Home Recipes Might Make You Gain Weight
Some people eat at home to avoid fatty restaurant foods. Others do it to try and save money. If you eat home recipes, they may be worse for you than you know.
Looking to save cash by eating at home? Be careful. While it may not cost you money it can cost you calories.
If anyone asked you who serves the biggest portions of food out of everyone you know, you would most probably spout the name of local restaurant. For me, it would probably be Red Robin. They have huge gourmet burgers and offer endless amounts of fries. What you probably would never think of is that your classic recipes might be just as bad. A recent study in the Annals of Internal Medicine this week found that in the past 70 years, classic recipes have increased in calories per serving by almost 40 percent. So much focus has been given to being weary of eating away from home that we have completely overlooked how the foods we eat at home are gradually getting worse for us.
The study reviewed a cookbook that has been around since the 1930’s. Of the 18 recipes that were in all the issues, 17 grew in calories per serving. Larger portion sizes helped to cause an increase in total calories per recipe, which was about 567 calories. An example of one of the recipes, chicken gumbo, gradually changed from creating 14 servings at 228 calories per serving to 10 servings at 576 servings. If you do the math, while there is an increase of 348 calories per serving, there is a total increase of 2,568 calories. Obviously, the chicken gumbo is much worse for you today than it was in 1930.
The major growth in restaurant portions did not happen until the late 1970’s. Why did restaurants change how much they served their customers? Maybe it is because their customers were starting to eat bigger portions at home. I wouldn’t go out to eat as much if I was getting small portions at a restaurant while getting big portions at home. Unfortunately, the increase in restaurant portion sizes inevitably would only further increase the portion sizes of home recipes. The increase in portion sizes translated into an increase overall calories per recipe. This escalator effect has led to where we are today.
One last reason this drastic change has occurred is money. Comparing household incomes in the 1930’s to now, food is a lot cheaper today. Instead of using less expensive ingredients which also had lower calories, we use the more expensive, higher calorie ingredients. One piece of advice to help with this problem: once you cook the recipe, take about half of the portion you would normally eat and put it immediately away with anything else that might be left over. What is left is the portion you would eat if you lived in the 1930’s.
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