Contradictory in terms

[ForthefinalTime]

Can a recipe ever be good for you in that it has virtually no fat and no sugar but still be high in calories?

I have a recipe which uses oats, which are good for you but it bumps up the calories like anything. There are also flaked almonds (2 oz) which I believe are good for the heart. The other ingredients are semi skimmed milk, sultanas, 1 small apple and cinnamon. The recipe calles them oat bars but I use it as a hot pudding. Even if it has 6 servings it is still 299 calories. In quarters, it is 448 calories.

Is this still a good pudding if I am counting calories?

[moreless Administrator 7 stone]

If you're counting calories, this pudding is fine, FtfT

Just be aware that when fruit is dried, the sugar content is concentrated and you don't need to fear fat. Fat is your friend

[Hidden]

Sounds fine to me - it also sounds really tasty!! Yum Yum!

[Dt_RiyazKhan_Hyd]

Oats is fairly high in calories, though its good too.

400+ is high for a pudding. Rather a meal plus pudding should be about 400 calories.

[Hidden in reply to Dt_RiyazKhan_Hyd]

Have to disagree. A meal plus a pudding shouldn't be about 400 calories, it should be whatever you want it to be if it fits into your plan.

[moreless Administrator 7 stone in reply to Hidden]

I have to agree with Steelad. 400 calories for a whole meal, will give you 1200 for the day, which, unless you're very short and/or very slim, would be way too few!

[Hidden in reply to moreless]

If the oaty pudding comes in at 300 cals, you could have 400-500 for a meal plus the pud and it might still fit into your plans ForthefinalTime

If you were making it into 6 portions (300 cals each) and you were having it with a light evening meal to reach 400 cals - what are you having for that evening meal at 100 cals??

[ForthefinalTime in reply to Hidden]

I didn't put my evening meal at 400-500 calories. I can make a paella for 259 calories but that is about as low as I can go.

[Hidden in reply to ForthefinalTime]

Sorry, it was the other comment, not from yourself that said an evening meal and desert should be 400 cals.

Paella sounds good - especially with pudding after!

[ForthefinalTime]

That is what I was thinking Dt_RiyazKhan_Hyd. I shall cut it down to six portions and have it with a light evening meal. It is rather scrummy and makes you feel you have had a pudding.

[IvanTheHorrible Maintainer]

Well ... basically, it's a dessert, and if you're attempting to lose weight, I'd try to wean yourself off desserts. For the time being at least.

Although it might technically contain no sugar, it's full of rapidly-digested starch, which is hydrolysed into sugars. The effect on your body is broadly the same as ingesting sugar. If you eat foods like that on a regular basis, various undesirable things will happen: you'll gain (or retain) fat, you will become less able to go from meal-to-meal without feeling hungry, and you will increase your risk of cardiovascular disease.

The fact that there's no fat or sugar in it is neither here nor there. In fact I'd be inclined to just make a proper bread-and-butter pudding (which it seems to resemble), instead of attempting to make a quasi-healthy dessert which sounds like it fails on both healthfulness and flavour. Come to think of it ... if you want a treat, try making a creme brulee instead. It's basically eggs and cream with a modest amount of sugar, and because it's so rich it's generally served in small portions. Very nice and unlikely to impact your weight loss progress.

There's nothing wrong with having a dessert sometimes, but it's important to focus on proper food for mealtimes and not "set aside" big chunks of your calorie allowance so that you can eat puddingy things. Or, if you're of a certain age:

"If you don't eat yer meat, you can't have any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat?"

[ForthefinalTime in reply to IvanTheHorrible]

Unfortunately IvanTheHorrible, my bf inherited coronary problems. Cream has always disagreed with him, even as a child and is not good for his condition. The porridge scours out your arteries (a cardio-vascular surgeon put my friend's dad on a diet of porridge to clear out his arteries). "Experts" still don't know if it is sugar or fat which clogs up the arteries. This pudding is very nice and rather satisfying. Having now worked out the calories of the pudding, I am more inclined to cut it up smaller than leave it out all together. We don't have this every day, but as a treat, every so often. I usually have fruit with no fat natural yoghurt. Many thanks for your thought.

[IvanTheHorrible Maintainer in reply to ForthefinalTime]

Oh, they know. This is completely clear if you browse through published research. However this is a disconnect between scientific research and health policy: the health authorities cannot publicly backtrack over their previous longstanding advice because it would expose them to legal risks. It's a big game of musical chairs, and eventually the music will stop and the lawyers will feast upon those caught standing in the wrong place. My reading of the research is this: it isn't one or the other. It's a combination of excessive carbohydrates, very low fat, and long periods of inactivity. Most bodies can cope with any one of those factors by itself, but put them all together and you're finished.

My family are predisposed to CVD too. My dad had a coronary bypass in his 50s. He ate a "healthy diet" full of porridge and the like. He rattles when he walks because he's taking about 12 pills a day. It certainly didn't scour out his arteries. My uncle is in a terrible state. He's on a "healthy diet" too. Me, I've been eating proper food (including an "unhealthy" amount of fat) for the last 15 years. I'm now approaching the age at which my dad started getting angina. My BP is perfect, my heartrate response to exercise is perfect (no sign of "chronotropic incompetence"), my VO2max is about as the same the average 30-year-old, and my bodyfat hovers somewhere around 12-13%. The "dietary fat causes heart disease" theory can't explain why I'm even alive, nevermind fit and healthy.

Fair enough if your bf just doesn't like cream, but I would urge you to read up on this subject seriously if your family have genetic risk factors for CVD, and come to your own conclusions.