I was watching Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa, the other day and she was preparing pasta dishes, including a favorite of mine, Shrimp with Linguini. But, OMG, she used a stick of butter and 3 TBS of olive oil. My arteries were squealing! Her dish would have run over a 1000 calories a serving, 260mg of Cholesterol and 3424mg of sodium.I make this dish all the time and I don't use any where near that amount of fat, just enough oil on a paper towel to wipe my pan, then I add a little no fat/low sodium chicken stock.
They complain about fast food, always throwing little "bombs" at MacDonald's, but a Big Mac is around 600 calories, 300 of which come from fat, that's bad, but no worse than gourmet food.
Every time I watch Iron Chef America I'm horrified by the amount of butter and fat they put into their food.
They make fast food places post calorie/fat/sodium counts on their food, they should do the same for "upscale" restaurants.
I too cant believe how much butter and oil is in most of the 'cheffy' recipes .... a little can add to the flavour but that much is over kill taste wise....'junk' food is probably healthier than a lot of restaurant meals ...fresh wonderful ingredients mean nothing if drowning in fat.
ReplyDeleteWe are always amazed at how much salt some of the tv chefs (when we watch them) put into their food. We are always checking for salt levels when we buy in the supermarkets. Luckily we do cook a lot of fresh food and even make our own bread, cakes and etc so we can leave out salt or put in very little:)
ReplyDeleteI agree with you Janet. The first thing I do when reading a recipe to try, is imagine how i would cook it without the butter and salt. As you say, easy enough to make the changes.
ReplyDeleteWe have not used salt for years and do not miss it.