Diet Log: Week 9, Day 2

You're only fooling yourselves

I always like to try new things - especially when it comes to food, so I am looking at this week as kind of a culinary adventure. Whith that in mind, I went to the store yesterday and stocked up on some Vegetarian meals. Namely, Veggie Burgers, Soy Protein burgers, Veggie Dogs, Soy Protein Dogs, Soy Protein, Soy Cheese (American AND Swiss flavor), and Soy Protein Sausages. I sprinkled in a couple of different brands. Now, if you read any of the Vegan propoganda out there (which is, by the way, possibly the most arrogant propoganda I have ever read), they would tell you that all this stuff tastes as good as meat, and is better for you. Now, the claim that this stuff (especially the soy stuff)tastes just as good as the real thing is obviously nonsense - but, I thought, maybe it tastes OK. So I figured I would give it a try.

For dinner, I got some Morningstar Farms Grillers Prime Veggie Burgers, and since I wanted to hedge my bets a little bit a pack of "smart dogs" soy-protein dogs. The plan was to eat one of each, but my wife cooked up two burgers by accident, so I ended up with 2 burgers and one dog. As it turned out this was a fortunate accident, but I am getting ahead of myself. I also got some soy cheese to put on the burgers.

First up was the "smart dogs".
Now, I LOVE hot dogs. So I was looking forward to having one that was only 80 calories. If it was tasty, I could eat 5 or six of them in an average meal and still be ahead of the game. I took the first bite and was immediately dissappointed - it was mushy. A good hot dog must have the right texture that kind of "snaps" when you bite into it. As the flavor started to hit me, I was more than disappointed. I was grossed out. This was quite possibly the most disgusting thing I have ever tasted. The only reason I didn't spit it out was because I was in my living room and the fastest way to get rid of the taste was to swallow it quickly rather than rush to the kitchen. ugh. I have 4 more left over that I have no idea what I'm going to do with. That's $3 down the drain. (not only are they gross, they are expensive, which may be the most offensive thing to me of all) Maybe I will try to trick my kids into eating them. If all vegetarian food is like this, I am beginning to see why it is a good weight-loss technique. You are way too grossed out to keep eating.

Alright, on to the veggie burgers. (Insert picture here later when Blogger stops acting stupid). These were actually not too bad. They were very dry, and didn't have that much flavor (which I fixed by adding a lot of ketchup), and I could not tell any difference between the "american" soy cheese and the "swiss" soy cheese, but at least it was edible. I would say it was like if you are at a barbecue and everybody finished eating a couple of hours ago, and there was that last one on the plate that nobody wanted because it was a little overcooked, and it's been sitting around for a couple of hours..... Not bad if you are hungry, but not anybody's first choice for flavor. Here is my problem with it. I compared the Nutrional information to a regular ground beef patty (75% lean - pretty much the fattiest meat you can buy):

............."real" beef ........Veggie(pro-rated) ......Veggie (Actual)

serv. size ..3 oz (cooked) .......3 oz......................2.5 oz
Calories ....191..................204.......................170
(from fat) ..114..................96.........................80
Total Fat ...12.7g...............10.8g.......................9g
Saturated ...4.9g.................1.2g.......................1g
poly .........3g..................4.8g.......................4g
mono ........5.8g.................4.8g.......................4g
Chol .......63.9mg.................0..........................0
Sodium .....67 mg................432g.......................360mg
Pot.........247.9mg..............192mg......................160mg
Carbs.........0...................4.8g.......................4g
Protein ....18.1g................20.4g..................... 17g

The only REAL advantage I see here is maybe the cholesterol. So if you have a cholesterol problem, and you really love dried burgers that don't have much flavor, I guess you should go for it. (This is, of course, if you don't have a sodium restriction as well - if you do, you are just plain out of luck) For the rest of us, I don't really see the point.

My point is - I just don't get it. If you have a conviction about being a vegetarian, rock on - but why bother pretending that you can have all of these meat substitutes? They DON't taste that good, and they are not particularly better for you. There are many delicious non-meat food products out there in their natural form - just eat those and be happy.

Workout: 45 minutes on the treadmill. My wrists and forearms are killing me today, so I skipped the pushups, but I did up the situps to 60.

Weigh-In: -21. I guess my cheese-filled brats and root beer float weekend didn't do that much damage after all.

Breakfast: 2 more apples. I don't know what happened, but my wife bought some delicious MACs the last time she was at the store. That is very rare for this time of year - usually the apples available do not have that declicious-fresh-off-the-tree flavor, but these ones did. They literally tasted like I had just picked them. 120 calories.

Lunch: A large, delicious veggie sub from D'angelos. About 600 Calories (mostly from the cheese and bread, I'm guessing).

Dinner: PREGO Vegetable lasagne. This was frankly not particularly low-calorie, nor was it low-fat. It WAS actually pretty good though, probably because it wasn't pretending to be something it's not. About 700 Calories

Total for the day: 1420