A Dose of Health

I stopped by the grocery store last night to pickup cold cuts for my daughter’s school lunch. She told me she was tired of peanut butter and apple sandwiches (I was also tired of making them).

It was late and the cold cut counter was closed so I picked up a package of Sara Lee Honey Roasted Turkey Breast. Now, I know that there’s a lot of salt in processed meat, but for grins, I donned my reading glasses and decided to read the ingredients. I shouldn’t have done that. Here’s what I found:

Turkey Breast
Water
Honey
Contains 2% or less of:
Salt
Sugar
Sodium lactate
Sodium phosphate
Sodium diacetate
Sodium erythorbate
Sodium Nitrite

It gets me the way they package it as 2% or less of…

So, with 2% or less of 6 different types of salt, that means that the turkey package is potentially 12% salt.

Serving Sizes

The serving size for such chemicals are 4 slices which yield the following nutrition facts:

50 Calories of which 5 are from fat

.05g Fat
20 mg cholesterol
550 mg sodium
2g carbohydrates
2g sugar
10 g protein
2% iron.

The Truth of the Matter

The prepackaged slices are approximately 4 ½ inches in diameter and sliced so thin that it’s next to impossible to pull one slice off without it ripping. With such size and thinness, most folks use more than 4 slices to make a sandwich.

On the conservative side, let’s say you use 6 slices of turkey to make a sandwich. That means that you’re consuming 825 mg of sodium (and that’s not including the bread, mayo or mustard). Wow, that’s a lot of salt.

According to the MayoClinic adults shouldn’t exceed 1,500 to 2,400 mg of sodium a day. The requirement drops if you are over 50, African American and have any type of chronic diseases such as diabetes or high blood pressure.

A long time ago, I used a homemade recipe for cold cuts. It’s time for me to stop being so lazy and get back to basics. Making my own turkey cold cuts is not only healthier, but it’s cheaper too (plus I can season the turkey any way I want).

Butter gets a bad rap, but in my book I’ll pick butter over margarine any day.

I used to buy into the ‘margarine is better than butter’ hype, but no more.  Trans fat free and low in cholesterol spreads such as Promise and I Can’t Believe it’s Not Butter, Country Crock and a host of others have a long list of ingredients.  Have you ever checked it out?

Here’s the list for Smart Balance Buttery Spread:

Ingredients

NATURAL OIL BLEND (PALM FRUIT, SOYBEAN, CANOLA, AND OLIVE OILS), WATER, CONTAINS LESS THAN 2% OF SALT, WHEY (FROM MILK), VEGETABLE MONOGLYCERIDES AND SORBITAN ESTER OF FATTY ACIDS (EMULSIFIERS), SOYBEAN LECITHIN, POTASSIUM SORBATE, LACTIC ACID (TO PROTECT FRESHNESS), NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVORS, CALCIUM DISODIUM EDTA, VITAMIN A PALMITATE, VITAMIN B6, VITAMIN B12, VITAMIN D, VITAMIN E (DL-?-TOCOPHEROL ACETATE), BETA-CAROTENE COLOR

You can find this listing on the Smart Balance website.

Butter:

Now, I’ll go to my refrigerator and pull out a stick of butter and read the ingredients as follows:

Cream, Salt, Milk

I don’t know about you, but I’ll take the stuff I can pronounce over what I can’t any day.

Not only does butter taste better and makes things it interacts with taste better, but the ingredients are common every day ingredients.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a spare jar of VEGETABLE MONOGLYCERIDES AND SORBITAN ESTER OF FATTY ACIDS sitting around on my pantry shelf.

The Healthy Goal

I know, I know, butter is full of saturated fats and its ‘bad’ for us.  Well, since the goal is to make healthy choices one choice at a time, if given the option between margarine and butter, I choose butter (olive oil would be better, but that option is not on the table at this time).

So, if eating butter means that I have to make one extra lap around the block or vacuum with a little more vigor, so be it.  I’d rather have cream, salt and milk in my system than the host of ingredients that are listed on the margarine label.

Additional Reading

While doing a little research on butter, I came across this document entitled Ingredients for Margarines and Spreads.  Not quite sure what it all means, but I know after skimming through the document, I’m even more adamant about choosing butter over margarine.

Last night I wanted pizza, but I didn’t want to order pizza because I didn’t want the traditional white dough pizza, or the traditional thin crust white dough pizza or the Sicilian sliced white dough pizza. Do you notice a reoccurring theme here? I didn’t want the white dough pizza.

I was lazy and hungry and didn’t want to wait for the oven to warm up to make homemade pizza so I decided to make a fried pizza instead. I know, it sounds extremely unhealthy, but wait, listen to what I did.

Here are the ingredients

• Whole grain organic soft tortilla wraps
• Fresh tomato (organic preferred)
• Shredded mozzarella cheese
• Salt
• Pepper
• Garlic powder
• Basil (fresh preferred, but I only had the dried basil in my cabinet)
• Olive oil

Cooking utensils

• Bowl
• Skillet or frying pan

Here’s how to make healthy fried pizza:

• Slice the tomato paper-thin into a bowl and season them with salt, pepper, garlic powder and basil.
• Spread the tomato over the tortilla wrap. The tomato serves as the traditional tomato sauce.
• Sprinkle mozzarella cheese on top of the tomato.
• Heat the skillet and put just a hint of olive oil in it. You only want enough so that the tortilla won’t stick. If you prefer to use one of those oil spray things, use that (I personally don’t care for them too much).
• When the skillet is good and hot, place the pizza in the skillet. You want to leave it in long enough for the bottom of the pizza to develop a little crust and for the cheese to melt.

Melting the cheese without burning the crust can be a little tricky so here’s an alternative method:

Nuke the pizza in the microwave until the cheese melts. Then place the tortilla in the frying pan to crust up the bottom a bit. Once the bottom has a little texture, lift the skillet and slide the pizza out of the pan onto a plate and viola! Quick, easy and health fried pizza.

Variations:

As far as variations go, the sky is the limit. You can top your pizza with your favorite toppings. Not being much of a meat eater, my favorite toppings happen to be things like arugula, olives, sun dried tomatoes, spinach, banana peppers, onion, and so on.

More than being quick and easy to make, fried pizza is delicious. Unfortunately, I was rather hungry when I made the first experimental pizza so I didn’t stop to take pictures. The second and third pizzas were a goner too. My hubby and son devoured them.

Next time I make fried pizza, I’ll take pictures and post them here.