Convenience foods for fat loss, part one
Some of you are highly evolved persons who cook every day, carefully plan your five to six small daily meals, and pack the lot into a cooler before you leave the house in the morning. All I can say is, I admire you. Someday I may get that organized. Or maybe not.
I don’t cook much, I sort of kind of plan my daily meals, and on good days I throw several items in a plastic bag and lurch out the door. It helps that I keep frequently consumed foods in the fridge at work. I do track calories and grams of carbohydrate and protein daily, using a Google spreadsheet. But given the rather laissez-faire manner in which my planning occurs, I really appreciate certain foods that make my life easier.
Here’s part one of my can’t-live-without foods:
1. Cooked chicken-breast strips. Several brands are available, but I like Perdue Short Cuts, Fajita Style. Each package has 10 ounces of chicken, enough for several snacks or a couple of meals. A half-cup serving (71 grams) has 90 calories, 3 grams of carbohydrate, 2.5 grams of fat, and 13 grams of protein. The strips taste great cold. I often tuck them into whole-grain pita bread.
2. Sara Lee Soft & Smooth 100 percent whole wheat bread. I love bread in all forms, and although this bread isn’t chewy, the flavor is good, it’s low in calories, and it makes good toast. If I need a quick carb snack, I eat it plain. Each one-ounce slice has 70 calories, 12 grams carbohydrate, 1 gram of fat, 3 grams of protein, and 2 grams of fiber.
3. Salsa. I’ll buy just about any brand that has no sugar added. At the moment I’m looking at a jar of Market Pantry salsa (a Target house brand) made from all-natural ingredients. Two tablespoons have 10 calories. Salsa is great on your scrambled egg whites, baked potatoes, chicken breasts, and so on.
4. StarKist solid white albacore tuna. Where would I be without tuna? I suppose I’d ingest less mercury, for one thing. But tuna makes a great emergency meal when you don’t have anything else on hand. According to the USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, a six-ounce can of white tuna packed in water, drained, has 220 calories, nearly 41 grams of protein, zero carbs, and about 5 grams of fat. The StarKist label info varies somewhat, but I tend to trust the nutrient database. You can eat it plain, of course, but if you can spare the calories, why not add some reduced-fat mayo? Yes, it can taste delicious.
5. Hellmann’s Light Mayonnaise. Fat-free mayonnaise is an abomination. I mean, how can a food made from an emulsion of egg yolks and oil (fat plus fat) be made fat-free? It can’t. On the other hand, Hellmann’s Light is mayo made with less fat, and it tastes excellent. It’s scored very high against full-fat mayo brands in Cook’s Illustrated magazine’s taste tests. What’s the fat replaced with? Vinegar, corn starch, and corn syrup. Obviously you wouldn’t want to eat a ton of this stuff each day. But one tablespoon has 40 calories (rather than about 100), 4.5 grams of fat, and less than 1 gram of carbohydrate, which tells you that the product doesn’t contain a whole lot of corn starch or corn syrup. More in the next day or so.
