At The Naked Kitchen our goal has always been in creating whole food based, sustainable, nutrient-rich recipes and meals that everyone will love and enjoy. Counting calories, tracking fat and carbs and measuring sodium levels has never been our focus. Instead we want to encourage people to make their food choices count rather than count their food.
After being asked repeatedly to post nutritional facts on our recipes we finally gave in and started posting the data. Recently we stopped posting such information and many readers are left wondering why. In general, we are not fans of nutrition facts on recipes or packaged products. Neither label tells you anything about the health and nutritional properties of the actual food. Take a Lean Cuisine meal – Butternut Squash Ravioli. It has 260 calories, 7 grams of fat and 40 grams of carbs. How can you go wrong with 260 calories? Well, let me show you… what’s actually contained in those 260 calories? If you take a look at the ingredients list for this meal you’ll find that most of what you are putting in your body is modified chemicals and byproducts – yum! There is very little real nutrition in this meal and because you aren’t feeding your body real food it will most likely be hungry again in a very short time. I’m pretty sure a serving size of our Butternut Squash Lasagna has more than 260 calories, 7 grams of fat and 40 grams of carbs but with one serving you are providing your body with nutrient rich butternut squash, spinach, tomatoes and macadamia nuts.
Our views on calories and their effects on our body have been skewed and misdirected for so long now that we’ve forgotten how to eat healthy. If you have a 100 calorie apple in one hand and a 100 calorie pack of cookies in the other and you view this as the same – you can see where our erroneous judgement in calorie counting begins. All calories are not created equal!
When calories are burned in a laboratory they are indeed created equal and the same amount of energy is released. In a lab environment, there is no difference between 250 calories of apples and 250 calories of apple pie. If only our bodies worked the same way. Apples and apple pie are absorbed by our bodies at completely different rates and have different amounts of nutrients, fiber, fats, protein, carbs, vitamins – all these things affect health, weight, hunger and metabolic rate at the cellular level. When you eat more nutrients per calorie you’ll be better protected against disease, you’ll weigh less and be less hungry.
Remember, your body will continue to crave food/calories until you supply it with the nutrients it needs. The more nutrients you provide your body, the less hungry you will be. Calories are not created equal which is why at The Naked Kitchen we’ll continue to provide you with recipes and meals that will nourish your body. We hope you understand our decision to focus on real, nutrient rich food and less on nutrition facts and labels.
~Sarah and Kristy
