A favorite blog of mine that emphasizes "fat free vegan" recipes (and has done much astounding and tremendous, ground-breaking work), recently held a contest for "Vegetable Love 2009" to create a romantic plant-based Valentine's Dinner, and let people vote for the winner.
You can imagine my surprise when I glommed the 16-year old chef's second place winning recipes. Here's the link to "Vegetable Love 2009: Cashew Crusted Tofu, Vegetable Israeli Couscous, Sauteed Kale, Roasted Red Pepper Coulis."
And now, as is customary on my blog, the nutritional facts:
The crusted tofu, etc., menu has 10 TBL of Fat, and 1 1/4 cups of cashews (not counting, if memory serves, oil for frying). This translate into:
10 TBL of Fat/Oil = 140 grams of fat
The Cashews = over 90 grams of fat
Total: 230 grams of fat.
Feds recommend 60 grams of fat per day at most, Drs. Ornish, Esselstyn, etc., 14 to 20 grams.
This "vegan foodie" meal has near 4 times the total fat the Feds recommend per day and near 12 times the fat the guys who've reversed/prevented heart disease recommend... and I'm not even including the fat in tofu (which can, in some circumstances, be 50% of calories from fat).
Unbelievable.
Instead of "Love 2009" it should be called "Heart Attack Russian Roulette 2009." It might be a 'gorgeous dish that wins everyone's heart' but it also puts everyone's heart at risk. ONE serving kills a day's worth of fat according to the Feds and near 3x that recommended by the heart disease experts. High fat intake has been implicated in not only heart disease, but also diabetes, aging, cancers, and Altzheimer's disease.
Sorry if I sound "crusty" but the math here doesn't lie.
Let's hope the talented young vegan chef soon learns a bit more about diet and it's proven relationship to coronary heart disease, et. al., soon, reads the fat free vegan blog with a bit more attention to the concept, and understands that there's "unhealthy" vegan cooking and "healthy vegan cooking." If he continues to design meals this way, his promising career might be shorter than it could be and we'd all be lesser as a result.
This post is a little too much. First of all this entree has healthy fat. Cashews are very healthy for you. And if you look at the Fatfree vegan blog under FAQ you will see that Susan includes nuts as part of her diet. There is a difference between good fats and bad fats and you should get educated on them by going to http://www.healthcastle.com/goodfats-badfats.shtml. Nuts are very important to include in your diet. I wrote a lower fat version on how to make the tofu and red pepper coulis on my blog. Fat is not an issue for me as I am skinny so if I go on a completely fat free diet I will turn into a stick. Olive Oil is very good for you. People in the Mediterranean use a lot of olive oil which is why they are so healthy. Nuts and Olive oil are heart healthy. These fats that will give you heart attacks are bad fats like meat, dairy, eggs and seafood. Good fats will not give you heart attacks, they will improve your health! On your post you act like I used bad fats. You say no word about good fats. I am not trying to kill anyone with my recipes. If you watch vegan cooking shows like Christina Cooks you will see, she uses good fats in her recipes. Christina Cooks is a very healthy cooking show. Isa and Terry, authours of Veganomicon, use healthy fats too. Are you saying if you eat a cup of nuts you will get a heart attack? So before you put a whole post of inaccurate information you should do your research like I did mine.
[Jay: I haven't been getting comments through e-mail and just realized there's a bunch I need to address.
I'm not going to go into detail here. I've written plenty about added fat being a problem AND provided research to back it up. Esselstyn and Ornish have proven they can reverse heart disease through a no-added fat diet. Nuts in small amounts are okay, sure.
Added oil is NOT a food, period. As to the Med Diet, you can read about Essy's take on it in the "15 Reasons to avoid vegetable oils" post in the "Favorite Posts" on the right side of the first page of my blog. There are 15 reasons to avoid added oils, all documented research. The issue of added oil inflaming fatty tissue around blood vessels and constricting the endothelium is not guesswork, theory, or a statistical average. It's been scientifically measured.
Added fat/oil provides the fuel for creating plaque that causes 90% of the heart attacks/strokes that are fatal. Doesn't matter your cholesterol or fitness (although that can make matters worse).
Added oil is NOT a food, not healthy, and I don't care if those other cooks use it and are ignorant of the research available.
Sorry you take offense, but the fact is: your recipe had excessive amount of fat in it by any measurement.
Best regards, Mark]
Posted by: Jay | 2009.02.15 at 17:48