Yucatan guacamole is organic, 95 percent avocado, all natural, and tastes fresh and delicious. You can really taste the avocado in this guacamole. It's lightly spiced, not too hot and not too spicy (Goldilocks would approve). If you can get it at your local supermarket I recommend trying it. Chock full of healthy fats, it has 60 calories for 2 tablespoons, with 4.5 grams of fat, 3 grams of carbohydrates, and 1 gram of protein. This is an excellent low carbohydrate food that can be incorporated into any healthy diet.
I ended up buying this book "Eat This, Not That!" by the editor of Men's Health because Jerry started reading it in WalMart and got me hooked on it. The book is too detailed and covers too much territory to do an in depth review in one post (I'm not that ambitious right now) so I'll break up discussions on it.
First off, it is based on a low fat / low calorie approach to eating and sometimes this is its downfall. For example, on pages 228 and 229 it compares Healthy Choice Gourmet Supreme Pizza as one of the "Eat This" choices compared to four other "Not That!" products that had the SAME amount of calories or 40 less calories BUT more saturated fat (5 grams versus 11 to 18 grams). The other "Eat This" product has 900 mg sodium which is HIGHER than all four of the "Not That!" products by a huge amount.
Talk about dickering over minutia and tiny details based on wrong information. Fat and even saturated fat is not bad in and of itself. It's over consumption of any kind of calories - and refined carbohydrates in particular - that contribute to obesity and disease. The diet world (as opposed to the medical world) has indicted fat solely on its high caloric density (9 calories a gram versus 4 calories per gram in protein and carbohydrates). And fat - particularly saturated fat - got a bad reputation based on one study by Dr. Ancel Keyes that was based on misinformation.
(There’s no hard science to back up the low fat diet theory. Yes, you can lose weight on a low fat diet. And you can Google Ancel Keyes and find out his 60 year old theory that saturated fats are bad has never been backed up with similar studies. In actuality, the science points to a diet high in carbohydrates as harmful to health, particularly combined with a diet high in calories. Dr. Robert C. Atkins also pointed out that fats become harmful only when combined with a high carbohydrate / high calorie diet. The medical world treated Keyes single unsubstantiated study as law and fact and almost everyone in medicine, the media, and nutrition and diet writers still do).
So while this "No Diet Weight Loss Solution!" may send your sodium consumption through the roof its focus is on how much saturated fat and calories you eat (even if its a small difference in both). This is fine if you're healthy, don't suffer from heart disease or high blood pressure, and don't mind being bloated from excess salt.
Click here for "The Great Cholesterol Con" website.
Click here to read "The Truth about Saturated Fat" - that debunks the party line on "saturated fats are bad."
And Dr. Mercola's "Surprise! Saturated Fat Really Is Good For You."
Click here to read "No one benefits from refined carbohydrates."
The book does have its merits and entertains visually with lots of bright and professionally shot photos. On the plus side, if you're a packaged foods junkie with no intentions of cleaning up your diet this book will help you make better choices calories-wise. (Remember, it has an eye on fat and calorie content while overlooking carbohydrates). It also has an in depth section on what to eat in popular restaurant and fast food chains. So if you must eat out "Eat This, Not That!" is a handy guide.
And there is some humorous advice too, like the advice on page 183 that men should eat chocolate because "a Johns Hopkins study found that nitric oxide-boosting compounds found in chocolate can help trigger and maintain erections."
Put down that Viagra boys and eat your chocolate covered cherries! (Never mind that a good share of erectile dysfunction sufferers are diabetic and shouldn't be eating a lot of sugar that's found in the brand of chocolates pictured in both the "Eat This" and the "Not That!" pages for chocolates. Sometimes this book overlooks basic health facts and logic).
