Did you enjoy turkey for Thanksgiving? Not everyone is a turkey fan or chooses to partake of turkey for this holiday but many if not most Americans do. Turkey is lean nutritious meat that can be enjoyed all year round but that hasn’t been true for long. At one time 90 percent of all turkey meat was sold as the whole bird during the holiday season of November and December.

Turkey has become more popular in large part because individual turkey pieces such as breasts, tenderloins, cutlets and ground turkey are now available. And, of course, there’s the option to purchase pre-cooked turkey as deli slices or otherwise. When eating turkey meant having to purchase, prepare, and cook the whole bird it just wasn’t as appealing to do very often. Thankfully that’s changed.

Although, I may not have included turkey in my list of the top ten foods for women and weight loss, it does rank high on the list of healthy choices. Ounce for ounce turkey breast without the skin has more protein and less fat than beef or pork. A three-ounce serving of skinless boneless turkey breast has about 115 calories with 26 grams of protein, 1 gram of fat, and 0 grams of saturated fat. (Chicken is similar but not quite as good. A three ounce serving of skinless boneless chicken breast has about 140 calories with 26 grams of protein, 3 grams of fat, and close to 1 gram of saturated fat.) Turkey is also an excellent source of iron, zinc, and many B vitamins including riboflavin, B6, and B12.

So if you are watching your calorie intake and nutrition, turkey meat can be a great choice. Even the dark meat is relatively lean compared with other meats but it does have more total fat, saturated fat, and calories than breast meat. What you want to watch, however, is the ground turkey.

Ground turkey typically has significantly more fat. It ranges from 85 to 99 percent fat free. The amount of fat varies depending on whether the ground turkey includes a mix of dark and light meat along with some skin or if it is prepared from breast meat only. Something to keep in mind is that 85 percent fat free does not mean the turkey has 15 percent fat but rather that it is about 15 percent fat by weight. This actually translates into about 51 percent fat in terms of calories. See Weight Loss Success: Are You Buying the Best Products? for a better explanation of how that works.)

Adding low fat turkey meat to a recipe can boost the protein content of a dish while keeping the calorie count down. I’ve found turkey to be a great choice for preparing low calorie nutritious meals. I’ll share a few recipes with you for turkey meals with 350 calories or less per serving. You may have used up your turkey leftovers for this season but keep these recipes handy and you may very well find yourself preparing turkey breast more often!

1. Turkey with Curried Cream Sauce
2. Turkey Waldorf Salad
3. Turkey Pizza
4. Turkey Apple Gyros

Want more ideas? Check out the online recipe sites. Lots of recipes I’ve found call for ground turkey. But it’s quite easy to substitute chopped cooked turkey to save time and possibly calories. Just keep in mind the ratio of 4 to 3. For example, as a general rule, 4 ounces of uncooked meat will become about 3 ounces of cooked meat if you are cooking whole cuts. Ground meat will yield somewhat less.

Till next time, watch those calories and eat healthy!

When you go grocery shopping, you shouldn’t need to be a detective to find low calorie healthy foods. But all too often that is precisely what it takes to locate the best products.

Food manufacturers are savvy marketers. They’ve learned how to get your attention for food products with clever packaging. From pictures to the use of emotion-laden words and health claims, they can resort to strategies that are often misleading. You think you are purchasing one thing but really you are getting something else, something not as low calorie or nutritious as you thought.

Your best strategy to keep this from happening is to read BOTH the ingredient and nutrition labels before making a purchase. Yes, this takes time. The benefits of doing this, however, are tremendous. Today I will share a few tips that will help you know when to take a closer look so you don’t have to examine every package. In my next post I will follow up with a few more tips.

Weight Loss Success: Are You Buying the Best Products? Part Two

Image via Wikipedia

1. People like pictures.

Photographs of tasty looking food help sell products. Wholesome food such as fruits and vegetables on the packaging may suggest that a particular food is a good source of those items. The reality may be quite different. The actual product may have just a tiny amount. Do pay close attention to frozen entrees, soups, and other heat and serve products.

Check the ingredient label. Ingredients are listed in descending order by weight with the ingredient weighing the most listed first (water is included only if it is added to a product).

2. Be aware of what different claims actually mean.

If you were purchasing a food product labeled as being 95% percent fat free, it might seem like only 5% of the calories come from fat. However, the fat free percentage refers to weight not calories. So the product is actually 5% fat by weight.

Here’s an example. Don’t worry if you find it hard to follow, you’re not alone. Being aware that the fat free percentage may not be what it seems to be is what matters most.

Let’s say the product in question is a luncheon meat. Each serving is 2 ounces by weight (about 56 grams) and has 70 calories. If each serving is 5% fat by weight, one serving would have approximately 3 grams of fat. (5% of 56 grams is a little less than 3 grams.)

A gram of fat contains 9 calories. Therefore, each serving has a total of 27 calories of fat (3 grams fat per serving x 9). This means that 39% of the total calories come from fat not 5 (27 divided by 56)!

Whew! Who wants to do all these complicated calculations? Not me! The solution is to check the nutrition label when you see this kind of claim. Look for the grams of fat per serving.

NOTE: The fat percentage listed on the nutrition label (Nutrition Facts) has a different meaning from the fat percentage claim made on a package cover. The Nutrition Facts fat percentage refers to daily intake of calories (based on an average 2000 calorie diet) but not to the percentage of fat calories in the product. Confusing? I think so. That’s why you’ll want to look at the grams of fat per serving instead. (See 1200 Calorie Diet: Protein, Carbohydrate, Fat, and Fiber Needs to determine how many grams of fat you need on a low calorie diet.)

3. The term low fat is misleading.

You would be much better served by looking for products that say low calorie instead. Low fat products are not necessarily low calorie. Sometimes the food manufacturer will replace fat with sugar or other ingredients to keep the food tasty.

In addition, a number of research studies have shown that people typically eat more of a food when it is labeled low fat. Many people will eat as much as 50% more when the product actually has a calorie reduction of only 30% or less than the original product.

I’ve shared three important tips to keep in mind when grocery shopping. In my next post I will share three more along with a list of government-regulated terms found on packaged food products and what they mean. A little bit of knowledge can go a long way in guiding your decisions about the products you buy. The best products will help, not hinder, your efforts to succeed with weight loss or maintenance and achieve better health.

Eating healthy and keeping an eye on your calorie intake matters!

Weight Loss Success: Are You Buying the Best Products? Part Two