Check em’ out!

This will be short and sweet. While paying for gas recently, I noticed a treat inside the store that I hadn’t had for ages. Curious, I picked up the Nutter Butters to see the nutritional information. The particular sized Nutter Butter packaging I was looking at was for a 1.9 oz bag of them. I can’t remember exactly what they taste like but I bet they didn’t taste good enough to justify the calories: 260 of them in 1.9 OZ!!! 37g of sugar , 11g of fat and no nutritional value whatsoever.

Just pass on these peanut shaped pieces of Hell Food. You’d be better of drinking regular soda: less calories and more filling, but you know how much we hate soda here on Hell Food!

Here are this week’s stories:

Today I started off with the best breakfast that I have come up with:

4 scoops powder from Naturade’s Chocolate-flavored Meal Replacement
1 cup fat free soy milk
1 cup water
1 tablespoon instant coffee

Throw it all in a blender, and go. Tastes great, has a high protein count, and covers over half of all the nutrients I need in a day.

We’ve all seen the commercials these days by General Mills, promoting the “Whole Grain Nation”. Whole grain has been shown to be somewhat healthier than heavily refined grains. Products made with refined grain tend to be not much more than spun sugar. General Mills is now advertising their products as healthy just because of their whole grain content. I decided to take a look at what I thought was the least likely cereal to be healthy: Lucky Charms™.

I was a little surprised by what I found. Calorie-wise, the suggested serving size is only 110 calories. There is virtually no fat and the sugar content makes up only 7% of your daily recommended intake of carbohydrates. Some of the benefits of whole grain, though, don’t seem to make it into Lucky Charms™. One serving only contains 1 gram of fiber and 2 grams of protein. This isn’t horrible or unhealthy, but it’s not likely to give you a health benefit.

One thing that concerns me, is the very small serving size: 3/4 cup. Go find a measuring cup and poor 3/4 cup of Lucky Charms™. You’ll be underwhelmed by the small serving. That’s really the problem with breakfast cereals in general. The suggested serving sizes aren’t bad for you, but the portions are so small. Cereals are calorie dense products by nature, so you can easily eat too much.

I can’t honestly condemn Lucky Charms™ on a nutritional/health basis. It’s not great, it’s not bad. However, the marshmallows contain gelatin, and as a vegan, I can’t recommend it. I would suggest a less processed cereal without sugary bits.

Today I’m going to be listing a few interesting food stories I found in the past week. Enjoy!

Inspired by last night’s Coast to Coast AM show with Dr. Neal Barnard, I am going to promise myself to be more active on Hell Food. I am going to do more theme type days, like “Food Review Friday”. I think this might help with the discipline needed to maintain this site.

Today, on a whim, I did a Google search for “fast food”. I noticed the first sponsored link was from KFC, that bastion of health food. The headline of the ad reads “KFC is Zero Trans Fat”. Trans fat, of course, is the trendy food product to hate these days. I’m not saying it’s good for you, but let’s not act as if trans fat is somehow responsible for our awful eating habits.

So, I decided to click on the ad and look at the nutritional information for a single piece of KFC Orginal Recipe Chicken Breast. What I found wasn’t surprising. A single piece has one third of your recommended daily intake of fat, one quarter of your recommended daily intake of saturated fat, forty percent of your daily intake of cholesterol, forty-three percent of your daily intake of sodium, and three hundred and sixty calories. All in just a single piece of chicken. How many people stop at just a single piece of chicken? Not many.

KFC’s chicken no longer has trans fat in it, but it still has high fat and high cholesterol for not much nutritional value. Remember, KFC doesn’t just sell you a single piece of chicken. They include biscuits, mashed potatoes, and cole slaw, all with similar unhealthy attributes. So while KFC can claim to no longer contain today’s deadly food fad, it can’t purport to be healthy. It’s not.

If you really want a filling meal try this:

1 whole wheat hamburger bun    - 140 calories
2 Original Vegan Boca Burgers  - 140 calories
1 tablespoon ketchup           - 15 calories
1 tablespoon mustard           - 0  calories
1 cup mixed vegetables         - 90 calories

Fry the burgers in a frying pan with some vegetable broth,
and stack the patties on the bun
so you have a double burger.  Just heat the
vegetables in a microwave, and serve.

The meal adds up to 385 calories, more than the single piece of chicken, but you will be a lot more satisfied after this meal. KFC just can’t compete with that.

You might see headlines over the next couple days like this:

“Heart risk of diet soda found equal”

The title is misleading, because at most, the study cited in the article found a correlation, not a causation between diet soda and heart disease. What also is misleading, is that the study only looked at soda consumption and didn’t correct for other lifestyle choices. All you can draw from this conclusion, in my opinion, is that diets soda alone is not enough of a lifestyle change to have an effect.

Hell Food, while preferring that people drink water when thirsty, still considers diet soda to be a viable alternative to regular soda as part of an overall healthy lifestyle.

No, nothing is wrong with me. I haven’t been in an accident or suffered any disease. I’ve just not been able to eat and exercise like I normally had been because of our house remodel. I haven’t put on any weight back on, but I feel awful. So, I’ve decided to document my “Road to Recovery” as a learning tool and motivation for myself.

Morning
My air mattress quit on me, so I had to sleep on a cement floor with a small amount of padding. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep well, and didn’t have time for exercise. Damn. Now my back hears, and my abdomen muscles feel like garbage. So for breakfast, I’m having a bowl of grape-nuts with just a little soy milk. Hopefully, that will get my system on the way to recovery.

In this op-ed by Amy Lanou, Ph.D, she lays out the case that a vegan diet for a child is just as healthy and probably safer than the typical American diet:

Health by Veganism

In a side note, Clark Hoyt of the New York Times mentions the problem with an op-ed by Nina Planck called “Death by Veganism”. Ms. Planck claimed that a vegan lifestyle for a baby was irresponsible. She was wrong, of course. There is plenty of evidence to counter her claims. Hoyt’s point, concerning Planck, was that the Times didn’t present the other side of the debate, and has not presented the other side in sixteen years.