Eat Out Eat Well

food facts

Common Foods That Can Make You Sick

By Leave a Comment

According to the Centers for Disease Control, most foodborne illnesses are preventable. Here’s some information from their newest report:

 1,034 foodborne disease outbreaks were reported resulting in:

  • 23,152 illnesses
  • 1,276 hospitalizations
  • 22 deaths

In outbreaks where the cause was confirmed, norovirus and salmonella continue to be the causes of the largest number of outbreaks and illnesses.

In outbreaks linked to food in which all ingredients belong to a single food group, these foods were responsible for the biggest number of outbreaks:

  • beef
  • poultry
  • fish

The food groups responsible for the biggest number of outbreak-associated sicknesses were:

  • fruits and nuts
  • vine vegetables
  • beef

Foodborne illnesses come not just from “bad” meat, fish, eggs, and dairy.  Be alert to spoiled or contaminated fruit, nuts, and vegetables, too.

 

Is Sea Salt Less Salty Than Table Salt?

By Leave a Comment

The short answer:  no – even though sea salt might be marketed as a health food.

Chemically, table salt and sea salt are not much different although they might taste different or have different textures. Sea salt and table salt, by weight, have the same amount of sodium chloride.

Sea water is evaporated to make sea salt.  There is little processing and the water source, along with the trace minerals and elements left behind after evaporation, add flavor and color.  Sea salt comes in different degrees of coarseness and types of grain or flake.

Table salt, mined from underground salt deposits, goes through processing to eliminate minerals. It usually has an additive to prevent clumping and may have added iodine, which sea salt doesn’t have.

What’s The Difference Between Jam, Jelly, And Fruit Butter?

By Leave a Comment

What they have in common:  they are all made from some form of fruit.

Jams and jellies are made from fruit mixed with sugar and pectin. For jelly the fruit comes from fruit juice.  For jam the fruit comes from fruit pulp or crushed fruit.  Pectin, an indigestible carbohydrate found in the cell walls of most fruit, gels when heated with sugar in water and is what causes jam and jelly to thicken.

Jam is usually a thick, chunky, and fruity spread.  Because it includes whole fruit it tends to have more vitamins and minerals than jelly. To make jam, fruit is cooked with sugar and water until it starts to soften and break up. Natural pectin is released with the long slow cooking. Some people make jam without extra added pectin – just relying on the naturally released pectin.

Because jelly is made with fruit juice – not whole fruit  — pectin has to be added for it to firm up. Without the natural tartness of whole fruit, jelly tends to be a little sweeter than jam.

Fruit butter is puréed fruit that is cooked down to a thick consistency. Fruit, with or without skin, is cooked until it is soft, put through a sieve to remove seeds and skin and/or pureed, and then flavored, if desired, with spices or lemon juice.  Fruit butter is cooked until it is thick and doesn’t have pectin added to set the mixture.  Because fruit butter is supposed to be thick and sort of buttery it is usually, but not always, made with fruit like apples, pears, or peaches rather than “seedy” berries.

What About Calories And Sugar?

Jams and jellies are high in sugar in content.  Fruit butters tend to be the winner in the calorie and carb counts — although it is possible to make or buy low or no sugar (or artificially sweetened) products.

Here’s some nutritional info:

Is The Breadbasket Doing You In?

By Leave a Comment

Shiny Packets And Small Pots

It used to be only butter on bread – big slabs, small pots, or foil wrapped rectangles.  You can still find all of these – what would a diner be without those sometimes rock hard, sometimes soft and squishy, gold or silver foil wrapped butter packets?

Butter or Oil?

Olive oil for bread sopping and dipping is giving butter some stiff competition.  Olive oil arrives green or golden, plain, herbed or spiced.  It can be plopped down on your table, or poured with flourish from a dark tinted bottle.  Some restaurants offer a selection for dipping – and attempt to educate you about the variation in flavors depending upon the olives’ country of origin.

How Many Calories?

Do you eat more calories from one or the other?  Hidden cameras in Italian restaurants showed that people who put olive oil on a piece of bread consumed more fat and calories than if they used butter on their bread. But, the olive oil users end up eating fewer pieces of bread than the butter eaters.

In the study, done by the food psychology laboratory at Cornell University, 341 restaurant goers were randomly given olive oil or blocks of butter with their bread. Following dinner, researchers calculated the amount of olive oil or butter and the amount of bread that was consumed.

How Much Butter, How Much Oil, How Much Bread?

Adult diners given olive oil for their bread used 26% more oil on each piece of bread compared to those who were given block butter, but they ended up eating 23% less bread in total.

The researchers found:

  • Olive oil users used 26% more olive oil on each slice of bread compared to block butter users (40 vs. 33 calories)
  • Olive oil users ate 23% less bread over the course of a meal than the people who used butter

The olive oil users had a heavier hand than the butter users – for individual slices of bread.  However, over the course of the meal when the total amount of bread and either oil or butter was accounted for, the olive oil users used more per slice, but, overall they ate less bread and oil over the course of the meal.

They also took in 17% fewer bread calories:  264 calories (oil eaters) vs. 319 calories (butter eaters).

Butter, Oil, And Bread Add Significant Calories

  • A tablespoon of olive oil has 119 calories, a tablespoon of butter has 102 calories, one pat of butter has around 36 calories.
  • Butter and oil are all fat; olive oil is loaded with heart healthy monounsaturated fat, butter is filled with heart unhealthy saturated fat
  • Bread varies significantly in calories depending on the type of bread and the size of the piece
  • Most white bread and French bread averages around 90 to 100 calories a slice. Most dinner rolls average 70 to 75 calories each.

What’s Your Bread And Butter (or oil) Plan?

The bread and butter or olive oil pre-dinner (and maybe during dinner) ritual can create a real caloric bump without much nutritional value.  So many of us chow down mindlessly on bread and butter or oil before a meal – because we’re hungry – or because it’s there for easy nibbling.

Choose to eat it, limit your amount, or don’t let the breadbasket land on your table.  The choice is yours – just be mindful of the calories.

Do You Season Cold Food More Than Hot Food?

By Leave a Comment

Season cold food “generously but judiciously” according to the Sept/Oct 2011 edition of Cook’s Illustrated.

According to their “25 Tips For improving Flavor,” chilling foods dulls flavor and aroma so it’s important to compensate with more aggressive seasoning.

Cook’s Illustrated says that to keep from going overboard you should season with a normal amount of salt before you chill your food.  After it’s chilled sample it and add more seasoning to taste just before serving.