Design your diet
11. Energy sources in sauces
More detective work
If you have followed this so far, I hope that you’ll be understanding that you don’t have to look at ALL the numbers on the food labels with your magnifying glass, unless you want to.
Last time I was looking at the energy values for 100grams
Tomato sauce = 100
was a good yardstick to remember.
The special thing about this is that
this same yardstick is used on virtually
ALL food containers - not just sauce.
It’s on the tin.
It’s on the packet,
It’s on the box.
Energy values per 100 grams
Energy values give you an idea of how much energy you are taking in.
Let’s look at another sauce/dressing bottle.
To help understand the figures, here are two more sets of figures to check, so that we become accustomed to looking for the sugar and fat that will be the most important ingredients from a fattening point of view.
Sweet Chilli Sauce.
The order of the ingredients this time is, Water, Sugar, Glucose-Fructose syrup, plus other stuff. Now we see that ‘sugar’ can come in several different forms. It is obvious to us that Golden Syrup must be a kind of sugar and so is Honey, but there is a long list like the glucose/fructose, that we don’t need to bother with at the moment. Keep it simple. Experts will tell us that some are worse than others, but when we are looking to reduce the calories, we can think of them simply as ‘sugar’. You get some minced garlic (tasty!) as well as the spirit vinegar in this jar.
The energy value per 100grams is 206calories
(Tomato sauce 100 calories)
So, this sauce has about double the energy.
We can see the energy is mainly in the sugar content with this number, sugar 44.9gms. Remember that the main ingredient was Water and this sugar content is approaching half the volume in the jar. The salt is 3grams; much higher than other sauces.
Final sauce - Mango Chutney
There is 47% mango and the second ingredient is sugar, followed by sugar-cane vinegar. This is a recipe that looks almost like jam with all this fruit and sugar. Amongst the other ingredients are celery, egg, milk and peanuts. The energy value is 202cals, so the energy is in the same league as the other exotic sauce, Sweet Chilli and it is double that found in Tomato sauce. Salt is 2grams.
You can see Honey & Mustard at 103 is the same as Tomato. Mango Chutney at 202 is double. Mayonnaise at 644 is off the scale! Check if you want to.
The way you deal with this is up to you, once you understand what it means, if you want to reduce the energy you are taking in. You might decide you can only have half the quantity of Mango Chutney that you would have had before. You might look at a low-fat alternative to mayonnaise, to see how much lower they have made it.
Warning
Always be suspicious of the manufacturer’s claims. They have a lot of ‘lowering’ to get it down to a reasonable level and you might think about switching to the French Dressing style sauces if you want to begin to make a difference. Change is good for you and you are in control.
And there’s more . . .
I have not looked at all sauces. What about that Brown Pickle? What about those sandwich fillers? Here is a test of all your energy knowledge.
Can you make sense of these numbers?
Can you see where the energy comes from?
Will you be eating some of these and other sauces?
Walking
Walk up hills. It is the hills that will do you the most good. You have to try to get the heart going and breathing more deeply. Get some fresh air inside you. After this happens, just walk more gently until things return to normal.
You will have improved yourself.
It won’t be as hard next time.
Keep doing it – and -
I’ll tell you about another reason for my walking now.
Remember The Time has Come which meant
making a proper, strong decision that you would not change?
It was in Introduction at the top of the page.
Find it if you have not read it.
A second verse was in the Eat Less sections
Did you find it?
If not - DO find it please.
I was rewriting some of the verses from
Lewis Caroll's poem, that relate to us.
Here is a third verse
The Walrus and the Carpenter
“A loaf of bread,” the Walrus said,
‑‑“Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
‑‑Are very good indeed –
Now if you're ready Oysters dear,
‑‑We can begin to feed.”
The Fat-folks and the Food.
‘A loaf of bread,’ the fat-folks said,
Is what we chiefly need:
Pepperoni, cheese and Coke besides
Are very good indeed.
Now as we’re ready – well prepared
We can begin our feed.
To lose weight you have to make a strong decision
That you will not change