Sep 9th 2007 03:34 pm How to Lower Your Fat Intake Without Cutting out the Cheese
Cheese is extremely healthy for you, as long as you don’t eat too much of it. A single ounce provides over 200mg of calcium, about 20% of the daily recommended minimum. Natural cheese includes casein which provides us with a range of essential amino acids. Unfortunately most cheeses contain fairly high amounts of saturated fats.
We all know that saturated fats aren’t good for our health, they cause an increase in “bad” cholesterol and contain 9 calories per gram. Your calorie intake can quickly add up with just a relatively small portion of cheese.
Many people find it difficult to reduce their intake of cheese, it’s so convenient to pop a few slices into a sandwich, not to mention eating it as a tasty topping on pizza.
Vegetarians often find it easy to eliminate a lot of animal-based products from their diets, then find that cheese is everywhere. Going to a restaurant and finding something on the menu becomes a real challenge.
Low-fat cheeses can help solve these dilemmas.
Because cheese is a dairy product it’s possible for it to be made of different types of milk. Milks that are 2% less in fat percentage are considered low-fat. Skim milk contains 1% or less. This can make cheesemaking more tricky, but the products are still outstanding.
One potentially tricky aspect, though, is the different was high and low fat cheese melts.
On the whole low-fat cheeses don’t melt as smoothly as regular cheese. This is due to the lack of saturated fat molecules, also increased heat can cause low-fat cheese to burn.
In some cases, there are techniques to overcome this limitation. In casseroles, for example, layering the cheese between the strips of pasta can help. The pasta supports the low-fat cheese, which then doesn’t need to melt quite as smoothly. If you need to add cheese to the top of a dish, simply add it in later in the cooking cycle so that it’s not exposed to the heat for as long.
Alternating use of low-fat with regular cheese in this way can help reduce the total quantity of saturated fat consumed. Depending on your diet, that may be enough. Be prepared to sacrifice a little bit of taste, though. Making a low-fat cheese that tastes as good as the regular sort is still proving a challenge.
Posted by April / Food and Drink
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