Diabetes salad dressings

How to season a salad? Vegetable oil, vinegar or mayonnaise, or sour cream. This answer to the question posed can be heard from almost every second person.

Let’s start with vinegar

Let’s start with vinegar, which, according to the same “folk wisdom,” if not for money, then sweet. Both for money and for free – sour vinegar. For the simple reason that vinegar is an aqueous solution of acetic acid obtained from the fermentation of wine (ethyl) alcohol. Depending on the raw material, grape vinegar, alcoholic vinegar, fruit vinegar, etc., are distinguished, its origin and concentration in percent are indicated on the labels. If you come across the name “flavored vinegar” in a recipe, then it is vinegar that is infused with some herb or roots. It should be borne in mind that acetic acid in large quantities has a negative effect on the body, therefore it is better to use wine vinegar or fruit vinegar of low concentration.

Lemon juice

Another solution to acidifying salad dressings is lemon juice. Citric acid has a pronounced antimicrobial effect, and also improves the functioning of the digestive tract. And if you are a thrifty person, then use all the lemon, pulp and zest in the dressing, this will not spoil your salad at all, and in some cases it will even be a highlight in the taste. Lemon is a storehouse of vitamin C, which protects against free radicals and breaks down cholesterol. Also, this vitamin is necessary for the formation of collagen protein, which strengthens the cells of blood vessels, bone tissue, skin and promotes wound healing.

I rarely use vinegar in salads. In addition to lemon, I add red currant berries to salads. I use this berry from a number of all-season products. During the fruiting period, I use the berries fresh, and for the rest of the time I freeze them in plastic jars. Red currant is a rich source of pectin substances. Pectin, forming complex salts, removes toxic metals from the body. Berries contain a lot of potassium, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium. In smaller quantities – iron, copper, manganese, zinc, boron, lead, iodine. I add the frozen berries to the salad a few minutes before serving, so that they do not flow. They defrost in a salad in almost a matter of minutes. Can be added directly to salad and mixed with other ingredients, or sprinkled over salad as a decoration. You can also use sour black currants.

Butter

A popular proverb says: you can’t spoil porridge with butter. This is a controversial issue these days. What kind of butter, what kind of porridge, yes, by the way, and the good fellows are not the ones who used to eat porridge before. As for the salad, it is definitely possible to spoil it with butter, ‘if without measure and indiscriminately. So let’s figure it out, without delving into scientific research, what kind of oil and how much is needed for a good salad. In principle, oil can be squeezed out of any plant, or rather from its seeds. Here, for example, poppy oil (wonder how there is also oil in a poppy seed?), Or oil from grape seeds, or from watermelon seeds. Not all of the oils are used in cooking, some are only used in cosmetology. There are four most common types of oils that we use in cooking: sunflower (the most native and accessible), olive, corn and soy. We’re talking about salad oil.

Corn oil

Corn oil is more suitable for confectionery, making mayonnaise, preparing second and first courses, because it has a neutral taste, practically does not have it. In a salad, corn oil is just a fatty component with no taste. Soybean oil is very beneficial for hypertension and high cholesterol. It is prized for its high content of lecithin, linoleic and linolenic acids. These acids are essential fatty acids necessary for human life, this is a plus. Soybean oil is not everywhere and not always can be bought, this is a minus.

Sunflower oil and olive

And finally, two favorites are sunflower oil and olive oil. We say sunflower is our own. In fact, both sunflower and olive oil are emigrants. The homeland of the sunflower is North America, it came to us through a “window” to Europe as an ornamental plant to decorate gardens. But the oil from its seeds was squeezed out by the Russian peasant Daniil Bokarev. It was a long time ago, at the beginning of the 19th century, and it is very successful, we still press oil to this day. Unlike unrefined Daniel’s oil, they learned how to get refined oil (completely purified from impurities), deodorized (also from the characteristic smell and taste), by pressing, frozen (purified from wax and water). Unrefined oil with a pronounced color, taste and smell is not stored for long, after two months it loses its valuable properties, it cannot be fried on it (it foams a lot). The pressing method allows you to preserve vitamin E in a larger volume, protects the oil from oxidation. Frozen butter becomes transparent, while its aroma, taste and quality remain unchanged. By the way, about vitamin E, it is 12 times more in sunflower oil than in olive oil. And yet, olive oil is beginning to crowd out the position of sunflower on the tables of our population. Oh, how you want to be young and beautiful! Olive oil prevents cell withering. The Regional Mediterranean Diet is recognized by nutritionists in the world as one of the most acceptable diets for all regions. And not only because of the large amount of vegetables, fruits and fish, but also because the main source of fat in it is olive oil. Olive oil is the best friend of the digestive system, it is absorbed much better than all its “congeners”.

And the last point: vegetable oil is cholesterol-free, so the inscriptions on the labels of vegetable oils “cholesterol-free” are nothing more than a test of your vigilance. Vegetable oil helps lower cholesterol in our body.

It remains to combine the fatty with the sour, and the simplest salad dressing is ready. But for us, especially lazy ones, the French came up with a universal salad dressing, which does not need to be mixed with anything, this is mayonnaise. A product with a Shakespearean problem: to be or not to be? In the sense – is it or is it harmful? If the mayonnaise is of high quality and is made from natural products, then it is absolutely harmless. Mayonnaise itself is harmless, but the vinegar, mustard, spices included in it are already for especially healthy people. If history does not deceive us, the original version of mayonnaise was made from olive oil, turkey eggs, lemon juice, sugar and salt. It is tasty and, most importantly, it is not clear whether it is good or bad, but high in calories. What we have for the present period is a light version, light mayonnaise. The composition of light mayonnaise, in addition to the standard ones, includes the following components: sorbic acid, modified starch, stabilizers and emulsifiers, sodium benzoate. In addition, egg cholesterol yolk is replaced by plant components, for example, soy protein. And then there were supplements of dietary fiber, vitamins, minerals, bifidobacteria. I don’t understand the idea of ​​industrial chefs with these vitamin and mineral supplements. Mayonnaise is a sauce, you need to eat it with something, specifically with a salad. Is there nothing of this in the salad? Or another question for filling. Soy protein without cholesterol, but what about the GM label, indicating that soy is genetically modified? Briefly about DIK. Today science has the ability not only to decipher the code of the DNA molecule, but also to model it. Certain genes of one organism are allocated and “implanted” into another. At the same time, the new product acquires completely new properties. Soy was one of the first experimental products. That is why we say: we eat veal-flavored soy meat. Biotechnology works, but no one can say how it all gets along with our human body. Doctors agree that, of course, soy is a healthy product, but grown in their own garden. Get a cow – your milk, breed chickens – your eggs, grow a piglet – your meat, grow vegetables, fruits (we won’t talk about taxes) and sleep well. And in the morning I got up, the wind came with a cloud of Chernobyl dust, the rain passed from the cloud, and the dream disappeared like a hand, especially calm. Chernyshevsky – what to do? Try to LIVE, and above all not cut the branch on which you are sitting, and, figuratively speaking, give it to the “lumberjacks” yourself. So you sit and think: this diabetes is not so terrible, because you need to be picky with food with this disease. And on the other hand, perhaps diabetes is progressing so much on the globe, because there is steel without any consideration of quality and cooking technology.

Mayonnaise

I don’t know what decision you will make regarding mayonnaise, but I use fatty mayonnaise from a good manufacturer (I will not advertise) in small quantities. For some reason, we do not think, when we fill the salad with vegetable oil (with two tablespoons), that it is 306 kcal at once (sunflower oil), and two tablespoons of mayonnaise 36 g (a tablespoon – 18 g), this is 257 kcal with the fattest mayonnaise with calorie content 714 kcal. So why is vegetable oil good, and mayonnaise is bad, if the main component, up to 65% in the total composition, in this very mayonnaise is the same vegetable oil, and of the highest quality. You can, of course, learn how to make mayonnaise yourself, the technology is not very complicated, but it has its own characteristics. The recipe can be found in many cookbooks. In the salad recipes I offer, I use mayonnaise, although in reality I often replace it with various dressings. Such a replacement has practically no effect on energy indicators, because, as a rule, it is supplements of herbs, garlic, spices.

There are one-time salad dressings, and there are those that can be used two or three times if stored in the refrigerator.