Friday 27 April 2007

Pic of the day: Now with more dangerous fat. (The rice and whole wheat noodles are fine though.)

Fat noodles

No wonder I felt so well fed by my noodle dinners and didn't feel like eating much for the rest of the day. It was "fatisfaction"! I should have recognized it after all these years, but I had innocently thought that noodles were like spaghetti, low in fat and high in carbohydrates. The last part is true, at least. But this spring I read a big headline in the newspaper about pupils eating fat, and it turned out that much of this was noodles. In all fairness, the noodles I have in my kitchen only contain 17% fat dry weight, not enough to make me sick with just one portion. But it may have helped my slow and sure weight gain, which incidentally has stopped now. This is probably more because of the walks, though.

What is worse than the actual fat content is that it is palm fat, second only to the near-poisonous trans fat when it comes to clogging your arteries. (Trans fat is already forbidden in Denmark, and Norway is supposed to follow suit. Not sure about the palm fat. It is frequently called plant oil to confuse it with heart-healthy fats like olive or sunflower seed, not to mention flax which is very healthy for women (though not for men). If food packaging is required to specify palm fat, it is likely to see a lot less use, as people become more conscious of these things for each passing decade, or even less.

For me, it is the quantity of fat that sets off the violent sickness, so in the short run it matters little whether it is palm fat, milk fat or fish fat. Fat is fat. As long as I don't try to follow up with other fat, I can eat a noodle meal each day. I don't do that anymore, though. It is fairly cheap, though not by American standards, and really quick. But there are other meals that cost no more and have far less fat, especially far less dangerous fat. The full-grain pasta, for instance, contains only 2% fat, 0.5% saturated fat. Even if I add a teaspoon of garlic olive oil and a strip of low-fat cheese when I stir-fry it with apples or potatoes or raisins, it still beats the noodles health-wise. And I'm still full for the rest of the evening.

So, toodles noodles! Hasta la pasta!