Chapter 7 - Uncover Your Hidden Calories

Skyrocketing Calories | One Meal, Two Calorie Counts | Are You Drinking Your Calories?

If you eliminated just one pat of butter each day and your living habits remained the same, you could lose more than 8 pounds of body weight in one year. If you omitted l tablespoonful of salad oil per day, you could reduce an additional 10 pounds a year. The next few pages will tell you what you should know about foods to make your reducing easier.

The three basic foodstuffs which supply our calories are carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. One of the oldest, most persistent, and most ridiculous of superstitions is that one must never mix carbohydrates, fats, and proteins at the same meal. If it were possible to meet this requirement, our unhappy diner would become ill eventually, because proteins are utilized best when consumed with some fats and carbohydrates. Matter of fact, egg white and cottage cheese are the only proteins with no inherent fat or carbohydrate; refined sugar is the only carbohydrate with no protein or fat; and processed vegetable oils are the only fats with no protein or carbohydrate.

As seems to be the case in all such matters, the truth is less spectacular and much more obvious than the superstition or fad. Everyone requires carbohydrates, fats, and proteins; it is the relative amount of each which determines the effectiveness of your reducing diet.

Carbohydrates are the sugars and starches found in our foods. Bread, cereals and cereal products, sirups, and leguminous vegetables are high in carbohydrates. Refined sugar is the most concentrated carbohydrate available. A pound of carbohydrate contains 1820 calories.

Fats consist of fats and oils in all forms. One pound of fat, like lard or olive oil, contains a whopping 4000 calories. If you consume more carbohydrates and fats than you can utilize immediately, you will store them as body fat. This surplus cannot be disposed of at auction. You will have to burn it up in supplying heat and energy. Butter, margarine, salad oils, olive oil, and cottonseed oil are almost pure liquid fat. Remember the magic number—a pound of fat contains 4000 calories.

Proteins are indispensable. Among their vital chores are muscle building, maintenance of body fluids, formation of blood, and fighting of infections. You will find your proteins in meat, cheese, eggs, milk products, fish, legumes, and nuts. A pound of proteins, like a pound of carbohydrates, contains 1820 calories. Do not confuse a pound of meat with a pound of protein. Meat contains about 20 per cent protein, the rest is water and fat.

Skyrocketing Calories

The foods we eat are mixtures of the big three—carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. Let's first see how those major offenders, the fats and oils, skyrocket our budget of calories. Remember that 3500 calories equals 1 pound of body weight.

Here's an innocent little baked potato which offers a mere 80 calories to a hungry housewife. She adds one pat of butter and doubles the calorie content. She picks up a 60-calorie slice of bread, adds another chunk of butter, and up it soars to 140 calories. If you eliminated just one pat of butter per day, it could add up to more than 8 pounds of body weight in one year.

On the other side of the table rests a refreshing-looking bowl of mixed greens. At 16 calories it couldn't be more harmless. A hand reaches over the bowl and drops 1 table-spoonful of salad oil on the greens. This adds more than 100 calories. If you omitted 1 tablespoonful of salad oil per day, it would add up to more than 10 pounds of body weight per year.

Gravy from pan drippings contains 40 per cent fat, with flour added. A tablespoonful amounts to almost 100 calories. If you eliminated this twice a week, your annual budget would be reduced by over 10,000 calories, almost 3 pounds of that surplus body fat.

Suppose an 80-calorie potato is immersed in a deep-fat fryer. This is what happens. It sops up 180 additional calories of fat, for it has absorbed 20 per cent of its own weight in the fryer.

A cupful of spinach contains a slender 16 calories. In goes the butter, out comes the spinach at 96 calories.
How many women drop an artificial sweetener in their coffee, then fill the cup with cream? They have deprived themselves of a 16-calorie lump of sugar and added cream which totals 100 calories to the ounce. They would be much better off with the 16 calories of sugar and an ounce of milk, which amounts to 20 more calories.

Or take the unthinking meat eaters. Roast beef is only 12 per cent fat by weight, while pork is fully 30 per cent fat. The very leanest pork contains 350 calories to the portion, while the other cuts range up to 500 calories. Roast beef, leg of lamb, and liver contain half the calories of pork, ham, stew, or fatty meat portions.

These are some of the hidden calories which are to blame for that oft-repeated, "I don't know why I'm gaining weight, I concentrate on vegetables and salads and avoid the rich foods."

One Meal, Two Calorie Counts

The fact is that two people can eat the same dinner with one person consuming 500 more calories than the other. Here's how it may happen.

Two ladies, one slim, the other about thirty pounds overweight, visit a restaurant. They order the same dinner: soup, roast beef, two vegetables, salad, apple pie, and coffee.

The slender lady trims the fat portions of her meat, the large lady eats everything in sight. The slim one eats her vegetables plain and squeezes lemon juice over her salad. Her obese friend spreads a pat of butter on each vegetable and pours a liberal quantity of oil dressing on her salad. The little lady eats one slice of bread without butter while her large companion consumes two slices of buttered bread. Comes the dessert and coffee, and the pattern continues. Guess who has a pitcher of cream and two lumps of sugar and devours every shred-of piecrust? You're absolutely right. Meanwhile the slender member of this twosome drinks black coffee and eats the apple filling without the piecrust.

Net difference in cost per meal: no dollars, no cents; in calories, about 500.

Are You Drinking Your Calories?

Among the easiest calories to forget are those contained in alcohol. There are 150 calories in 1½ ounces of whisky, 120 calories in the same amount of gin, and 120 calories in an 8-ounce glass of beer. Cocktails with small volume and high alcohol content put you in double jeopardy, since they stimulate the gastric juices, leading to bigger and more troublesome -eating. A highball is preferable to a drink "on the rocks," since it is greater in bulk and will fill up the drinker more quickly than a potent but short drink of whisky on ice. But the ginger-ale mixer adds thirty-five calories.

What accompanies the drinks may be quite as deadly (from the calorie standpoint, anyway) as the drinks themselves. Let's say we manage to nibble away at eight to ten potato chips and ten peanuts with our drink. The innocent little potato chip is 17 per cent fat, 1 per cent water, and 82 per cent starch. Our portion totals 100 calories. The irresistible, effortless-to-eat peanuts add 50 more, for a total of 150 calories. Then we spot a celery stalk and, realizing that it contains virtually no calories, we snatch it up. But before we pop it into our mouth we flavor it just a trifle with a tablespoonful of that delicious cheese filling. Result: 150 more calories.

This book is not taking a stand on the merits or demerits of prohibition. Certainly the less you drink the fewer calories you consume. In any event, you should be aware of the calorie count of your beverage. It's equally important to realize that at a cocktail party you can eat virtually unlimited quantities of unadorned celery, radishes, and carrots without adding calories.

Both husband and wife are prone to forget their tippling when they become aware of a suddenly developing paunch. But it is the lady of the house who is most apt to forget the between-meal socializing which rings up calories like a busy cash register.

If she takes in an afternoon meeting of the League of Enlightened Parents she is quite likely to warm up with over 100 calories of a sugar-sweetened carbonated beverage. When the meeting is adjourned, the ladies move on from there to coffee and a 300-calorie-plus slice of cake or pastry.

Appendix A at the end of this book is a Calorie Counter for average portions of just about any food you can imagine.

This will help you to add and subtract foods from the reducing diet menus for all ages which will be presented in later pages.

Remember that there is a vast difference between the foods with highly concentrated calories and those which are virtually calorie-free.

You can add a pound of body weight by consuming a quart of whisky or a pound of butter. But you would have to eat 60 pounds of spinach or 19 pounds of oranges to gain the same amount of weight.

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