Conference rocks::weight_control

    Another good dip idea is to take Lipton Onion Soup mix and mix it
    with low fat yogurt instead of sour cream.  You can't tell the
    difference and the only calories in it are those from the yogurt.

    Popcorn is a favorite snack with me.  Use an air popper and sprinkle
    butter-flavored salt on the fluffy stuff afterward.  This is much
    lower in calories than, say, a bag of potato chips.
    
    --Mike
    

    I guess this is a good as place as any to ask.....
    
    
    I went to my Weight Watchers meeting last night.  We were talking
    about fruits.  They mentioned putting grapes in the freezer.  Then
    you can eat them as a snack, they are sweet and crunchy.  Has anyone
    tried this?  Do you freeze the grapes as individuals on a cookie
    sheet?  I would think that if they were frozen in the bunch, it
    would be hard to eat just on or two at a time.
    
    Thanks in advance.
    Bev
    

    Bev,
    
    This is YUMMY!  Wash the grapes, let them dry, take them off the 
    stems (the bunch), then just put them in a Baggie, close it up and
    pop'm in the freezer!  When you take them out, it is pretty easy to
    break them apart, and they are a lot of fun.  Doesn't take too long
    to freeze them as I recall, maybe an hour?
    
    E Grace

    I discovered today a great substitute for Smartfood popcorn!
    
    Take regular air-popped or diet microwave popcorn.  Spray on a little
    no-stick cooking spray (to hold the cheese) and then sprinkle on two or
    three shakes of Molly McButter cheese sprinkles.
    
    Mmmmmm.  Not exactly smartfood, but a reasonable lo-cal facsimile.
    [Molly McButter sprinkles are all natural, sugar-free and have 4
    calories per teaspoon.]
    
    D!

    D, check the ingredients again.  I know regular Molly McButter has a
    form of sugar as the second ingredient.  If you are trying to do away
    with Sugar from your program you might want to abstain from using Molly
    McButter.

Hmph!  I didn't even think of that!  Well, wouldn't that be just a major
bummer!  I'll check tonight...

Thanks...
D!

    Survey says...
    
    the first ingredient in both regular and cheese flavor Molly McButter
    is maltodextrin, "a natural carbohydrate derived from corn."  I don't
    think it is a sugar, because it doesn't have the "-ose" suffix that
    sugars have - I suspect it is some sort of complex carbohydrate, which
    is okay.
    
    The bottom line is that it doesn't send me into crave-fits, therefore I
    can eat it.
    
    Enjoy!
    
    D!

	Tobin's here in HLO sells "Lite" Popcorn.  I believe it's
	associated with the Diet Workshop.  Although the Cheese variety
	isn't such a bargain (50% fat), the new caramel corn has only 1
	gram of fat!  It is made primarily with brown sugar.  I count
	fats mostly, so the sugar doesn't bother me.  It's 70 calories
	per serving, I believe.

	Karen

    Here's a way to make low fat (almost no fat, I think) cheese popcorn
    that really tastes good.  (well, junk food good, I mean)  Take a
    package of Kraft macaroni and cheese, or any other brand, it just has
    to be the type with the packet of powdered cheese.  Pop some corn in an
    air popper, and then sprinkle on the cheese powder.  It really tastes
    like TRUE junk food!
    
    Even grated cheese -- romano or parmesan -- are surprisingly low fat
    for cheese, which is ordinarilly one of the fattiest things you can
    eat.  Guess there's a lot of air in a tablespoon of it!

    Diana's Balsamic Yogurt Dip
    
    (These measurements are estimates...I didn't actually measure then,
    just kinda mixed things up.)
    
    1/4 cup yogurt
    2 Tbs Balsamic vinegar
    1-2 tsp italian seasoning
    
    Great on veggies.  Put a little extra vinegar in and you can use it as 
    salad dressing.
    
    WW: 1/4 milk exchange

    Here's a challenge to the beloved noters in this file. When I work late
    at night, it brings out the snack animal in me. When I was living in
    the US I always made sure I had plenty of plain popcorn to airpop and
    veggies to eat with non-fat yogurt dip concoctions (nf yogurt and salsa
    was a favorite). Well, I'm living in Budapest and it's back to basics.
    No non-fat yogurt, no skim milk, no diet salad dressing, and rarely any
    celery. I can usually find big fat carrots. There are lots of pickled
    vegetables, but you can only eat so many of those!
             
    Can anybody come up with some wonderful "safe" snacks that don't
    require specialty ingredients? I have found pretzels, but after a while
    my mouth reacts to all the salt as I don't usually salt my food.
    
    Anxiously awaiting responses (CARE packages will do nicely, too)
    
    Amy

    Ah, there's a challenge...
    
    well, how about muffins made without oil...you can use applesauce (are
    there apples?), bananas or regular yogurt in place of oil.  (Regular
    yogurt, of course, would add *some* fat...but in the whole muffin, it
    would still be low-fat.)
    
    Better yet, get a friend to send you a BIG bag of unpopped popcorn, and
    an airpopper (don't forget the converter to allow it to use the
    different voltage!)
    
    How about dried fruit, is that available?
    
    I'll think about this further over the weekend.  I love challenges.
    
    D!

    > How about dried fruit, is that available?
    
    Even if it is, it's hardly a low-calorie snack! But how about fresh fruit?

    June

    >    Even if it is, it's hardly a low-calorie snack! But how about
    >fresh fruit?
    
    I was assuming fresh fruit was not readily available, or she would
    already have considered that.  Dried fruit has no fat...beyond that,
    whether something is "low calorie" depends on how much you eat. 
    Raisins are about 60-80 calories an ounce.  I find 2 ounces of raisins
    to be a very satisfying afternoon snack, and consider 150 calories a
    reasonable amount to "spend".
    
    D!

    Thanks everybody. Fresh fruit is available, not much variety right now,
    but I can get oranges, bananas and grapefruit right on the street corner. I
    don't usually eat a lot of fruit (more than 2-3 servings a day) because
    of the old Weight Watcher training. Exception -  raisins; I found them 
    once and was tempted, but I know me and raisins and it's too easy to 
    overdo it. They're so cute and little and what's one more handful...?
    
    I found some celery over the weekend!!! It was small and very expensive.
    I used most of it in a pot of vegetable soup. I also used some root type
    veggies that I didn't recognize, but looked interesting. 
    
    Popcorn...I have a microwave that I bought here and a plastic microwave 
    popper coming in my shipment, but alas, can't find plain popcorn. I
    found a product that looked like Jiffy-Pop, but I assume it is high in
    fat.
    
    I also found a German version of diet pudding. That's a guess, but
    there was a NutraSweet symbol on the front. I also found 1.5% fat milk
    that's been irradiated and comes in boxes that you store on the shelf
    until you open it. I got 10 of them! It's tough reading labels. I
    figured out the words for oil, salt, pork, cheese, milk, flour and
    sugar so I can tell where they are in the order of the ingredients list
    which supposedly indicates the amounts in decreasing order. But I also
    assume that's by weight or volume, not by calories. I'm still making
    mistakes, though. I bought some kind of bran cereal and was
    disappointed when I tasted it and it was too sweet! There must have
    been several types of sugars that have names I don't recognise yet,
    like fructose or corn sweetener.
    
    Some packages do offer the caloric content in Kcal or kilojoules.
    Anybody know how to convert?
    
    Still experimenting...
                 

    What we in the States call "calories" are really "kilocalories", so
    Kcal is the same as calories.
    
    In terms of order of ingredients by weight vs. by calories...protein
    and carboyhydrates both have the same calories per gram, fat has more
    than twice as much.  So if fat is the second or third ingredient, it
    probably has more than 50% calories from fat (as a guess.)
    
    For weight-watching trivia buffs: a calorie is the amount of energy
    necessary to increase the temperature of one cubic centimeter (which I
    believe is 10 ml) of water by one degree centigrade.  In nutrition what
    we call a calorie is really a kilocalorie, meaning enough energy to
    raise 1 ml of water 1000 degrees, or 1000 ml (1 liter) by 1 degree.
    
    So if you eat 2000 calories a day, that's enough raise the temperature
    of 20 liters of water from freezing to boiling.  :-)
    
    D!

    > don't usually eat a lot of fruit (more than 2-3 servings a day) because
    > of the old Weight Watcher training. 

    Have Weight Watchers got something against fruit, then? I thought it
    was a good thing to eat, no? (Excuse my ignorance, but I've never been 
    to WW)

    June

    No, they have nothing "against" fruit, they just limit it (as they do
    everything other than vegetables.)  Fruit provides fewer essential
    nutrients than, say, grains and meat, so you get substantial amounts of
    those and relatively little fruit - 2-3 servings a day.
    
    However, if you need snacks, fresh fruit is great because it's low in
    calories for the amount of bulk, and it comes in pre-packaged amounts
    (1 apple, etc).
    
    D!

    June,
    
    The way that Weight Watchers works is that any food is "good to eat"
    provided the quantity follows the guidelines of the program. In the
    case of fruit, I believe it recommends 2 or 3 servings per day (varies by
    the type of fruit). They don't have anything against any foods as much
    as they have developed (over 20 years) a program which assures a
    moderate level of weight loss. Every year they learn a little more
    about nutrition and metabolism and adjust the quantities in each category 
    of food (milk, fat, fruit, bread, veggies, protein, optional calories). 
    
    I spent long enough in WW to have these "rules" burned into my
    conscious being. It's funny that even though they have improved the
    program, I go back to what I learned works for me.
    
    Also, I am getting tired of oranges. They have apples here, too, but
    they are mostly the cooking variety and my mouth doesn't accept these
    as a snack. Interesting point, fruit tastes good but my body doesn't
    register that it has gotten anything when I eat it to curb hunger. It
    does when I have complex carbos, though. Popcorn does it. Anybody able 
    to answer this? Is it a volume issue? 
    
    I'm sure being overly tired has a lot to do with it. It's going on
    8:00pm and I'm still at work!
    
    Amy 
    PS Now I have to think about what to do for dinner. They now have a
    Burger King, a MacDonalds, a Kentucky Fried Chicken, a Dairy Queen and
    several Dunkin' Donuts in Budapest. Poison.

.17> What we in the States call "calories" are really "kilocalories", so
.17> Kcal is the same as calories.
    
    Not many people know that.  I'm impressed!