health hand held

FILLING STATION

admin — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 10:21:12 +0000

You don’t have to count calories or grams of fat if all your sandwich ingredients are lean. Mix and match these fixings for an easy low-fat meal by picking one item from each of the four categories below. Add as many extras as you like.

BREAD	FILLINGS
¡ Bagel	¡ Chicken salad
¡ English muffin	¡ Grilled chicken cutlet
¡ Flour tortilla	¡ Low-fat sliced cheese
¡ French bread	¡ Nonbreaded fish fillet
¡ Italian roll	¡ Seafood salad
¡ Kaiser roll	¡ Sliced lean meat
¡ Pita bread	¡ Smoked salmon
¡ Whole-grain bread	¡ Tuna salad
CONDIMENTS	EXTRAS
¡ Fruit butters	¡ Carrot, grated
¡ Flavored vinegars	¡ Cucumber slices
¡ Herbal soft cheese	¡ Lettuce
¡ Horseradish	¡ Low-fat cheese, grated
¡ Low-fat salad dressing	¡ Mushrooms, sliced
¡ Mustard	¡ Onion
¡ Reduced-calorie mayonnaise	¡ Red and green cabbage, grated
¡ Red beets, grated	¡ Sesame seeds, toasted
¡ Tahini dressing	¡ Spinach
	¡ Sprouts
	¡ Sweet pepper rings
	¡ Tomato slices
	¡ Watercress

11 grams of fat you would have eaten with that tablespoon of mayonnaise.
So there you have it, in honor of the earl, a full-fledged roast beef sandwich—three slices of lean roast beef, a slice of low-fat Swiss cheese, lettuce, tomato and horseradish on whole-wheat bread—that weights in at 424 calories and less than 14 grams of fat. It’s a hearth meal that won’t make you feel like a nitpicking calorie counter.
If you start feeling a bit frisky and want to experiment with some ethnic cuisines, try one of these sandwiches.
Italian, For an update on the submarine sandwich, paint a crusty roll with a bit of whole-grain mustard and top it with three ounces of chicken breast, a couple of thin-sliced artichoke hearts and a few cured black olives or sun-dried tomatoes.
Mexican. Mix a can of water-packed tuna with the juice of half a lime, a tablespoon of chopped fresh cilantro and a teaspoon of chili powder or your favorite Caribbean hot sauce. Wrap it all up in a tortilla.
Greek. Into a Whole-wheat pita, put two slices of grilled eggplant. Add diced red bell peppers, garlic and watercress or lettuce. Sprinkle with lemon juice.

ADMIRABLE ADDTIONS

admin — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 10:15:25 +0000

Next we come to the two areas in which imagination serves up the greatest rewards for sandwich eaters: vegetables and condiments. Both of these ingredients have traditionally been used to fill the important role of moistening the other filling ingredients, but they can also do much more.
Tomatoes and lettuce are fine sandwich garnishes, but it pays to extend your repertoire. Try slightly bitter greens such as arugula or watercress, which add more taste complexity than iceberg lettuce (and more nutrients, too). Add vegetables such as shredded cabbage, alfalfa sprouts or strips of bell pepper, which give a nice crunchy texture as well as god flavor. To give the basic roast beef sandwich a lift, throw on some watercress, which contributes a little flavor, a little crunch and a little moisture.
Now we come to condiments. Here the dictates of flavor and healthfulness combine, for the one condiment that should permanently leave out of your sandwiches is bland and cholesterol-laden mayonnaise. (“As a general rule, healthy sandwiches should crunch, not ooze,” says Men’s Health nutritionist Anita Hirsch.) Instead of mayonnaise, with 11 grams of fat per tablespoon, use one of the new low-fat or nonfat mayonnaise-type dressings or stronger-flavored Dijon mustard, horseradish, bottled chutney or cranberry sauce. Just by way of comparison, you would have to eat 30 cups of cranberry sauce to equal the amount of fat in one tablespoon of mayonnaise. Horseradish, the condiment of choice for a roast beef sandwich, has no measurable fat at all, so you save the entire

CAN THE FAT

admin — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 10:13:44 +0000

If you prefer the convenience of canned seafood, be sure you get water-packed tuna, salmon or sardines rather than the oil-packed versions. The savings in fat are considerable: Three ounces of oil-packed chunk tuna usually contains 18 grams of fat, about 16 ½ grams more than the water-packed kind.
For low-fat sandwich fillings, things that swim are followed closely by things with wings, specifically chicken and turkey. A three-ounce portion of skinless chicken breast—about three slices—weighs in at under four grams of fat, while turkey is the champion with just two grams.
Some sliced deli meats are okay, but most are loaded with fat. Stay away from standard cured lunch meats like bologna, salami and hard sausage or any others that we used to call “mystery meats” when we were kids. They generally deliver about 20 to 25 grams of fat per three- to four-slice portion. (To keep within the suggested health guidelines of the American Heart Association, a man of average weight and appetite should consume no more than 80 grams of gat in an entire day.) It does little good to switch to the “lite” versions of bologna made from turkey or chicken. Even though they’re cleverly described on the packages as being one-third lower in fat than the original, they still weigh in at 15 to 20 grams per three-slice serving, which means that as much as 80 percent of their calories are from fat. A better bet at the deli department is to choose meats like boiled ham, roast turkey or lean roast beef, all of which are relatively low in fat.
If you favor deli food, it’s nearly impossible to avoid the food additives known as nitrates. These are added to prevent spoilage and retain the appetizing color of the meat. The whole issue of whether or not nitrates are a major risk factor for some types of cancer is unanswered as yet. Still, the American Cancer Society recommends limiting your intake of nitrate-cured meats, unless they have vitamin C compounds added. Researchers thing that the vitamin C may keep nitrates from turning into cancer-causing chemicals. Vitamin C has been added if the label includes mention of ascorbic acid, sodium ascorbate or sodium erythrobate.
Most people don’t consider a sandwich a sandwich without some cheese thrown in. That might seem like a problem, since about 50 to 70 percent of the calories from many cheeses are from fat. One solution is simply to use less. Will two or three make the sandwich taste that much better than a single slice will? For us, the answer is no. Cheese is very flavorful, and a little goes a long way.
It’s also a good idea to use lower-fat cheesed whenever possible. A slice of Cheddar will contribute about ten grams of fat to your sandwich, but mozzarella adds only six grams. Even better, try a part-skim version of mozzarella, which cuts down the fat content by about another 20 percent. Similar savings can be found with low-fat Cheddar, Monterey Jack or Swiss. At these levels, the amount of fat your are adding is small enough to justify the flavor benefits of cheese. Cheese also supplies significant amounts of protein and calcium to your meal.

FROM THE BOTTOM UP

admin — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 10:13:06 +0000

A good place o begin is with the foundation of the sandwich: the bread. Even the spongiest, whitest of white breads supplies healthful complex carbohydrates, but it’s best to go with whole-grain varieties, which offer the additional benefit of two times the fiber of plain white bread. For our money, whole-grain bread also tastes better.
You can get whole-grain breads in fat, crusty loaves from bakeries, and you can also get them in neat, sliced and packaged versions at your grocer’s. Both are fine, but if you prefer the latter type, check out the ingredient list and buy only those breads that have a whole grain at the top of the label. On the other hand, don’t let your imagination stop at bread that comes in loaves. You can also buy whole-grain bagels, rolls English muffins and pita bread.
Now that we’ve got the foundation of our sandwich, it’s time to select the filling. Fish and seafood are the healthiest choices, since most of them tend to be lower in fat than meat. A simple broiled fish fillet makes a great sandwich filler. Three ounces of cod contains only 89 calories and less than a gram of fat. Drizzle a little lemon juice on the fillet, pack it between two slices of whole-grain bread, add lettuce and tomato, then paint on a layer of spicy mustard for delicious, light meal.

Stack the Deck

admin — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 10:13:05 +0000

Want to know how to build a better sandwich? Here are some healthy hand-held meals for the well-breaded lifestyle.
FROM ITS VERY BEGINNING, the sandwich has been the ultimate in regular-guy food. John Montagu, the Fourth Earl of Sandwich, invented this prototypical nosh not out of culinary genius but because he was a lunatic card player. Deep into 24-hour game and reluctant to leave the table for sustenance, he instructed a servant to bring him a slab of beef between pieces of toast, and the sandwich was born. More than three centuries later, this hand-held meal remains the salvation of men reluctant to leave the card table, the sports arena or the chair in front of the TV.
Unfortunately, many of today’s sandwiches are not much more healthful than old Montagu’s. Usually we eat whatever will fit between two slices of bread, from fat- and sodium-laden cured lunch meats to artery-clogging mayonnaise.
We’d never suggest that you abandon sandwiches altogether. It wouldn’t do much good if we did. Americans love sandwiches. In fact, a survey found that sandwiches account for half of all lunches eaten in restaurants, 30 percent of all dinners and 19 percent of all breakfasts. Instead of admonishing you to quit sandwiches, we’d like to offer some advice on how to build them better.