"Heart Harmful Meatless Monday Recipes"

Although it's great to see "Meatless Monday" get a lot of attention, it is most distressing to me to see how fat-ladden and unhealthy so many of the recipes proclaimed "Heart Healthy" are.  Here's a bunch collected (I guess) using "Healthy Recipe Finder" and collected on Women's Health as "Meatless Monday: Valentine's Day the Vegetarian Way."  Let's take a look at the amount of fat per serving (as listed):

"French Toast with Vanilla Bourbon and Carmelized Bananas:"  17.9 grams of fat, 478 calories

"Baby Spinach Salad with Goat Cheese and Toasted Pistachios:"  52 grams of fat per serving, 572 calories, (16.5 grams of saturated fat per serving, more than the American Heart Association recommends for a woman PER DAY)

"Portobello Caps Stuffed with Chili Polenta and Cheese:" 9.1 grams of fat per serving

"Ravioli and Lemon Chive Sauce:" 15.7 grams of fat per serving, 8.7 grams of saturated fat (oh, and two-thirds a day's worth of sodium, according to the AHA)

"Expresso Granita:" 7 grams of fat

This "cozy" dinner for two amounts to a whopping 101.7 grams of fat per serving.  Putting this into a heart-healthy perspective, Ornish and Esselstyn (who reversed heart disease) recommend around 14 to 24 grams of fat per day.  The total for this meal, per serving, is FOUR times the high end.  Or, go conservative with the American Heart Association, recommending a range of 50 to 70 grams of fat per day, and you're around 1 1/2 times to double that amount.

Excessive sodium, extremely high fat, over a day's worth of saturated fat (hell, I didn't even bother to look at sugar per serving), and we've got an example of what's killing both women and men in this country.  Heart Disease, Obesity, Hypertension, Diabetes... all are invited by meals such as this one and it's truly sad.

Just because it's meatless, doesn't mean it's healthy.  IMHO, it's a lousy way to show your love for someone by promoting an onslaught on their entire cardiovascular system.  This isn't moderation, this is suicide.  These recipes do not belong on Women's Health any more than does a bottle of Jack Daniels advertisement in an AA pamplet, and I gotta admit, rarely have I been so surprised by doing the numbers.  But, the math doesn't lie (or exaggerate).

Comments

[Lisa]

Curious: Do Esselstyn and Ornish mean TOTAL fat grams for a day, or saturated fats? I got really sick trying to stay within their 20-24g/day range. Freezing cold all the time, no energy, and ahem, female problems (which still have yet to resolve!) Once I increased my fat intake slightly (still watching sat fats), I felt a million times better in just a week.

[They are talking fat grams in general. If you are having problems, you may have to adjust up accordingly. I'm not an expert in this area, and maybe you should contact one of them and ask your questions directly.

Certainly, watching the Sat Fats (despite some of the minority negative stuff about this) is probably prudent.]

Do they have different guidelines for women?

[None that I'm aware of, and again, maybe you should contact them (or Drs. Neal Barnard, or McDougall) for further advice.

Hope things go well for you. We all have to adjust to what our bodies tell us regarding nutritional intake.

Best regards, Mark]

[al]

what would you recommend i put on my popcorn?

[I've learned to love it plain (have an air popper), but others have suggested curry powder, vegan parmesan, mixed dried herbs, nutritional yeast, paprika, cumin, and so on.

Be creative! Best regards, Mark]

[Ann]

No, "meatless" doesn't mean it's healthy - or cruelty-free, or environmentally-friendly. Thanks for this post.

[Agreed! I don't think we should lower our standards just to get more vegetarians on board... let's keep the bar high! Best, Mark]

[Joey Lee]

Hi Mark-

I just wanted to let you know that the national Meatless Monday campaign features 4 healthy, meatless recipes on MeatlessMonday.com each and every Monday (breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack/dessert). Unfortunately we don't have control over the content that our independent participants post as they go Meatless every Monday. (Like the one you've critiqued in this post.)

Many bloggers think its fun to do weekly Meatless Monday posts, usually posting a healthy meatless recipe. Would you be interested in starting weekly Meatless Monday posts on Soul Veggie? It would be a great way to spread the word and post recipes that live up to a higher standard of health.

Also- let me know if you'd like to submit any of your original recipes to be featured on MeatlessMonday.com. If they work for us, I'd love to link back to Soul Veggie as the source. You can submit recipes here:

http://www.meatlessmonday.com/submit-your-meatless-recipe/

Shoot me an email at jlee@mondaycampaigns.org if you're interested in either weekly posts and/or submitting recipes and we'll coordinate.

Best,

-Joey Lee
Project Associate
Meatless Monday

[Thanks for your comment. I was concerned that y'all might misunderstand my intent.

As to posting recipes, I'm way too busy on my cookbook, but hope to contribute some time in the near future. Best regards for your efforts, Mark]

[Jennifer Enchin]

wow, yeah you might as well just eat meat...Yeah the whole oprah vegan thing is wrong in so many ways. People shouldn't focus on no meat, they should focus on health!