Week Two: Find a better butter.
Butter is ubiquitous, but not in as many things as you might think. As people begin to recognize that butter is adding a lot of calories to their favorite crackers and cookies, manufacturers are beginning to make their products without it.
At 100 calories per tablespoon, butter makes your body pay for its flavor. But you can find alternatives to butter that do not taste too bad. My favorite is bestlife buttery spread. It has half the calories of butter and no cholesterol, since cholesterol is only found in animal products. There are plenty of other butter substitutes out there, so keep looking until you find something you like.
There are also some very tasty spreads that you can use that do not even try to imitate butter. You are only limited by your level of daring. Tahini, hummus, baba ghanoush, nut spreads, imitation mayonnaise, mustards, fruit spreads, open a whole world of flavors that leave butter in the dust. So expand your food repertoire by giving butter the heave ho.
Small step: Buy a tub of buttery spread and put it on the table the same way you do butter. Use it instead of butter.
Medium step: Check labels so you can avoid buying anything with butter in it. An easy shortcut for seeing if something contains butter is to look at the end of the ingredients list, where there will usually be a list of possible allergens. If the product contains dairy products or eggs, they will be listed as possible allergens. This is much faster than trying to check the entire list of ingredients.
Large step: Try eliminating cheese as well as butter. Being from Wisconsin, this step has been very difficult for me. Pizza without cheese? You've got to be kidding! But there are some good cheese alternatives out there, and some pesto-based pizzas that are quite good.
Giant step: Give up ice cream. For a Wisconsin native, this must be done gradually, to avoid complete culture shock. Eventually, you should be able to substitute tasty sorbets, or non-dairy vegan ice creams, which both come in several delicious flavors.
********************
If you have comments, questions, or would like some encouragement, please post a comment to the blog. I'm rooting for you. We all are.
Additional online sources for support:
http://www.thekindlife.com
http://www.vrg.org/
http://chooseveg.com/
http://vegan.com/
At 100 calories per tablespoon, butter makes your body pay for its flavor. But you can find alternatives to butter that do not taste too bad. My favorite is bestlife buttery spread. It has half the calories of butter and no cholesterol, since cholesterol is only found in animal products. There are plenty of other butter substitutes out there, so keep looking until you find something you like.
There are also some very tasty spreads that you can use that do not even try to imitate butter. You are only limited by your level of daring. Tahini, hummus, baba ghanoush, nut spreads, imitation mayonnaise, mustards, fruit spreads, open a whole world of flavors that leave butter in the dust. So expand your food repertoire by giving butter the heave ho.
Small step: Buy a tub of buttery spread and put it on the table the same way you do butter. Use it instead of butter.
Medium step: Check labels so you can avoid buying anything with butter in it. An easy shortcut for seeing if something contains butter is to look at the end of the ingredients list, where there will usually be a list of possible allergens. If the product contains dairy products or eggs, they will be listed as possible allergens. This is much faster than trying to check the entire list of ingredients.
Large step: Try eliminating cheese as well as butter. Being from Wisconsin, this step has been very difficult for me. Pizza without cheese? You've got to be kidding! But there are some good cheese alternatives out there, and some pesto-based pizzas that are quite good.
Giant step: Give up ice cream. For a Wisconsin native, this must be done gradually, to avoid complete culture shock. Eventually, you should be able to substitute tasty sorbets, or non-dairy vegan ice creams, which both come in several delicious flavors.
********************
If you have comments, questions, or would like some encouragement, please post a comment to the blog. I'm rooting for you. We all are.
Additional online sources for support:
http://www.thekindlife.com
http://www.vrg.org/
http://chooseveg.com/
http://vegan.com/