How healthy are the recipes for Greek food?
Your website is terrific. My husband is a heart patient (bypasses, heart failure and atrial fibrilation plus Type 2 diabetes), so I turn to your website often. I have Type 2 diabetes and grew up in a Greek (Mediterranean) home with veggies, fruits, and very little meat. I have tried to maintain this in my own home and would like your advice as to how you rate some of the Mediterranean recipes that are in the more popular Greek Cuisine cookbooks. I would like to go on your diet plan because we could also lose about 20 pounds apiece, but I find it difficult to switch to more American-style foods such as are in your diet plan. Can you advise me?
Dr. Gourmet Says...
Certainly,
Greek cuisine is the foundation of Mediterranean style diet. If I have a
choice of any restaurant, it would almost always be Greek. The challenge
for the recipes in popular cookbooks is that the meals will often contain
more calories than needed -- great ingredients but just too much of them.
This is true whether the cookbook is Greek or some other cuisine.
There are two ways for you to look at your favorite recipes in such cookbooks to determine how healthy they may be:
1. Is the serving size too large? This will often be the case and making sure that you have a good understanding of how a meal should be composed will help. Here's a link to get you started:
http://www.drgourmet.com/eatinghealthy/dinner.shtml
2. Often cookbooks will simply have more of an ingredient than necessary. We now know that a low-fat diet is not the best choice but many recipes simply contain way to much fat. Even if this is healthy olive oil, you don't need to begin a recipe with a tablespoon or more per serving (each teaspoon of oil contains 50 calories). Look at the ingredient list of your recipes and see which calorie dense items you might be able to cut back on or even substitute with a lower calorie choice without affecting the taste.
You are correct that many of the recipes on the Dr. Gourmet web site work to "Americanize" the Mediterranean diet principles but choosing great quality Greek food will suit you just fine.
Thanks very much for your nice words about the Dr. Gourmet web site,
Timothy S. Harlan, M.D.
Dr. Gourmet