes. Enjoy and let us know what else you’d like to see on that page..
Trying to stay on a heart-healthy diet means giving up almost all of the foods I once enjoyed.
Salmon, thankfully, is not one of those, however. Current nutritional thinking is that salmon has “healthy” fats and so is fine to eat for everyone, regardless of health concerns. In our house, salmon really has come to replace beef several nights a week.
So I have a lot of salmon recipes on my recipe page. But you can never have enough.
So I was happy to read this piece on EatingWell.com 26 High-Protein Salmon Dinners for Weeknights. Some of these don’t appeal to me because they’re highly spiced, but others, like one-skillet salmon with fennel and sun-dried tomato couscous, sound intriguing.
A nice feature about these recipes is they include nutritional information so you can see if they’re truly healthy, i.e. low in salt, fat and sugar, or just claiming to be. Remember, never assume a recipe is healthy just because whoever posts it says so.
Being stuck at home during this pandemic has meant more take-out and more quick snacks for many people, I’ve written about the dangers of that before. But now a new warning about such eating habits comes from the website eatthis.com
“As we change the way we live, we have the risk of developing some very serious patterns that do real damage to our bodies and potentially put us in harm’s way,” the site notes.
The site asked nutritionists for advice. Among the recommendations — take care with what type of take-out foods you order, don’t keep junk food in plain sight around your house, and watch your salt intake, a constant challenge for most Americans.
As someone who decided to splurge on hot dogs and fries the past two weekends, I’m feeling this is written to me — and to all of you.
The Food Network is predicting that 2021 will be a year of big breakfasts, cookies and easier ways to find “healthy” foods, although what healthy emans depends on who is using the term, as ever.
“The pandemic disrupted the usual breakfast routine for 80% of Americans. Less commuting to work and school meant more time for the most important meal of the day and food manufacturers are adapting. Look out for more convenient breakfast foods that are packed with functional ingredients like protein and fiber, such as Jimmy Dean Casserole Bites and Flourish Pancake Mix. Also expect familiar brands to up their breakfast game with tempting offers like Cinnabon’s CinnaBiscuit Chicken Sandwich,” Food Network reports in a piece entitled The Biggest Food Trends We’ll Be Talking About in 2021.
You can read all the predictions by clicking on this link.
We had a record number of visitors to our No Salt No Fat No Sugar Journal in 2020, more than 34,600 people, eclipsing our old record set in 2017.
“Covid and the move to more eating at home sent a lot of people looking for healthier recipes like we provide,” says site Founder and Editor John N. Frank. “While a lot of people were binging on chips and junk food, I’d like to think some realized they need to get the salt, fat and sugar out of their diets as they think more about what they eat every day.”
This site’s recipe page remains its most popular feature.
Frank started the blog in late 2012 after his first angioplasty to open a blocked artery which nearly killed him. He’s since had a second stent inserted in a different artery in 2017.
He has utilized his prior experience as a food journalist to find or modify recipes to get out the excessive salt, bad fats, and high amounts of sugar that many Americans eat every day without realizing what’s in their food.
Frank recently was named a 2020 top executive by Marquis’ Who’s Who in recognition of his career in journalism, his work on this blog, his efforts to start a small theater and his volunteer work with Mended Hearts, a national peer-to-peer support group for those dealing with heart disease.
“I’ve been stuck inside all year like everyone else but I’ve tried to keep busy,” he jokes.
I’ve been eating a lot more fish since my heart issues started back in 2012, but fish preparation can sometimes confuse people and take time. So when I came across a recipe called Easy Baked Tilapia (or Cod), how could I not check it out, and try it?
I used tilapia and the result was a very tasty dinner that was, indeed, easy to make. I made one major change to the recipe, however, switching in olive oil where it called for butter in the topping to get a healthier fat into the mix.
Also, because I had five large tilapia fillets instead of the four in the original recipe, I doubled the amount of everything to make the topping, which worked out great. I also used bottled lemon juice since I did not have a fresh lemon.
So, as with any recipe, be prepared to adjust depending on what you have available for cooking.
Here are the details:
Easy Baked Tilapia
Ingredients
4 filets white fish such as cod or tilapia
½ lemon
1 ½ tablespoons melted butter
Topping
Instructions
And kudos to Spendwithpennies.com for also listing the nutrition information for the dish.
NUTRITION INFORMATION
Calories: 240, Carbohydrates: 4g, Protein: 35g, Fat: 9g, Saturated Fat: 4g, Cholesterol: 100mg, Sodium: 203mg, Potassium: 532mg, Vitamin A: 390IU, Vitamin C: 8.5mg, Calcium: 57mg, Iron: 1.3mg
I think using the oil instead of the butter likely cut some, if mot all, of the saturated fat content too.
I’m a big believer in buying what’s on sale each week and creating meals around those items. Recently, frozen flounder fillets were on sale at my local store, so I bought some and went recipe hunting.
The recipe I found to make them, Garlic Parmesan Flounder, was delicious and didn’t use fatty butter as did so many of the other flounder recipes I came across after a quick search. The cheese does have salt, so go light on it.
Making it was fairly simple too. Let’s start with:
INGREDIENTS
1/4 c. extra-virgin olive oil
4 fillets flounder
Freshly ground black pepper
1/2 c. freshly grated Parmesan
1/4 c. bread crumbs (I use panko crumbs, they’re lower in salt)
4 cloves garlic, minced
Juice and zest of 1 lemon (I used bottled lemon juice to taste)
Then the steops:
Preheat oven to 425°.
Drizzle 2 tablespoons oil on a large baking sheet. Season flounder with salt and pepper.
Combine Parmesan, bread crumbs, garlic, and lemon zest. Season with pepper.
Dredge fish in bread crumb mixture, pressing to coat. (I first coated the fillets with egg whites to hold the crumbs on)
Place fish on prepared baking sheet and drizzle with remaining two tablespoons oil and lemon juice.
Bake until golden and fish flakes easily with a fork, 20 minutes.
We had them with a side of steamed green beans for a wonderfully tasty fall meal.
I’ve long been a fan of Mrs. Dash’s salt-free marinades and salt-free taco seasoning. I recently also tried Mrs. Dash’s salt-free Sloppy Joe mix and found it a great substitute for the salt-ladened Manwich Sloppy Joe in a can I used to buy when my children were young.
The Mrs. Dash product did taste different, I think primarily because of the lack of salt. Manwich Sloppy Joe has 310 mgs of sodium a serving and claims one can is 10 servings!. If you’ve ever made it, you know that’s really not the case. I’d say a can is about three real-people servings, so each person would get about 1,000 mgs of sodium, half a day’s worth.
The Mrs Dash mix includes:
Sugar, Dried Onion, Brown Sugar, Spices (Black Pepper, Celery Seed, Chili Pepper, Cinnamon, Cumin, Nutmeg), Cornstarch, Maltodextrin, Potassium Chloride, Yeast Extract, Tomato Powder, Dried Red and Green Bell Pepper, Dried Garlic, Citric Acid, Glucose, Natural Flavors, Vinegar.
We tried the Mrs. Dash seasoning with ground turkey instead of ground beef to hold the fat down as well. The combination worked well. I might modify the recipe on the package a bit and add more tomato paste than called for to give it a bit more tomato zwing.
One note, my local food stores don’t carry this product, so I bought it online at the Healthy Heart Market.
I always enjoy watching Giadi De Laurentiis’ cooking shows, even though she often uses more fat or salt than I can eat on my restricted diet. But this recipe for stuffed zucchini and peppers caught my eye because it uses ground turkey instead of ground beef.
True, it calls for dark meat turkey, which is the highest inf at of any turkey meat. But you can easily substitute lean to extra lean ground turkey to cut the fat substantially.
Having ketchup in here surprised me too, I’d say use it or not to your taste and if you do use it, use a salt-free, low-sugar variety.
So, the ingredients:
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 small onion, grated
1/4 cup chopped fresh Italian parsley leaves
1 large egg
3 tablespoons ketchup
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/3 cup grated Pecorino Romano
1/4 cup dried plain bread crumbs
1 pound ground turkey, preferably dark meat
2 zucchini, ends removed, halved lengthwise and crosswise
1 short orange bell pepper, halved and seeded
1 short red bell pepper, halved and seeded
1 short yellow bell pepper, halved and seeded
1 1/2 cups marinara sauce Continue reading “Stuffed Zucchini and Red Peppers ala Giada”
A lot has been written about people overeating during the Covid-19 pandemic. And why not, with all the tension and changes in routine the pandemic has brought into our lives?
If you’re trying to get a grip on your pandemic eating, try starting with not eating for at least two hours before you go to bed. And, according to this piece on Foodnetwork.com, avoid these eight foods before bedtime:
Why? Read all about it by clicking here.
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The No Salt, No Fat, No Sugar Journal 