Don't Cheat Yourself

Calorie counting is critical but be sure you are in fact getting the amount of food you're charging yourself for. When food has played such an important part of your life, and you decide you're going to limit how much of it you have, you don't want to cheat yourself out of even one morsel!

That's why it's important to have a good kitchen scale and weigh portions, particularly if it's food coming from cans. On the nutrition label, the manufacturer will not only give the size of the serving of say, green beans, but it will also give how many of those servings you can expect to get from said can. If you portion out those servings by simply eyeballing it, you may find that the information of, "about 3 1/2 servings," written on the nutrition label seems extremely generous when the food is actually separated that way. In most instances, I have rarely come across a can of just about anything that actually contained the amount the label claimed. Don't ask me how the manufacturers get away with it, but they do and some major brands are actually worse about it than others. Do your own test. Not only are you getting cheated out of the amount of food you think you're eating, but it's especially annoying when you're trying to feed a family on a budget and you aren't getting the value you think you are.

If you take a moment to weigh your servings, (it's really not that big a hassle if you keep your scale easily accessible - mine sits on my kitchen counter all the time), you may well find that out of a 15.5 ounce can of most any vegetable, you'll end up with just a little more than 2 servings, and yes, I'm even including the packing water in those measurements.

When it comes to accurate calorie counting, portion control is critical. Just be certain you're getting what you think you are.

Cooking The Books

So I'm standing there waiting with my cans of cat food and diet Coke at the grocery store check-out when I begin to look over the magazines, particularly the cooking and diet magazines. On the cover of the latest issue of Cooking Light is a gorgeous picture of a slice of cherry pie. Now, my favorite dessert is pie of just about any kind, but among the myriad of choices, my absolute favorite is cherry rivaled only by peach followed by chocolate, lemon,... well, you get the idea.

The thing about cherry pie, or any pie, is that it's usually very high in calories. For the average slice, (that's 1/8th of a 9" pie), you're looking at between 350 and 450 calories. I was curious. How did a slice of cherry pie wind up on the cover of a diet magazine? Imagine my surprise when I looked up the recipe and saw a calorie count of 282 calories per slice. Wow. That's really good. But because I know a little about baking, I had to wonder how they had lightened the calories. The picture certainly didn't look any different from the average full-calorie cherry pie slice. The crust didn't look different, the cherries didn't look like little blocks of tofu or some such, what could they have put in or taken out to get those results? The list of ingredients appeared to be what I typically see in any cherry pie recipe. I was perplexed.

That's when I took another look at the end of the recipe, the part where it says number of servings. That's when my jaw dropped. The folks at Cooking Light hadn't done anything that I could tell to lessen the calories in their cherry pie, they simply sliced it smaller! Instead of getting the typical 8 slices, they think you should get 12! A dozen slices from a 9" pie! Come on! Who are they kidding? I assure you that even the photographer who took the picture for the magazine cover didn't try to do that.

My immediate thought, (after thinking the magazine editors must assume we're all gullible idiots), was why did they bother to stop at twelve? Why not go for 16? Sixteen slices would give you just 211.5 calories using their totals. They could have really impressed some folks if they'd put that figure in a headline. And what was even more disappointing, when I figured their pie recipe at 8 slices, it came to 423 calories a slice! That's actually on the high side for the average cherry pie serving.

You know, it's wonderful that there are a few diet cooking magazines that make the effort to lighten some of our favorite recipes. It can take quite a bit of effort to 'cut down' a recipe, and it's nice when someone can help you figure out a way to do it and still come away with something that tastes good. But I think it's frankly bordering on immoral when a publication sets itself up as a leader in the health and diet industry only to end up cheating the very public it claims to be helping. I can take any recipe and make it appear lower in calories if I cut it into ridiculously tiny servings! I suppose they would argue, 'Hey, at least we were honest, we didn't lie about it.' No, they didn't lie but such a tactic is misleading and therefore dishonest. Do I sound angry? I am. The diet industry in this country is enormous. There is a great deal of money to be made in all kinds of weight loss and health claims. I am appalled and disgusted at any company that takes advantage of the vulnerability of people in search of help and hope.

Don't be tricked. Magazines that do this don't deserve the public trust and respect because they aren't respecting us. They certainly don't deserve our money. I must say this is not the first time I've seen one of Cooking Light's recipes creatively handled this way.

Trust me, there are other magazines like Weight Watchers and Prevention, not to mention numerous websites like http://www.allrecipes.com/ and http://www.bettycrocker.com/ that contain the nutritional information for recipes.

And they don't slice food into portions that would fit on a plate in Barbie's dream kitchen just to get a nice sounding calorie number.