Treats

When I was 14 I decided that I really ought to learn something about cooking as this would be a useful skill, so I started reading recipes. That was the start of a lifetime’s interest in food and its preparation. I am one of the unusual CRers who loves food and cooking. I have been subscribing to a cookery magazine for many years, and have recently been going though the back issues to see what CR-friendly recipes I can glean. I am currently putting them onto a database in order to be able to dispose of the magazines which I don’t have room for. There isn’t really a CR-friendly magazine as such. I have looked at slimmers’ magazines and they are obviously designed for people who are overweight and want to be slimmer not skinny me who wants to stay that way, so the recipes are still way too calorific. But the mag I usually take does have quite a few healthy style recipes and many which can be tweaked usually by reducing the amount of oil used (for tablespoons read teaspoons) and substituting a few ingredients. Some recipes intended to be side dishes can suddenly find themselves promoted to main course status. There are a lot of recipes that are way beyond the pale, however. The classic signs to look out for are names that include certain key words such as ‘creamy’, ‘cheesy’, ‘sticky’ ‘luxury’, ‘decadent’ and ‘indulgent’. And any recipe whose title includes the word ‘heaven’ is probably going to get you there a lot faster. We are urged to treat ourselves to things that are naughty but nice. This does call to mind the time I saw a friend who I knew was trying to lose weight, consuming a large sugary snack. She commented guiltily that she knew she shouldn’t be eating it but reckoned she deserved a treat. But that was a treat only for the tastebuds, a few minutes of pleasure followed by hours of regret. A treat should be something that is going to benefit our bodies, not do them damage. My friend didn’t deserve that snack because she is a good person who should be with us as long as possible.

The useful thing about the magazine is that for each recipe it supplies a calorie count per portion plus analysis of protein, fat, saturated fat, carbs, sugar, fibre and salt. And what a horror story this sometimes tells. There have been 500 calorie starters, dessert recipes with over 800 calories a portion, vegetable dishes dressed with cream and butter, and one main course which was over 1100 calories! The magazine would probably say in its defence that it always possible to make adjustments elsewhere in the meal, but this argument doesn’t apply to features which recommend a three course menu. Taking a magazine at random I went through all of these set menus and counted the calories. Not including drinks with the meal, I found that they were advising people to consume 2000 to 3000 calories at one sitting. So I wrote to them pointing out that while I appreciated that this wasn’t a slimmers’ magazine, they were suggesting that readers eat at one meal as many or more calories than were recommended for the average person to consume in a whole day. In other words these were weight-gain menus. They didn’t reply, but I noticed they did do lip-service to this point in a later issue by stating that a course could be omitted if it was felt to be too much!