In Defense of Faux Foods

I’m all about natural, wholesome foods. Fresh fruits and vegetables, eggs, fish and poultry, lean beef, small amounts of nuts and whole grains. That’s what I build my meals on. No Lean Cuisine frozen dinners, “diet food,” or sugar free Jello for me (although if you like Jello, the sugar free kind is really a free food). My goal was to lose my taste for sweets and unhealthy foods, so that I would crave good, fresh, whole foods. And it has worked very well. I honestly do crave turkey and vegetables and plain yoghurt and cottage cheese. (The only “fake food” that I have persistently hung onto is diet coke. I need to keep at least one vice!)

However. Sometimes you do want something different than salads and plain meat. Sometimes you want to eat “normal” food—but still don’t want to sabotage yourself with hundreds of excess calories. Nor do you want to eat such a tiny portion of the “normal” food that you can’t get no satisfaction!

So I have allowed myself to occasionally delve into the world of food substitutions. Other than the diet coke, of course, which I’ve continued to indulge in over the years. My first surrender was to sugar-free Fudgsicles, 40 calories of creamy chocolatey goodness apiece, which means that I can eat two as a bedtime snack for the same calories as a simple apple! (“Two” is a big thing with me.)

I have also created for myself a hot dog with the works for a fraction of the calories in a regular hot dog. A standard wiener has at least 150 calories, and up to 300 or more calories for Polish sausage or similar franks. A hot dog bun has about 200 calories! Instead, I choose a Ballpark fat-free beef frankfurter at 50 calories, and instead of a bun I use a piece of low calorie whole grain bread such as Franz bread, which has only 40 calories per slice. My favorite condiments, mustard, relish, sauerkraut, chopped onions, jalapenos, have virtually no calories, so each hot dog all put together has about 100 calories. (Yes, I can have two.)

With my hot dog(s) I like to have cole slaw. This really isn’t a substitution, it’s just a healthier version of regular slaw. The dressing is a spoonful of light mayonnaise mixed with plenty of apple cider vinegar and a little Splenda to take the edge off. Mix up plenty of chopped cabbage, broccoli slaw, and other chopped vegetables such as onion, bell pepper, cucumber and celery, and toss with the dressing. Eat as much as you want!

Then for the baked beans. Actually, regular baked beans aren’t too bad at 140 calories per half cup. However, you can improve them a little bit (and increase the size of your portion) by mixing ¼ cup of the baked beans (70 calories) with ½ cup canned kidney beans (100 calories). The plain beans will take on the flavor of the baked beans, and you’ll hardly know the difference. You might want to jazz them up at bit by adding a few shakes of chipotle Tabasco sauce. I like to divide the ¾ cup serving in half…so I can have seconds.

A couple of times this summer I indulged in a delicious fruit and chocolate crepe at the Sunday Farmer’s Market. When the market ended at the end of September, so did the crepes. But I have come up with a way to sort of recreate the crepe experience, in a lower calorie, somewhat healthier way. I started with a box of whole grain lowfat freezer waffles from the grocery store (140 calories for two waffles). To top the waffles I thawed a bowl of unsweetened frozen blueberries and raspberries, which I sweetened with a little Splenda. My garnishes are somewhat fake—fat free Cool Whip and sugar-free Hershey’s syrup, both 15 calories per two-tablespoon serving. I fix the waffles one at a time—yes, so I can go back for seconds. On the side I have two pieces of turkey bacon, which is both a fake food and a real food in its own right!

Thanksgiving is a wonderful time for real, healthy foods. (Yes, really!) My Thanksgiving staples are the wonderful turkey, roasted sweet potatoes, and my ubiquitous green salad. But I have also come up with some light versions of other Thanksgiving foods. Many years ago I modified a traditional Jello salad recipe with sugar-free Jello for my grandmother. This is a recipe that is well known in the annals of Jello dishes… I prepare sugar-free raspberry Jello with unsweetened apple sauce and mix in thawed frozen raspberries, then chill in the fridge. The topping, which traditionally involved min-marshmallows, is now fat-free sour cream sweetened with Splenda. It’s yummy, and the applesauce and raspberries immensely improve the texture of the jello! Actually, most Jello recipes can be made with sugar-free Jello, saving considerably in calories and, of course, sugar.

I also made a reduced sugar version of cranberry sauce. I cooked some fresh cranberries with water so that they soften, then sweeten with Splenda and then stir in some Polaner all-fruit spread for sweetness and thickening. It is just as delicious as “real” cranberry sauce, maybe more so!

I rarely eat pasta, and when I do I try to choose whole grain pasta. My only real trick with pasta is to mix it with a lot of vegetables, to create bulk and quantity without too much actual pasta. I dress it with a half cup of healthy marinara sauce, and garnish with a half (or whole) ounce of parmesan grated on my microplane grater. You can do the same thing with spaghetti squash, and don’t need to be as frugal with the squash as with real pasta!

Most of the time it’s better, and easier, to stick with plain, healthy natural foods. But on occasion, I say go ahead and go crazy with a low calorie substitute food. It’s fun!