A couple of years ago I wrote about two related strategies for reducing the number of calories in a dish. The first was to enhance flavor by choosing lower calorie, high-flavor ingredients. The second, and more difficult, strategy was to pay careful attention to those ingredients that have more calories by weight and to use them very carefully.
As it turned out, a recent study had compared the overall daily caloric intake for subjects on four different diets:
A standard diet;
75% of the calories of the standard diet but same weight;
Same calories as standard, but 75% of weight;
75% of calories and 75% of weight as standard
All three of the variations of the standard diet saw the participants eating fewer calories overall. The catch, however, is that for all of the non-standard meals, the subjects were presented with smaller portions or reduced-fat versions of their meals, or both. The subjects still found the foods to taste as good and be as satisfying as the standard diet.
In a significant twist on this research, researchers at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health compared foods made with beef with the same foods made with ground mushrooms….
