Eat Out Eat Well

Snacking, Noshing, Tasting

Why Not A Non-Fat Caffe Latte?

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Valley Of Fatigue

When I was a kid there was a commercial on TV for Welch’s Grape Juice.  The gist of the commercial was that when you hit your 3 or 4PM energy drain – or what they called the “valley of fatigue” — a nice glass of Welch’s grape juice would help you climb right out of the bottom of that valley.

Of course, an 8 oz glass of the purple juice with 170 calories, and 42 grams of carbohydrates (40 of which are sugars), will certainly give you a pop of energy.  However, since it’s all sugar, that immediate blood sugar spike will quickly turn into a dropping blood sugar – leaving you with less energy – and probably crankier – than before.

Here’s A Better Choice

How about a non-fat skim caffe latte instead.  You could be at a mall, in a train station, an airport, sitting at your desk, or walking down the street.  There’s a Starbuck’s or a Dunkin’ Donuts, or a zillion other coffee shops if not right in front of you, then most likely around the next corner or down the road apiece.

Why Is A Non-Fat Skim A Good Idea?

Three reasons — maybe there are more, but here are three good ones:

  • Easy to find – coffee shops are everywhere
  • It’s a finite size – you ask for a certain size, you get it, you drink it and then it’s gone (unlike the rest of the cookies remaining in the box that will continue to tempt you)
  • You get a nice satisfying, long-lasting, and portable hot drink to sip with a good amount of protein and no fat; whether it’s caffeinated or decaffeinated is your choice

Nutritional Stats For a Non-Fat Caffe Latte

Starbucks’ Non-Fat Caffe Latte (espresso and non-fat milk)

  • Tall (12 oz):  100 calories, 10 grams of protein
  • Grande (16 oz):  130 calories, 13 grams protein
  • Venti (20 oz):  170 calories, 16 grams protein

Note:  Try to avoid flavored lattes which add (in sugars) 50 calories to the tall, 70 calories to the grande, and 80 calories to the venti and drops the protein count for each by a gram.

What Do Crossing The Street And Eating Have in Common?

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Look Both Ways

Don’t you look both ways before you cross the street — or shouldn’t you?  That’s called being mindful of your surroundings and potential problems – like a car or bike speeding toward you.

Check In With Yourself

The same thing is true with eating:  check in with yourself and ask if you’re really hungry.  Is your stomach growling and your blood sugar low?  Or is it the wafting smell of the freshly baked bread coming from the open door of a bakery or the sight of just out of the oven chocolate chip cookies that creates an irresistable urge to eat  – even if you’ve just had a good sized and satisfying lunch.

There’s the rub: in situations like that you are eating in response to external cues (what you see, hear, smell, or even think) rather than checking in with your body and determining if you are actually hungry.

Be Mindful

It’s called mindful eating for good reason:  you are being mindful, or thoughtful, about whether you really need or want to eat versus eating because your emotions are sending you “feed me” messages.   You know, the kind of messages that make you scarf down the mini snickers bars and the Reese’s peanut butter cups (and then some)  from your kids’ Halloween candy or propel you to taste (big serving size tastes, of course) of all three pies Aunt Mary had for Thanksgiving.

Make Your Decision

Try to let your body talk to you – and then listen to it.  There will always be occasions — certain celebrations come to mind — when it may be important or the right thing to do to eat a piece of cake or a cookie or an ice cream cone.

Before the food starts its path to your mouth, stop and ask yourself if you are really hungry or if you have head hunger  — the urge rather than the need to eat because your emotions and external cues are telling you that you should. Answer the question and proceed accordingly.

Potato Chips the Way They Used To Be

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Saratoga Potato Chips

I have a soft spot for Saratoga Springs, New York, home of Skidmore College, my alma mater.  Saratoga is also known for  — to name a few things — the Battles of Saratoga (1777, a turning point in the Revolutionary War), its spa, Saratoga spring water (which I couldn’t stand the first time I tasted it), and another of my favorite spots, the racetrack with its incredible wooden stands.

What I didn’t know is that Saratoga is also credited as the birthplace of American potato chips.  Originally called Saratoga Chips, they are usually credited to George Crum, the Native- and African-American chef at Moon’s Lake House in Saratoga Springs who first prepared them in 1853.

In the 1920s chips were handed out in wax-paper bags. In the 1930’s they were packaged and became a commercial snack food.

We now call them plain old potato chips, Saratoga having vanished from the name.  There’s another big difference, too.  To make classic Saratoga chips, the Browns, 1940 authors of “America Cooks,” told you to slice potatoes “to fairylike thinness” and fry them in lard. A 1904 recipe from The Times called for frying them in olive oil, which gave the potatoes a nutty flavor, and, as we now know, was a lot healthier than many of today’s commercially used oils – or the once used lard.

Modern Day Potato Chips

Modern day potato chips come in a multitude of flavors: vinegar and salt, sour cream and onion, cool ranch, and barbecue.  Some are ribbed or ruffled and some aren’t, they are packaged in noisy foil bags, are plentifully salted, and sometimes are stamped out in identical sizes and stacked in a cardboard tube.  Don’t you wonder what they use to make those flavors?

An eight ounce bag of chips has 1242 calories, 766 of them from fat.  It contains 85.1 grams of fat (24.9 grams of which are saturated, 1192 mg of sodium (slightly more than half of the daily recommendation), and 14.9 grams of protein.

Pringles come all nice and neat and layered in a tube.  But, what happened to just potatoes?  Here’s Pringles’ ingredient list:  dried potatoes, vegetable oil (contains one or more of the following: corn oil, cottonseed oil, and/or sunflower oil), wheat starch, maltodextrin, rice flour, salt and dextrose.

A one ounce serving size of Lay’s classic potato chips is made from potatoes, sunflower and/or corn oil, and salt.  It has 150 calories, 10 grams of fat (1gram saturated), and 2 grams of protein.

Bottom Line:

Sometimes you gotta love the chips.  However, there are some good choices and some not so good choices.  Oven frying your own is probably the best choice – you get the vegetable lightly coated with olive oil and however much salt and herbs you prefer.

Some commercial brands now come oven baked, too.  If you are buying a bag of chips  look for the kind that is made from real potatoes rather than dried potatoes mixed with sugars, salt, and preservatives.

For home made oven fried potato chips, wash the potatoes well and slice them thinly, about 1/8-inch,  keeping the peel on. Brush both sides with olive oil (you can use a light coating of cooking spray if you are watching your calories) and arrange the slices on a baking sheet in a single layer without crowding. Sprinkle with salt and herbs, if desired. Bake in a preheated 375 degree oven until nicely browned and pretend you’re in Saratoga.

What’s For Lunch At Amusement Parks?

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Boardwalk, Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York

The Boardwalk at Coney Island

I spent most of Saturday at Coney Island.  It was an absolutely beautiful day and I was there for a birthday party.  What a fantastic idea.

We all had lunch at a Peruvian chicken place.  Chicken, rice and beans, plantains, and some French fries thrown in for good measure.  The chicken was marinated and roasted, the plantains sauteed in butter and brown sugar.  The rice and beans were just that — white rice and brown beans.

Given the other options, this was not a bad meal.  The chicken was very tasty and not fried.  The plantains were very sweet and the rice and beans were not greasy.  The French fries were crispy — but still French fries.  No green food or other veggies in sight.

Birthday cake:  Homemade and decorated with jelly beans.  Birthday girl:  Loved it.

The Alternatives

These are pictures of  what was mostly available.  Although all of these photos were taken on the boardwalk   at Coney Island (near the New York Aquarium), this kind of food is what can be found at many amusement parks.  Peruvian chicken was certainly the best food option in this case.  An even better one could be to bring your own lunch if you want to — otherwise, build this type of meal into your eating for the day.  Whichever choice you make, enjoy.  I certainly did.

What Button Do You Push On The Vending Machine?

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Are you facing a long car ride — punctuated by innumerable rest stops — this Labor Day weekend?  Many of the roads I  travel have “Welcome to Massachusetts or New Hampshire or Maine,” in front of a New England style structure with bathrooms and a line-up of vending machines.

What Number And Letter Button Do You Push?

Whether out of boredom or hunger when you’re confronted with a similar line-up, index finger ready to punch the letter and number of your chosen indulgence, what do you ultimately choose?

I have to be honest, I love vending machines – I have since I was a kid and spent a nickel to get cardboard packages of two chiclets of gum on New York City subway platforms.

Here’s a bit of interesting trivia. Around 215 BC, the mathematician Hero invented a vending type device that accepted bronze coins to dispense holy water.

In 1888 vending became economically viable in the US when the Adams Gum Company put gum machines on New York City’s elevated train platforms that dispensed a piece of Tutti-Frutti gum for a penny.

Today’s automated vending business is a $30 billion-a-year industry with around100 million people using 7 million vending machines each day.  Around 30% of the machines are in manufacturing facilities and slightly over 16% are on school and college campuses.

Best Selling Vending Machine Candy

According to an unscientific survey of 20 vending machine owners, when asked what their best selling vending machine product is:

  • 1 said Reese’s
  • 1 said Cashews
  • 1 said Mike n’ Ike
  • 1 said Smartfood White Cheddar popcorn
  • 1 said Stickers (“ cause kids can’t resist them)
  • 2 said Gumballs
  • 3 said Skittles
  • 10 said Peanut M & Ms

Peanuts In Our Candy

We Americans love peanuts in our candy. Out of the ten most popular candy bars sold in the US, five of them — Snickers, Reese’s peanut butter cups, Baby Ruth, Butterfinger, and Oh Henry! —  contain peanuts or peanut butter.  In most vending machines, about 25% of the dispensed food contains peanuts or peanut butter – a cautionary note for anyone with a peanut allergy.

Some Stomach Churning Info

Some stomach churning info and advice, in his own words,  from a bulk candy (machines that you often find in diners where you get handfuls of loose candy for a quarter) vendor’s blog:

The best selling bulk candy is peanut m&m’s, but you have to be careful because the m&ms can be very messy. “Imagine a hot summer day and your bulk vending machine is placed near a window . . . if that sun is beaming down on your vending machine those m&ms will melt and you will lose that location quick when the lady in the office gets chocolate on her hands and accidentally gets it on her blouse.”

On Mike n’ Ikes, his favorite bulk candy: “Man I have had a lot of success with these colorful tasty little bad boys.  Mike n Ikes do well in the winter and in the summer but just like the m&ms please be careful in the summer.

In the summer if your bulk vending machine is in a hot location the Mike N Ikes can stick together and become one big ball. To stop this from happening you can lightly spray the Mike N Ikes with Pam or your favorite cooking spray, and you shouldn’t have a problem in the summer time.”

On Gumballs:  Gumballs are your best friend and are by far the most profitable and are indestructible. “The only tips I can suggest on these gumballs are after a couple of months in your machine please check them by biting into a gumball every now and then.  Sometimes these gumballs get real hard and after that you are going to want to get rid of them.”

SocialDieter Tip:

If a vending machine calls your name, choose wisely.  There are good, better, and best choices to be made.  You can almost always find packages of nuts, or popcorn, or pretzels, or dried fruit.  Be careful of things with too much sugar, especially if you’re driving.  A big time sugar hit may give you energy from an initial blood sugar spike but more than likely it will be followed by a drop in your blood sugar levels possibly making you sleepy, grouchy, and hungry.