Nuts
Valuable for protein and Vitamin B1 nuts
are also rich in fats and rank as concentrated, high-calorie foods. Best to
forget about them if you want to reduce, for a couple Brazil nuts equal about
five servings of boiled cabbage.
Fruit Juices
Fruit juices in general are excellent
sources of Vitamin C; tomato juice has the additional advantage of being a good
source of Vitamin A as well. Carbonated drinks (except a few rare ones that may
contain slight amounts of fruit pulp) are made from soda water and heavy
syrups, contributing no vitamins, nothing but carbohydrate calories. A typical
12-ounce bottle of soda pop contains the equivalent of 6 teaspoons of sugar.
Using Your Cook Book
If you are your own cook you can probably
persuade yourself to follow your own advice with a minimum of ill-feeling. If
someone else does your cooking, however, you may have to speak softly but carry
a big stick.
You have probably been struck by the fact
that reducing diets look ample enough to satisfy a generous appetite. So they
are. But the foods must all be prepared in the simplest way possible
The trouble with a good cook (aside from
the quality immortalized by Saki in his remark: "She was a good cook, as
cooks go, and as cooks go, she went") is her deep-grained habit of
cozening the customer's appetite with three-decker confections, pastries that
melt in your mouth, and rich sauces à la Escoffier. Hunger and appetite are two
different things. You can be hungry and have no appetite, as after a four-day
fast. And you can have an appetite when you aren't hungry, as when you're
tempted by an extra serving of shortcake.
So, as diplomatically as may be, you lay
down the law:
Foods may be boiled, broiled, roasted or
baked, but not fried.
Butter, fat and cream are to be used in
cooking only in extremely limited amounts—better yet, not at all.
What butter is permitted is to be served
soft; it spreads more easily and goes farther.
As far as possible, eliminate sugar in
preparing foods. Saccharin may be substituted as a beverage sweetener in
moderate amounts.
Serve some raw foods every day, usually as
salads, but allow no mayonnaise or fancy dressings. Vinegar, which has no food
value, is permitted, or lemon juice, valuable for Vitamin C. Not all
digestions, however, can tolerate large amounts of raw foods, so be temperate.
If desired, a mineral oil dressing of
negligible calorie value may be prepared according to this approximate formula:
I cup mineral oil, ½ cup vinegar, 1 egg (can be omitted), condiments: teaspoon
of salt, teaspoon of mustard, pepper, teaspoon of paprika, garlic if desired.
The disadvantage of mineral oil dressing in
the light of recent findings—that it prevents absorption of much Vitamin A in
the carotene form in which it occurs in plant foods—has already been commented
on. If you use mineral oil dressing, it is advisable to take a Vitamin A
concentrate.
You can cut down your calorie consumption
substantially merely by making your cook hew to these lines
.
No comments:
Post a Comment