Jimmy's Healthy Holiday Baking Tips

My favorite time of year! Holidays that inspire elaborate decorations, spirited songs, lots of chocolate, bountiful meals with plenty of leftovers for days, and gifts for giving and getting to put smiles on faces! Unlike many, I don't fear or focus on how much I'm eating during my Thanksgiving and Christmas meals, deserts, and leftovers, because I do most of the cooking and baking myself, so I know what's going into my scrumptious yummies! 

Unfortunately, many see or hear the words "diet", "healthy", "reduced-fat", "low-fat", or "fat-free" and instantly think "Yuck!", "bad-tasting", "plain-tasting", "taste like cardboard", etc. This is because they are not eating the right foods in those categories. Yes, there are many healthy foods that taste plain and boring, but once you've done the trial-and-error of trying many healthy foods, you learn what works and what doesn't; what tastes plain, and what tastes great; just like the fattening versions.

Now, I'm not going to preach that you should eat all-organic, that nothing you eat should have any preservatives, dyes (Blue No. 1&2, Green No. 3, Red No. 3&40, Yellow No. 5&6), artificial sweeteners (High Fructose Corn Syrup, Saccharin, Acesulfame potassium, Aspartame [NutraSweet & Equal], Sucralose [Splenda], Phenylalaline), as I know you won't do that.  It is very hard to do and for many reasons.

I don't eat all-organic, nor is everything I eat free of dyes or artificial sweeteners. I couldn't imagine living life without ever ordering Domino's or Chinese take-out, eating at chain-restaurants, or junk food at the movies or an amusement park. However, I do eat as healthy and smart as I can when I'm at home. I do this by paying attention to what’s in the products I'm buying at the grocery store so that I know what I'm eating the majority of the time, and how much I’m eating per sitting, per day, per week. So allow me to share the results of my many years of trial and error.
For starters, you can easily reduce the bad foods and drinks you buy and consume. The less chemicals you consume, the better. Whenever you see "Sugar-free", that means the natural (from the earth) sugar has been replaced with a man-made chemical to provide the sweetness. Of course having too much sugar is not good for you (too much of anything is not good for you!) However, our body burns natural sugar and uses it for energy - it doesn't burn artificial sweeteners. Don't feel that "Sugar-Free" is some great discovery to replace sugar without consequences.
I don't pay as much attention to the sugar content as I do the fat content. Remember, every gram of carbs (sugar) = 4 calories, every gram of protein = 4 calories, while every gram of fat = 9 calories! That's more than twice the amount of calories as carbs and protein. I'm sure we all know how hard it is to burn fat, while we easily experience the spike and crash from consuming something very sugary - the crash is because you burned plenty of that sugar. Sugar is easily accessible for your body to burn, while fat is not.
I LOVE pot pies! However, I will never buy one in the grocery store. It is shocking how much fat is in a store-bought pot pie: Stouffer's - one 10 ounce pie, 1180 calories, 68g fat. That is just crazy! Besides paying attention to the grams of fat, pay close attention to the amount of servings per container, as almost all packaged nutritional labels use this ratio (per serving) to trick you.
If you look at the label of that pot pie it will only list the grams of fat as 34g fat, which is still a lot per serving, but guess what? That pot pie says it is two servings per pie. This means that a mere 5 ounces of that pie is 34g of fat. That's like 4-5 spoonfuls! You would actually be eating the entire 10 ounce pie and 68 grams of fat! Pay attention to how many servings the nutritional facts are for, and especially to the size each serving is, compared to how much you would realistically consume for your actual serving.
Here is a major example, and yes, ironic:  "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter". I do suggest using this instead of a stick of butter because with a stick of butter you tend to slice off more than you really need for the butter flavoring, whether on toast, a biscuit, pancakes, waffles, on vegetables, etc. However, don't be fooled by the 0g fat, 0 calories on the nutritional label. If you look closer and see what the serving size is for that 0g fat, 0 calories it says "1 pump". This is where they trick you.
Of course we all know "1 pump" of spray butter is not a serving for anyone or on anything. You are made to think it is fat-free and calorie-free since it shows you 0g fat, 0 calories. This spray butter is the same as any other stick of butter, same amount of fat, same amount of calories. Have you noticed there isn't big, bold writing on the bottle that says "FAT-FREE" and "CALORIE-FREE"? Think about it... in this day and age where consumers are paying closer attention to what they are buying and eating, if your product was fat-free and calorie-free, wouldn't you highly advertise that exact verbiage? Well here's some FDA facts for you on one of their Q&A pages:
N27. May a "fat free" claim be made even though the product is essentially 100% fat, for example, a cooking oil spray that has a very small serving size?
Answer: Although the food has less than 0.5 grams of fat per RACC (Research Administrators Certification Council), and technically qualifies to make a "fat free" claim, such a claim on a product that is essentially 100% fat would be misleading. Under section 403(a)(1) and 201(n) of the FD&C Act, the label would have to disclose that the product is 100% fat. However, the terms "fat free" and "100% fat" or "all fat" are contradictory and the statement seems confusing. FDA believes a claim such as "for fat free cooking" is more appropriate, so long as it was not made in a misleading manner and the words "fat free" were not highlighted, printed in a more prominent type, or otherwise set off from the rest of the statement. (ref. www.fda.gov)
So the product is not "fat-free" or "calorie-free", which is why they can't label it as such. To list the fat gram content as 0g, the serving size it is specifying has to be less than .5 grams. So let's say each pump is .49g fat, count how many times you spray pump your butter on something. I have, and I use about 8 pumps on one piece of toast, or four waffles/pancakes - that's about 4 grams of fat.
It's still less than a slice or two I would get from a stick of butter, so I do use spray butter over a stick of butter for flavoring and to control the amount I use better. I just want you to be aware that alternative products like "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" are not fat-free or "calorie-free", so don’t go overboard spraying a lot of it all over everything.
Since butter and oil is where we get the majority of fat in baked goods, here is a great tip which I swear by, live by, and eat baked goods by all the time... For anything you bake that requires butter or oil in it, such as brownies, cookies, breads, pies, etc., instead of using butter or oil, use fat-free vanilla yogurt. Use the same amount it says to use (e.g. 1/2 cup oil = 1/2 cup fat-free vanilla yogurt), and your baked goods will taste exactly the same as if you used butter or oil. *Note: It doesn't need to be organic.
Other alternatives you may have tried, like applesauce or fat-free or reduced-fat mayonnaise, leaves your baked goods with an applesauce or mayonnaise taste to them.  Using vanilla yogurt doesn't. Since 90-95% of the fat in traditionally prepared baked goods come from the butter or oil ingredient, using fat-free vanilla yogurt makes your baked goods almost 90-95% fat-free.
Other quick tips:
- Be sure to buy juice that says 100% juice (most are around 25% juice.) When I fly I always ask for apple juice because it is usually the only juice they have that is 100% juice, the other juices they serve are about 25% (or less) juice.
- Drink "Silk" Vanilla Almond Milk instead of dairy milk. I won't even start on how bad dairy is for you, we would be here all day!  Just Google it and see for yourself. Vanilla Almond milk is not only healthy, but it tastes like a vanilla milk shake, which your kids would LOVE, especially in their cereal. *Note: "Blue Diamond" brand Almond Milk has many controversial ingredients, so try to get "Silk".
- Don't buy bottled water with added fluoride. Fluoride is a toxic chemical and does not need to be added to what we consume. Yes, fluoride occurs naturally in many water sources, but everything from the earth is provided for us to live on without adding more components to it. So why is more fluoride added to our water supply? Simple answer... fluoride is produced by steel, aluminum, and fertilizer factories. Some coal burning power plants as well as cement and glass production industries will also produce fluoride as an after-product. Companies need to get rid of their after-products, and since fluoride is something already approved by the FDA and has a value to it, factories sell their fluoride after-product to municipalities to add to our water.
- If you're making the cheaper macaroni & cheese that instructs you to add 1/4 cup butter (1/2 stick, 46g fat, 405 calories)... don't. It tastes the same without the butter. What comes in the box is already 11g fat, 780 calories.
- When eating out, substitute egg-whites for whole eggs, as each medium egg yolk is about 4 grams of fat. Yes it is also around 6 grams of protein, but you can get your protein from meat sources in your meal. Speaking of, substitute regular bacon with turkey bacon, regular sausage with turkey sausage, and when you can, beef burger with a turkey burger - Flavoring is in the marinade, spices and toppings.
- If you insist on buying soda, buy regular soda instead of diet, as it will make you drink less of it. Buying diet soda basically gives yourself approval to drink it more often, which has you consuming crazy amounts of artificial sweeteners.
- Drink more water! Start by having a full glass of water first thing in the morning before breakfast.
- Do not skip breakfast... and breakfast is not a cup of coffee (wink).
Happy Holidays Everyone!
Jimmy Thomas - RNC