Posted on 07/05/2012 12:00:01 PM PDT by James C. Bennett
If you're using fat free dressing on your salad, you're doing it all wrong. According to scientists, you need to eat salad with fat-based dressings to get the most out of the veggies. Having no fat in your salad actually diminishes the benefit from eating vegetables.
This sounds a little crazy, right? But yes, even though fat free dressing has less calories than its fatty filled counterpart, you're not getting the full oomph you want when eating vegetables with skinny dressings. Researchers at Purdue University compared salad eating with dressing that had saturated fat, monounsaturated fat and polyunsaturated fat at three, eight and twenty grams of fat to find which was most effective and discovered that fat is a good thing. The Atlantic says:
Mario Ferruzzi, the lead author of the study and an associate professor of food science at Purdue, said that in order to get more from eating fruits and vegetables, they need to be paired correctly with fat-based dressings.
It turned out that dressing made with monounsaturated fat (olive and canola oil) were easily the most effective, needing the least amount of dressing to get the most amount of health-promoting carotenoids (carotenoids act as antioxidants in our bodies). Carotenoids are found in eating plant foods like vegetables and fruits so it makes sense that we'd want to get as much bang as we can when eating them. Using salad dressing with fat accomplishes that. [Molecular Nutrition & Food Research via The Atlantic, Image Credit: Kamila i Wojtek Cyganek/Shutterstock]
Canola Oil? I grow Canolas in my backyard!
Two of them :)
The anti-fat nazis just about killed us all. Replacing fats with simple carbs was a disaster. The evidence had been there for over 20 years too.
Hear hear!!
For meat eaters it really shouldn’t matter then. You’ll get fat from beef etc. I’ll use fat Free 1000 Island and eat more beef :>} A win/win.
Seriously why if it is something you enjoy? Zero carbs Zero Calories. I drink lots of soft drinks as I hate coffee & fruit juices hurt my stomach and are only 10% pure plus are loaded with sugars. I drink soft drinks with Splenda {Suclarose} for the better taste. Actually I like Splenda sweetened cokes better than regular ones now. Zero calories Zero Carbs there is no way it can cause weight gain.
Official Meeting Facilities Guide?
Old Men Fart Graciously?
In all seriousness, yes I do, and I apologize for offending you. This subject is very personal and one I’ve been pushing for years. To see it in print by a group of scientists put me over the moon with excitement, and I got caught up in the moment.
Listen Nifster, I’m 100% behind the idea that calories in < calories out = weight loss, but think about it from a satiety standpoint.
If your daily caloric intake is 2000 calories, of what is that calorie count comprised? 9 bags of Cheetos are around 2000 calories. Half a Cheesecake Factory plain cheesecake is well over 2000 calories. A 12 oz. ribeye, baked potato with butter, and broccoli au gratin, while seemingly normal, is gonna tip your count well over 2000 calories, and that’s likely just dinner.
Satiety is the feeling of fullness which in turn keeps you out of the fridge and pantry. Fat and protein rank the highest on a satiety index, followed by complex carbohydrates and simple carbs. If you’re sitting around all day playing video games eating junk food, yes, you’re going to get fat, but if you have a large breakfast comprised of a 2 egg omelet, 2 slices of bacon, and a glass of milk, you’ll likely not feel hungry until well into the afternoon or even up until dinner time.
This has been my strategy for years, and I work from home often. It’s helped keep the pounds off on days when I can’t make it to the gym, because that coupled with water intake over a gallon a day and a lot of tea means I’m never truly hungry or bored enough to want to blow through a bag of Cheetos or a large cheese pizza.
That’s why the best dressings are either Italian or a homemade combination of Olive oil, vinegar, freshly ground pepper, and possibly a clove of garlic.
One of the most important chemical compounds for the brain is glucose which is primarily derived from carbohydrates. When I was going through the initial phases of my weight loss efforts, I went through keitosis, a process where the body is evacuated of carbohydrates as fuel and starts plowing through fat as the next bio-available energy source. It’s incredibly effective and the fat literally melts away through weeks of exercise. It’s a slower process without exercise, but it does work.
One of the downsides, I found, was that I often felt a little heady and had trouble concentrating. A cup of black coffee often helped, but once I started bringing carbs back into my diet after about 18 weeks, it was noticeable how my alertness came back and my mind felt like it was firing on all cylinders.
This program is not ideal for everyone. Some people respond immediately, as I did, and some people do not. The fact remains that sugar is addicting and has been shown to light up the same parts of the brain in an MRI as cocaine and other narcotics. It’s a pleasurable consumable.
People love sweets, and for good reason; however, for millenia, man relied solely on meat and fat for sustenance. When agriculture became huge, commodities such as sugar were easier to obtain and sweets came into existence. Prior to sweets, it was alcohol that did a similar job, obviously depending on moderation of consumption. If you focus your diet on fat and protein with moderate carbohydrate intake and VERY sparing sugar consumption, you’ll notice a huge difference in how you feel and how your body feels.
Do you know how lactose measures up?
They may be right on this one; IIRC Canola oil is another term for Rapeseed oil. There was a movie called Lorenzo's Oil in which Rapeseed oil (IIRC, it's been a while) plays the major part in medication for a boy with a disease that degenerates the mylin [sp?] sheathes that insulate nerves. Good movie.
What if you eat raw veggies with hummus?
Actually on fitness sites diet soda's have been known to cause weight gain for years..these are people who write down everything they eat and drink and when they drink a lot of diet soda their weight goes back up. I know it does for me if I drink 2-3 a day and I keep track of every calorie even my supps I take.
I can't remember the exact science but heavy aspartame exposure directly contributes to increased blood glucose levels which leads to increased fat.
I don't really care for aspartame due to taste. Sucralose AKA Splenda has been determined to be safe and has had over 25 years scrunity. Pepsi used to make a drink called Pepsi One and it was sweetened by Sucralose. Ingles in store brand of diet Cola also uses it and it taste pretty good. Personally I've never had any trouble loosing weight using Splenda. But I'll pack pounds on fast if I go back to regular sugar drinks. Sucralose is made from sugar BTW.
Lactose can’t be absorbed in the human digestive tract directly, but in the lactase enzyme converted form it doesn’t have the molecular backbone for triglycerides that fructose has. Lactose wouldn’t be useful to sweeten anything, though, and an excess can bring on bloating and loose bowels.
Aspartame really took the pizzazz out of Fresca that cyclamates (which are still legal in Canada) gave it. Aspartame makes Fresca pedestrian. Even saccharin would produce a superior Fresca, IMHO.
If you eat crap your body will be deficient in needed nutrients. If your argument is to not eat processed foods ( or keep them to a minimum) I agree. I eat the way I did growing up. Fruits and veggies from the back yard or a local stand. Eat in season. Meat from ranchers you know and trust (I mean buy local folks). Work hard enjoy my meat and potatoes and live to be 90 like my folks did.
My mom baked bread every day until she discovered a nice bakery that made sour dough ( abread she loved and convinced herslef she couldn’t master).
The truth is that most obese folks eat too much (junk or otherwise). Is sugar part of their problem....maybe. But I think the larger driver is a sedintary life style and a style of eating that does not mimic what our ancestors ate.
And that means what, practically speaking? I was mostly asking because of an article I'd read some years back that revealed Lactose as the sugar the brain uses.
Lactose wouldn’t be useful to sweeten anything, though, and an excess can bring on bloating and loose bowels
I'm not sure that's entirely correct, the [traditional] Cream Stout has a sweet undertone that is due, I think, to the Lactose.
Lactose is mostly used for processing purposes, but I could see how it might be use as a subtle flavor for a liqueur. Once converted by lactase the result is markedly sweet.
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