"fat free" news and stories

Potato chips are, as a general rule, fried, greasy and unfortunately addictive, as illustrated by the longtime Lay's slogan "bet you can't eat just one. All these traits make them the bane of many health food activists' existences, but those same activists might go a little easier on the popular snack food if they knew you can easily make a non-fried, fat free version that is just as crispy as the "real" thing at home All you need is a microwave.

This Japanese potato chip maker allows you to make chips in the microwave. All you need to do is slice up a potato into fine rounds and place in the stand, then microwave until crisp.

It sounds implausible, but microwaving chips really does work. I've done it myself with great success thanks to the recipe for Uncle Bill's Microwave Potato Chips, which doesn't require a potato chip stand to work. The chips actually do crisp up well, especially if you take care to slice them thinly and evenly. In the photo above, the chips that I made are on the left, while the chips made with the chip-maker (not made by me) are on the right. I cut my potatoes freehand with a sharp knife, but using a mandoline will produce results even faster and guarantee consistency. Make sure to season your chips with salt and pepper or seasoning salt before microwaving them, as it is difficult to get the salt to adhere to already crisp chips.

The original pound cake got its name from the fact that it contained a pound of each of its basic ingredients: butter, sugar, flour and eggs. The average pound cake these days tends to be a bit more refined, using some sort of leavening agent in addition to eggs and often incorporating additional ingredients, such as vanilla, sour cream, heavy cream or even chocolate.

Pound cake, needless to say, is not a low fat food. It is dense, tender, buttery and something that is best eaten in small portions if you are watching what you eat. Of course, pound cake tastes so good that it can be hard to stop with just one slice. This recipe produces a lightened pound cake that is almost entirely fat free, so you don't have to stop with a mere sliver.

There are federal regulations in place that dictate how terms like "fat free," "low fat," "reduced fat" and "light," among others, can be used with regard to food. Fat free foods, for example, must contain less than .5 grams of fat per serving. It may seem like there is enough definition in this area of food labeling already, but a new label is catching on rapidly: the "lean" label.

For a long time, the "lean" label has been applied only to USDA certified meats that have less than 8 grams of total fat per serving, and no more than 3.5 mg of saturated fats. A recent ruling change means that the term can now be applied to packaged foods, putting it in direct competition with "fat free" and other existing labels for the consumer's attention at the grocery store.

Do consumers really need another way to describe the fat content of, say, frozen pizza? It would probably be too much to as that they just start printing the fat content right on the front of the box.

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There are a lot of foods that, usually because of their serving size, end up being "calorie free" according to the nutritional label on their package. Cooking sprays, which are oil in a pressurized can, are a good example of this because if you use a 1/3 second spray, you'll get no calories, but more sprays will start to add up. You can keep these foods calorie free by sticking religiously to the serving size. There are some other calorie-free "foods" that are made with, essentially, flavorings and water. So, some edible things are calorie free, but just because you can eat them doesn't mean you'll want to. Should you give them a try? The answer depends on what you're planning to eat. Hungry Girl bravely taste-tested four fat-free, calorie-free foods, including the bizarre sounding David Burke's Flavor Sprays, and found most of them to be lacking in more than calories. To find out which one(s) made her list of things worth trying, you'll have to read the reviews.

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While trying out light recipes is fun for those who love to bake, not to mention a satisfying way to know that you're not going to over-do the indulgences because the desserts are lighter/healthier than "normal" recipes, sometimes a boxed mix is convenient. For example, if you are at the home of a friend who owns no baking ingredients whatsoever, a mix with all the flour, sugar, leaveners and flavorings you need can come in handy. Mixes are also reliable, and even if you have a fool-proof favorite chocolate cake recipe, sometimes it's just easy to have a backup on hand.

The final reason to use a mix is that some of them taste good. And this is especially good to keep in mind when the good-tasting ones turn out to be fat free.