Frightening Foods
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Cynthia Sass, MPH, RD, CSSD
In honor of Halloween, I’ve compiled my very first countdown list – the Top 5 Scariest Foods. But I don’t mean the Fear Factory variety (like brains, worms, and the like). These foods are frighteningly high in calories, and loaded with the type of fats that up the risk of heart disease (America’s top killer). Now, I subscribe to an “everything in moderation” philosophy, so I’m not calling for an outright ban on any of these foods. But….I certainly wouldn’t support eating them all on the same day either (boy, I bet that would hurt!). All right, here they are (drum roll please)….
#5 Deep Fried Macaroni and Cheese – made by scooping mac and cheese into balls, breading, and deep frying. Otherwise known as orbs of fat.
#4 Scotch Eggs – in case you’re not familiar, a Scotch egg is a hard-boiled egg, wrapped in a mixture of sausages, coated in breadcrumbs, and deep-fried. My arteries are clogging just thinking about this.
#3 Black Pudding – not pudding at all. The official definition is, “sausage made by cooking animal blood with meat, fat or other filler until it is thick enough to congeal when cooled.” I’m at a loss for words.
#2 Deep Fried Coca-Cola (which made its début at this year’s Texas State Fair) – funnel-cake batter mixed with Coke instead of water, deep fried, topped with cola syrup and powdered sugar. Enough said.
#1 Hardee’s Monster Thickburger - 1,410 calories, 107 g of fat , 45 g saturated fat, 229 mg cholesterol – yiiiiiiiiikes!
Comparison key – each day, a moderately active healthy adult should consume about 2,000 calories, roughly 55 grams of fat, no more than about 20 g of saturated fat, less than 300 mg of cholesterol.
Pepper is so frightened by these foods she can’t even look!
P.S.
Have a safe (and healthy) Halloween!
4 Comments:
At Thu Oct 04, 02:36:00 AM 2007,
Anonymous said…
I'm looking for more information on the cholesterol content of black pudding. I've found a maker who omits the fat chunks that make black pudding so desperately dangerous. So the question ultimately, I suppose, is: what is the cholesterol content of pig's blood? Is the cholesterol level higher than that of lean pork?
- Geoffrey.
At Thu Oct 04, 02:43:00 AM 2007,
sizergh said…
How "frightening" is a black pudding made without the usual fatty chunks. I have found one locally made for a man on a low cholesterol diet. What is the cholesterol content of such food? The standard charts show values for the type with fatty chunks.
At Thu Jan 29, 07:22:00 AM 2009,
Anonymous said…
Who cares?
Lets try feeding the hungry of the world before starting to worry about starving our over-indulged selves.
At Mon May 18, 05:02:00 AM 2009,
Anonymous said…
You are presenting a very one-sided view of black pudding. it is an extremely good source of iron and is recommended by various nutrition experts for people suffering from aenemia. Aenemia is extremely debilitating and it is well worth some extra fat for the iron supplies provided by this food. You should know, too, since you are posting info which may affect people's decisions about food intake, that not all sources of iron are equally easy for the digestive system to absorb. So, some people can absorb black pudding more easily than they might absorb iron in other forms, in raw veg for instance, etc. So before condemning something like black pudding outright, you should look into the pros and cons and give your readers thorough information. Jules
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