I do believe in "resting," so the Sunday post will be short. It will still contain the Food of the Day, which I mislabeled as the Food of the Week yesterday. But it was Pizza, which is such a wonderful food that it was hard for me to give Pizza just one day.
FOOD OF THE DAY: SAUSAGE
Sorry to be a downer on a Sunday, but most sausage is not that great for you. However, I just had 6 breakfast sausage links and they were damn good! Loaded with saturated fat and salt, sausages cannot possibly be said to be "heart healthy." And many commercially available sausages have sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite preservatives, which MAY (it has not been definitively proven) slightly increase the risk for stomach and other cancers.
The good news is that the universe of sausages (like the Universe in general according to Stephen Hawking and others), is EXPANDING continually. So now you can find sausages made of things other than pork and pig fat. For example, a recent trip to Costco allowed me to witness the following:
1. Locally-made pork sausage that had NO nitrate or nitrite preservatives
2. Turkey and chicken sausages with less fat, some with fruit such as apples mixed in
3. Soy and tofu sausages of various sorts with low sodium and almost NO fat!
My advice is simple:
1. If you like pork-sausage, get locally made sausage without preservatives, and eat it no more than 2 times per month.
2. If you eat sausage several times per week, buy turkey-apple, chicken, or soy-based sausages.
SAUSAGE: BENEFITS
-Lots of iron and protein. Premenstrual and pregnant women are much more likely than others to be iron deficient, so I advise them to eat sausage more often (IF they can find preservative-free sausage).
-Stores well. Freeze it for months, thaw it out, and when cooked it tastes the same as fresh sausage.
-You can make your own if you are handy with intestines and ground meat.
-A little goes a long way. A single Italian sausage can really "pork up" pasta and red sauce for 2 people!
-Healthier sausages are now pretty easy to find (see above).
SAUSAGE: DRAWBACKS
-Saturated fat from beef and pork are the worst fats for you in terms of cardiac health. Most sausages are loaded with this type of fat. If you have high cholesterol, you probably should indulge in pork sausage rarely, if at all.
-Nitrates and nitrites, the preservatives in most mass-produced commercial sausages, MAY increase your blood pressure and your risk of getting gastrointestinal cancers.
-You could theoretically get a pork tapeworm or a case of E. coli from undercooked sausage, though reports of this are very rare.
-Sausage is like bacon- you might want to eat a serving but if it's around, you may find yourself eating 2 or 3 servings like I did this morning.
THANKS TO MY BROTHER RANDY WHO DOES THE GRAPHICS FOR THIS BLOG!!!!
And to all: have a wonderful Sunday and I'll see you here tomorrow.
1 comment:
My oh my, this blog has just about everything I look for in a website: a daily food item, a weekly fashion item, a smattering of healthful tip and an unfortunate picture of what at first glance looks like the sidewalk in front of chinese food/donut shops at wee hours of the morning (thanks for that Randy). But it's missing one very important feature: information and photos on Dr Tofuhead's spawn: Tofutie Cutie. Please advise.
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