Chicken Diet Opus

Chicken Scoop: Why Is Chicken A Dieter's Best Friend?

Let's Ask the Experts! Did you know a skinless chicken breast contains less than 1.5 grams of fat per 100 gram serving? Offering expert advice just in time for bathing suit season, Bryan Hughes, New Product Development Manager at Maple Lodge Farms raves over the nutritious merits of chicken.

"One of the leanest meats on grocery store shelves, chicken is an excellent source of protein that offers an energizing boost without the fat," says Hughes. "And by removing the skin from a chicken breast, you can reduce its fat content by an additional 80 per cent!"

But cooks often make the mistake of adding fat when preparing chicken, he adds. Oils, sauces and dressings account for 65 per cent of our daily fat intake and can quickly transform low-fat chicken into a high-fat meal. It's important to use each in moderation.

"Lighter fare is key to sensible summer eating," says Hughes. "Premium Oven Roasted and Seasoned Chicken Breasts from Maple Lodge Farms are two ideal options available at your neighbourhood Sobey's, IGA and Knechtel's food markets."

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That's My Food Serenade

What'S That In My Food!

If you drop a bomb, you kill not only your enemies but your friends as well. This is the effect food additives have on humans.

Man has existed for thousands of years, and only started using additives at the start of the industrial revolution, when women were set free. Most animals eat their food when and where it is grown. Not humans. Man, because of his concentrated urban areas, was forced to ship and process his food.

Food additives are any substances added to food which may have some "useful" purpose, such as protection from deterioration or spoilage.

Additives are also used to improve taste, flavor, texture, and appearance to restore nutritive value and to aide in processing and packaging. There are at least 704 additives used in the processing of our food.

According to the Food and Drug Administration, manufacturers have to prove that the additives are necessary.

Additives kill bacteria of all living organisms in the food, so there is no decay. There is nothing to prevent them from harming body enzymes and organs.

Milk is a good example. Calcium chloride is added to canned and evaporated milk. It is also used to melt snow and causes metal parts to disintegrate. Milk substitutes contain an array of acids and gases.

Choose your bread carefully. It takes five times the chemicals to make whole wheat bread than white bread.

Sugar is pumped so full of acids, then boiled several times, which makes it the deadest and most dangerous product on the market. Meat has about 13 different additives, ranging from dyes to acids to buffers.

Then to find out what's in your food-read labels and check with the FDA.

Kathy Thompson, is a freelance writer/speaker, with over 25 years of researching nutrition and fitness. Kathy provides coaching, classes, workshops, articles, reports, columns - FREE report "The Secret To Permanent Weight Loss".


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Recipe Box Opus

My Mother's Recipe Box

Remember the days when cookbooks weren't so readily available, and you or your mother relied on only one or two different cookbooks for cooking all of your family's meals? I still have my mother's old cookbooks, as well as my grandmother's. Each one is worn from age and use--if you flip through the tattered pages it is obvious which recipes were turned to time and time again. These cookbooks will always number among my most precious treasures.

When our mothers wanted to try new recipes, they most likely didn't run out and buy new cookbooks. They often didn't have the extra money to spend, and often there weren't very many to choose from. So where did they get new recipes? From each other.

When I was a child I remember my mother exchanging recipe cards with friends and relatives and bringing them home and filing them away in her recipe box. I always loved going through her recipes (although she often got mad at me for getting them all out of order!)

All the years while I was learning how to cook I went through her recipe box time and time again, pulling out my favorite recipes and preparing them again and again.

Seeing who the recipes were from made them all the more special. I also love looking back at all the recipe cards I prepared myself while I was in 4-H and spent much of my time learning how to cook. I still prepare many of the recipes I used back then. To this day, all I have to do is open my recipe card box, and I am instantly transported back in time.

My mother hasn't exchanged recipe cards with anyone in more than 20 years. I have very few of my own (although I hope to inherit hers someday!) But even to this day there is no better place to find favorite family recipes than in my mother's recipe box.

Twenty years from now, I look forward to going through my recipe box with my own daughter, telling her stories about where all of my different recipes came from.

Rachel Paxton is a freelance writer and mom who publishes the Creative Homemaking Recipe of the Week Club, a weekly newsletter that contains quick, easy dinner ideas and money-saving household hints - Creative Homemaking.


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