It looks so good! Your tomatoes and mozzarella arrive with drizzled decorative squiggles of colorful basil oil on top. But are those squiggles only decorative?
Flavorful, Caloric, and Decorative
The squiggles are attractive and probably provide some deliciousness, but they’re also adding what might amount to a fair amount of calories.
It’s so easy to be fooled by fatty sauces and dressings on innocent looking vegetables. Vegetables are great. Veggies smothered with butter, cheese, croutons, and/or bacon are loaded with calories. Restaurants love to use oil and butter for flavor and to make the veggies glistening and mouth watering so they’re often “rinsed” with oil just before they’re sent to your table.
With salad dressings and sauces, the amount of dressing or sauce on a dish is heavily dependent on the hand of the pourer, even when a standard size ladle is used. You can always ask for sauce on the side, vegetables not to be rinsed, and with no butter or oil added.
If your food is cooked in stock or steam instead of in oil, you save 120 calories per tablespoon of oil. Flavored oil drizzled on top of your food – like basil oil – will add another 40 calories a teaspoon. Do you need it or want it?
For more tips get 30 Ways to Have Low-Calorie Fun in the Sun: Your Guide to Guilt-Free Eating at Picnics, Amusement Parks, Barbecues & Parties available on Amazon.
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