RSSFat Free, my @$$!
April 13th, 2007 by Dawn, Co-founder of Rouxbe
While I was blogging about salad dressing from this week’s recipe releases, it got me thinking about things…and I have to say I feel bad for those people who believe what ever they hear and/or read. Let’s take, for instance, some of the new “healthy” salads that are being advertised. The lettuce is good and healthy, don’t get me wrong. But have you ever read the labels on some of the dressings? Some of the fast food places (*cough*McDonalds*cough*) nowadays are promoting “healthy” salads, yet once you add the dressing you might as well have had a triple cheese burger. Really! Don’t be fooled by the “healthy” salad fads – just because there is some lettuce under there doesn’t mean it is good for you. If it’s creamy and loaded with dressing, it’s probably fattening. For that matter you might as well have the fries!
This talk about fattening salads reminds me of these guys that used to come into the restaurant that I worked at. (I was actually a waitress at the time, and not one of the cooks in the back.) Anyway, they used to come in and order two taco salads and two diet cokes. “Yeah, we’re back on the diet,” they’d say. “It’s hard, but we need to do it.” Don’t get me wrong, their hearts were in the right place but they actually thought they were sacrificing something.
Like, hello…? Let me spell it out for you: One deep fried taco shell loaded with creamy Caesar salad, then topped with “fried” ground beef (not the lean or the extra lean kind). Then the whole salad was finished with about 1/2 cup of grated cheddar cheese, three tablespoons of full fat sour cream and three tablespoons of guacamole and salsa. “Oh, dieting it is sooo hard,” they used to say! Meanwhile they had not only polished off the entire salad they had also eaten the bowl (the taco shell) that it came in. Oh ya, and 3 diet cokes each!
Moderation and Exercise; there are no secrets. You want to eat three cookies after dinner? Great, but go for a run! Or go play frisbee and maybe only have two cookies and save the other one for next time!
Remember, don’t believe all that you are told. Read the ingredients and think about what you are eating. If something says “fat free” yet the first ingredient is sugar, then really it is not “fat free.” No one is lying to you though, because technically it is “fat free” going in… it is just once the sugar hits your system, your body then turns it into fat.
It’s simple: just eat smart and be smart! (And have you ever notice that the word “diet” has the word “die” in it? Interesting!)
[...] also read labels and don’t believe everything that is on the label. Like when something says fat free, I usually say, “ya right”. Because most fat free food items have sugar which I know gets converted into fat once digested. So [...]