Recipes That Seem Too Good to Be True

Social media posts seem to be becoming more and more like supermarket checkout tabloid headlines.  There are so many posts, reposts, shares and advertisements declaring that “[someone] did [something] and you will be amazed at what happened next”. The whole point of these “you won’t believe your eyes” posts is to encourage you to follow the link so they can serve you up ads and make advertising $$ while you are enjoying being amazed. 

January has come around and with it all those New Year’s resolutions to get fit and eat more healthful foods. It is hardly surprising then to see that so many of the recent “you won’t believe this” posts are about food. The postings use a few carefully chosen key words and phrases that people associate with meaning “healthful”. Words and phrases like, “no carb”, “no added sugar”, or “low-fat”. While many of these recipes may be delicious, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are healthful or low calorie. 

There are many free tools available that make it easy to figure out the nutrition information for recipes. My favorite is the MyFitnessPal app (or website). Enter the ingredients and the number of servings and the nutrition information per serving will be calculated for you. If the serving size is not given with the recipe, you will have to make a calculated guess about how large a serving you think should count as 1 serving.

A balanced and healthful diet should consist of carbohydrates, protein and fat. You need all three (in the percentages shown below) for good health and nutrition.

 

Facebook Recipes: Healthful or Not?

I choose three recipes that have been appearing in my Facebook feed multiple times per day over the last couple of weeks. All three of these are being “shared” and “liked” by a lot of people so I decided to calculate the nutritional information* for them to see how full of goodness they really are!

For each recipe I have also included nutritional information for a commercially available product for comparison.**

1. Oat, Banana, Apple Sauce Cookies

This Recipe for banana, oat & apple sauce cookies is the healthiest of the three recipes. However, the statement attached to the recipe “When you have a sweet tooth and want to stay on track here is a nice treat. Sugar is NOT an added ingredient”, is quite misleading. Each cookie (if you make 24 cookies from this ingredient list) contains the same amount of sugar as a chocolate chip cookie of comparable size. Bananas, apple sauce and almond milk all contain sugar. I used the Chips Ahoy, Chunky Chocolate Chip Cookie as a guide to how many calories should be in one serving of a cookie. Based on that 80 calorie per cookie number, this recipe should yield 24 cookies. This is a low fat cookie, but it is not low sugar or low calorie compared to a commercially available cookie. The nutrition information** for a Chips Ahoy, Chunky Chocolate Chip Cookie  is included for comparison. It a good homemade alternative to a packaged cookie but it contains exactly the same number of calories per serving. 

2. Cauliflower Grilled Cheese Sandwich

This recipe came from the “23 Insanely Clever Ways to Cook with Cauliflower Instead of Carbs” article that the grilled cheese sandwich photo linked to. All but two of those recipes, did not appear to be particularly healthful. I calculated the nutrition information for the recipe shown in the photo as it was this photo that was being shared on Facebook. It is a grilled cheese sandwich made with a baked cauliflower base instead of bread. The cauliflower is mixed with cheese to make the base so the sandwich is basically cheese sandwiched between cheese and cauliflower.  The recipe stated that it would make two sandwiches so I calculated one serving to be half of the recipe. The nutrition information** for a grilled cheese sandwich from the restaurant Steak n Shake, is included for comparison.

3. Zero Carb Pizza

Just reading the ingredients list for this recipe almost gave me a heart attack. Zero carbs does not make a recipe a healthful choice!

You may notice that the recipe shown in the photo (above) for the zero carb pizza is for the base of the pizza only. It does not include the toppings (tomato sauce, pepperoni & cheese) shown in the photograph. For accuracy I estimated the missing ingredients and added them to the ingredients list before calculating the nutrition information. I included 1/3 cup of pizza sauce per serving (which is approximately how much I would use when making a regular pizza). I counted the slices of pepperoni (56) and added those, and I made a guesstimate of 1.5 cups of grated cheese as a topping. I estimated that a cookie sheet sized pizza would make 8 servings (the recipe did not give a serving size). Just to be clear, the nutrition facts are for just 1 serving (1/8^th of the recipe). I have included nutritional information** for one slice of Domino’s Pepperoni Pizza for comparison. Rather scary numbers aren’t they?

The bottom line is, removing a carb, fat or sugar from a recipe and replacing it with a different carb, fat or sugar doesn’t necessarily mean it will be lower in calories, or more healthful. You take something away; you have to add something in its place. The something you add may be less healthful than what you took away!

*The nutritional information for the Facebook recipes has been provided as a general example with no claim to accuracy. The nutrition facts charts were created using generic nutrition information from the MyFitnessPal app. **The commercial foods nutrition information was found on the Calorie King website and we make no claim as to its accuracy. The %DV (daily value) numbers are based on a 2000 calorie per day diet (the standard for nutrition labels). If your daily calories are more or less than 2000, that percentage number will not be accurate for you.