Yay Olestra!
All this time I've been sick, miserable, and unable to eat anything tasty! I completely forgot about "Olean" or Olestra, the fake fat used in what was originally called the WOW! brand. Now it's used in all sorts of stuff, but mostly snack food. Basically the molecule is too large for the small intestine to absorb, so it just passes right through. I did some research and found out that Olestra (unlike real fats) doesn't stimulate the gall bladder either so it won't make me sick!
It does have it's own side effects though. The FDA makes them put a small label on the packaging warning that it makes fat-soluble vitamins harder to absorb and it can cause "loose stool." The old joke was that it causes "anal leakage" but that's not so much the truth. Studies show it can just cause a very slight increase in stool production. Sorry if that's too much information =) I'm not too worried about the second part, but I'll need to make sure I don't eat too much and interfere with my vitamins. I'm already having a hard enough time getting the nutrients I need!
I'm just excited because I got to buy tortilla chips tonight! Since salsa is naturally fat free, I got to have a very tasty snack for the first time in MONTHS! I also took a stroll through the health food section and found a few extremely low-fat things to try. A lot of them use tofu or soy protein since most meats have quite a bit of fat in them. I did find a few frozen dinners by Kashi that have chicken or fish in them, but they're still very low fat.
Next time you're at the store, look at the stuff marked "low fat" and see how many grams of fat are actually in 1 serving. With my gall bladder acting up, I have to stay around 7 grams of fat or less. If I'm having a REALLY good day, sometimes I can get away with 10-15 grams before I get too sick. Most of the time I have to weigh the pros and cons and decide how much pain it's worth to eat. And that's not 10-15 grams per meal, it's more like per day. It seems that my gall bladder is rather sluggish and it reacts sometimes hours after I eat so 2 meals can seem like 1 to it. Just some perspective for you.
It does have it's own side effects though. The FDA makes them put a small label on the packaging warning that it makes fat-soluble vitamins harder to absorb and it can cause "loose stool." The old joke was that it causes "anal leakage" but that's not so much the truth. Studies show it can just cause a very slight increase in stool production. Sorry if that's too much information =) I'm not too worried about the second part, but I'll need to make sure I don't eat too much and interfere with my vitamins. I'm already having a hard enough time getting the nutrients I need!
I'm just excited because I got to buy tortilla chips tonight! Since salsa is naturally fat free, I got to have a very tasty snack for the first time in MONTHS! I also took a stroll through the health food section and found a few extremely low-fat things to try. A lot of them use tofu or soy protein since most meats have quite a bit of fat in them. I did find a few frozen dinners by Kashi that have chicken or fish in them, but they're still very low fat.
Next time you're at the store, look at the stuff marked "low fat" and see how many grams of fat are actually in 1 serving. With my gall bladder acting up, I have to stay around 7 grams of fat or less. If I'm having a REALLY good day, sometimes I can get away with 10-15 grams before I get too sick. Most of the time I have to weigh the pros and cons and decide how much pain it's worth to eat. And that's not 10-15 grams per meal, it's more like per day. It seems that my gall bladder is rather sluggish and it reacts sometimes hours after I eat so 2 meals can seem like 1 to it. Just some perspective for you.
Labels: Health
posted by d0ggiem0mma | 12:40 AM
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