Look Good & Taste Good – Cut Back On The Carbs, But Not On The Taste

For the record, the title is about your food tasting good.  I don’t know where your mind happens to be right now.

A big problem for most people is that when trying to clean up their diets, they aren’t really sure how to do that and still like what they eat.  Especially when going low carb.  Most people’s diet’s are based on refined carbs (that’s the problem in the first place), and changing this seems daunting.  “What am I going to eat?  I eat everything on a bun, or a crust…?”

(Side note:  Yep.  Low carb out performs low fat.  I’ve done a bunch of posts on that like this one and this one.  Also, on the idea that all calories are created equal – they are not.  And, on “research” to the contrary.  And, finally, on the “negative” health problems that people think associated with eating steak, or simply with increasing animal fat consumption – here and here.)

Kim (thank you!) brought in this article by South beach author Arthur Agatston from The Wash Post’s Express.

A bunch of other clients saw the piece that Kim brought me and asked me to Xerox it for them.  I thought the article had a lot of good ideas for “Cut The Carbs, Not The Flavor,” but I also thought a few of them could use some improvement, so here’s my spin:

#1.  Mashed Potatoes

Mashed potatoes are good, however, they aren’t necessarily all that helpful for most people’s waist line, health, or energy levels.  But, it’s very easy to make a cauliflower alternative in just a few minutes.

Mashed potatoes go from pure starch to starch-free.

#2.  Lasagna

With pretty much any lasagna recipe you can swap the noodles for thinly slices strips of zucchini.  Use a mandolin to slice it length-wise.  You can do it with a knife too, but it requires attention to how thick the slices are.  (It also requires more dexterity than I seem to possess.)  About ¼” seems to work best.

The article has you pre-cook them on a stove top.

I hate doing anything that adds extra time to a recipe, so, if I can cut a step, I cut it.  I don’t pre-cook, ‘cause stove top cooking the slices from 5 zucchini would take forever  (20+min in my world).

I stick the zuchini into the lasagna raw and into oven  raw.  It may need to bake a little longer, but, whatever, I don’t need to be there for the oven to bake it (about 45min at 425).  I can go read a book, write a program or watch an episode of House on DVD  (only 42min without the commercials).

Note:  if you do cook it raw, you’ll end up with a little extra water in the finished batch.  Use some pot holders to pour it off into your sink.  That takes about 60sec of active time.

This is my favorite new thing.  I can make a huge batch of this on Sunday and eat it ‘till Friday.  All I have to do is heat and eat.

#4.  Spaghetti

Spaghetti squash makes a pretty decent sub for regular pasta.  It’s really easy to make in the microwave.

You can put all the normal stuff on it – sauce, cheese, meatballs, chicken, etc.

The article says it has the same consistency as regular pasta.  I don’t think so.  It’s good and it handles the cravings but, it’s not the same.

#5.  Pancakes

The article tells you to make them with oatmeal and cottage cheese… I don’t know, for most people who have body fat to lose, that is probably going to be too much starch.  Personally, I would not eat that as a “healthy” meal, and I damn sure wouldn’t waste a cheat meal on oatmeal; so I don’t really see anywhere in my life I’d use that idea.

However, you don’t need the oatmeal after all.  You can make these crepes for a similar themed breakfast treat.  And, if you want something thicker, and more pancake-y you can try this version made with almond flour.  (By the way almond flour is much, much cheaper at Trader Joe’s vs. Whole Foods – like 50% less the last time I checked.)

Low Carb Pancakes

2 eggs

¼ cup water

1 tbsp vanilla

½ cup almond flour

¼ cup flax meal

¼ cup sugar alternative**

½ tsp baking powder

1/8 tsp salt

½ tsp baking soda

Cinnamon to taste

**You can use Splenda.  If you don’t like the idea of Splenda here are a few ideas:

#1.  Leave the sweetener out altogether, and remove the cinnamon, and make a savory pancake and roll it up around mushrooms and cheese.  Maybe you would like that would be better with the crepes.

#2.  Check out Just Like Sugar (nothing artificial and NO fructose whatsoever) – a very decent substitute.

#3.  Try liquid sucralose – the biggest problem that I have with Splenda (sucralose) is that the powder form has to be carried in maltodextrin – a refined carb, so, the powder form, in quantities big enough for cooking kinda defeats the purpose (kinda, but not completely).

Sucralose is so sweet that the quantity that you need for a cup of coffee would leave you nothing to put in the packet.  So, they use maltodextrin as a bulking agent.  In liquid form, you don’t need the maltodextrin.  It’s carried in water and fiber.

Directions

1.  Mix it all up

2.  Heat up a skillet with some sort of fat to keep it from cooking.  I think you’re better off with butter, as vegetable oil (unsaturated fatty acids) are not particularly heat stable, but saturated fat is.

3.  Pour batter into pan, and cook for 3-4min on side 1, and then 1min on the other side.  Makes 10-ish cakes.  (I never know how many it actually makes ‘cause I eat them as soon as I make them, so I am always guessing the total number.)

4.  Top with berries and maybe Greek yogurt, or something else creamy.

#6.  Pizza Crust

Their suggestion is to sub out the crust for a Portobello mushroom cap with the gills removed.

I tried this once a year or two ago, and it was OK.  I think there’s a reason I haven’t done it since – it’s a lot of work, for a relatively mediocre dish.  It turns out very watery no matter how long you cook it.

The Last 2

There were two more ideas in the article that I’ve never tried – using squash instead of potatoes fro hash browns.  Sounds interesting, but I have no idea how this works out.

The other was using tempeh (a fermented soy product) instead of potatoes for making scalloped potatoes.  Never tried this one either.  Their recipe is in the article.  I don’t think I’ll ever try this one.  I avoid soy as much as I can.  I spent far too many years eating 100+g of soy protein a day, and I will be paying for that mistake for the rest of my life.

If you try something, post your experience here.

Josef Brandenburg is 2010, Washington, DC  Personal Trainer of the Year Nominee for both Personal Fitness Professional Magazine and The Washington, DC Fitness Association, The DC Fitness Advisor and the Fitness Expert for the PCOS Challenge TV Show. He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have. To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here. You can also pick up a FREE copy of his brand new CD – “Why Eat Less and Exercise More is The Worst Advice Ever” here.