Fat. It’s an ugly image, fraught with unsightly bulges that strain zippers and seams.
Just try to hide it this summer. Linen dresses, silk shirts and sleek swimsuits don’t oblige one extra ounce. And if you think billowy oversized tops and baggy shorts hide your sebaceous secrets, you’re mistaken. Take a look in a three-way mirror.
Then there’s dietary fat, quite different from body fat but often related since too much dietary fat often leads to excess body fat.
Make no mistake, American diets are heavy on fat.
Dietary fat may play an important role in the development of heart disease, stroke, diabetes and in colorectal, breast and liver cancers and possibly in a host of other health problems.
Not to mention that it often bulges bodies. With about twice as many calories per gram as carbohydrates and proteins, high-fat diets can lead to obesity.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends limiting fat calories to less than 30 percent of total diet calories. Many health experts say that percentage should shrink even more-conservatively to 25 percent but figures as low as 10 percent are quoted by some. American diets average 36 to 40 percent fat.
But, hey, it’s summer! Who wants another warning about the consequences of eating too much fat?
Instead, here is an idea-a-day calendar of 94 simple ways to reduce fat, from the first day of summer to the last.
We polled dietitians and doctors, spa chefs, home cooks and people who just like to eat, asking for tips to trim fat. Not one suggested stocking up on low-fat frozen entrees or re-engineered food that has all the fat and all the flavor removed.
Instead, they suggest rethinking the way we eat without losing sight of the pleasure of food. The notion of “good” foods or “bad” foods seems to have fallen in favor of attaining a balance between health and satisfaction.
Dietitian Mary Abbott Hess, former president of the American Dietetic Association and now a nutrition consultant in Winnetka, says, “There are no bad foods, only bad amounts.”
Starting Monday, the first day of summer, here’s a tip for each day of the season. When summer segues into fall, you can carry on with a new-found freedom from fat:
1. Buy a non-stick skillet and use it. Vegetables, meats, poultry and seafood all can be cooked with little, if any, added fat.
2. Eat pancakes and waffles without butter. After you add real maple syrup or a thick fruit syrup, you’ll barely notice that there’s not a dripping pool of fat. Blueberries and raspberries are in season now-try them as a topping.
3. Learn to “sweat” vegetables the French way. This technique for sauteeing uses the natural moisture in foods plus the steam created by cooking instead of fat. It works best with diced or chopped vegetables rather than large pieces. To sweat onions, mushrooms, bell peppers, celery, summer squash-almost any vegetable-chop them and place in a skillet just large enough to hold them. Cut a circle of waxed paper to fit the pan and place it directly on top of the vegetables. Start cooking over gentle heat, stirring often, until there’s some moisture in the pan. Then, you can increase the heat a little more and cook until the vegetables are tender, stirring as necessary so they don’t stick.
4. Eat a peach instead of potato chips, cantaloupe instead of a cookie, a banana instead of a brownie. Summer is the best time of year for fruit and there’s no fat in most varieties and no limit to how much you can eat.
5. Weigh your portions of meats, especially those that are high-fat. Three ounces of cooked weight is enough for adults. It’s less than you think-about the size of a deck of cards.
6. A good-quality balsamic vinegar or seasoned rice vinegar can be drizzled on salads. Both are sweeter than other vinegars and allow you to skip the oil.
7. Snack on pretzels instead of potato or corn chips.
8. Thicken soups with pureed potato or rice instead of cream or roux.
9. If doughnuts or coffeecake are your current morning bread, rediscover the simple pleasures of a great piece of French bread or a grainy roll.
10. Snack on popcorn. The best method for making it without fat is to use a hot-air popper. In lieu of that, cook it with the least fat possible. Then, put the popped kernels in a paper bag, hold it closed and shake it so the paper absorbs some of the fat.
11. Splurge on a slice of angel food cake-homemade or purchased-topped with fresh berries. Angel food cake, classically made with egg whites and no shortening, has no fat.
12. Make yogurt cheese by lining a strainer with cheesecloth and letting plain, low-fat or non-fat yogurt drain for several hours. With the watery whey drained away, the thick yogurt is ideal for making spreads and dips. A tablespoon of regular or low-fat sour cream added to the yogurt cheese enriches the flavor and turns it into something exotic and rich-sounding-fromage blanc (white cheese).
13. Have a “beefsteak” sandwich, that is, a big, red, ripe slab of beefsteak tomato embellished with herbs, onions and a dash of vinegar. Put it between two slices of whole-grain bread and enjoy.
14. Take a step down from whole milk to 2 percent, then in a few weeks switch to skim.
15. Try meat as a side dish instead of a main course. Augment smaller portions of meat with vegetables and grains.
16. Pick the best supersweet corn you can find, grill it and squeeze lime juice on top or sprinkle with chili powder. It’s better than butter.
17. If your favorite potato salad includes hard-cooked eggs, use one whole cooked egg and 3 or 4 cooked egg whites.
18. Just say “yo” to yogurt. Use it to replace part or all the sour cream in dressings for summery macaroni and potato salad.
19. Rediscover mustard. This tangy condiment can replace mayonnaise on sandwiches and butter in pan drippings.
20. Buy tuna packed in water instead of oil. In tuna salad, use lots of chopped tomatoes, red peppers and cucumbers instead of mayonnaise.
21. Trim chicken before cooking. Little pockets of yellow fat are visible in many places. It’s OK to cook the chicken with the skin on but be sure to remove all of it before eating.
22. When dining out, ask that all sauces and salad dressings be served on the side. Taste the food without sauce-it’s probably just fine without it. But even if you add some, you’ll likely use much less than they ladle on in the kitchen.
23. Try turkey burgers on the grill instead of hamburgers. Make sure the ground turkey is from the breast meat with no skin or fat added.
24. Top baked potatoes with low-fat cottage cheese or yogurt cheese instead of butter or sour cream.
25. Make a “creamy” milkshake by blending a ripe banana, skim milk, a splash of vanilla and a handful of ice cubes until it is smooth and frothy.
26. Eat bagels instead of muffins and skip the cream cheese. Try toasting them then and sprinkling cinnamon sugar over or spreading with fruit preserves.
27. For an uncooked pasta topping, dice vine-ripened tomatoes and combine with chopped onion, garlic and fresh basil. Add a splash of red wine vinegar, lots of pepper and-if you must-a small drizzle of olive oil. Let stand about 20 minutes before tossing with pasta.
28. In cooked sauces, replace cream or half-and-half with low-fat or skim milk.
29. When making pesto sauce, cut in half the amount of oil. If you purchase prepared pesto sauce, pour some of the surface oil off.
30. Use salsa freely-as a dip, a condiment, a sandwich spread, a sauce for poultry and fish, a topping for baked potatoes or a salad dressing. Salsa has no fat.
31. Make fantastic fruit sherbets in the food processor. Freeze summer berries, cut-up peaches, nectarines, bananas or fresh pineapple on a jelly roll pan lined with waxed paper. When they’re solid, put them in the processor with sugar to taste. Process until smooth and fluffy. If desired, a tablespoon of fruit liqueur or low-fat yogurt can be added during processing.
32. Freeze sweet, juicy grapes. Snack on them like candy.
33. Serve marinated, grilled flank steak or beef tenderloin instead of fattier cuts of beef. Cut it into thin slices and serve with fresh grilled vegetables.
34. In Mexican recipes, swap corn tortillas for flour tortillas. Flour tortillas have added fat.
35. Forget how to fry foods. Grill or broil meat, poultry and seafood. Poach fish and steam vegetables.
36. Instead of double-crust fruit pies, make fruit crisps, topped with oatmeal, brown sugar, spices and a small amount of butter.
37. Cook rice in defatted chicken broth, adding herbs and spices instead of butter.
38. Fish from cold waters have more fat than their warm-water kin. Though all fish are lower in fat than meat is, select varieties such as cod, snapper and sole more often than mackerel, salmon or bluefish.
39. Don’t starve yourself on a diet. Hungry fat cells will launch a counter-attack, hoarding as much fat as they can.
