Is Subway Healthy?

Subway. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was thinking about picking up a Subway sandwich, I watched The Biggest Loser and they were eating Subway.  We’ve all heard of Jared who lost weight eating Subway and walking.  We are bombarded with how “healthy” of a choice it is.  I do suppose that compared to McDonald’s or Taco Bell it is probably a healthier option but is it really “healthy?”

Instead of blindly running down there at lunch to fulfill a void I decided to research what I was going to be eating.  Most places these days have ingredient lists on their websites as well as nutrition facts.  I wanted to know what exactly is in their bread, is that a healthy option for me?  I found a PDF on their site giving the ingredients, check them out http://www.subway.com/Nutrition/Files/usProdIngredients.pdf

The first thing I noticed was the famous word “enriched.”  All their bread is made from enriched flour, sounds good enough right?  What exactly is enriched flour?  Basically they remove all the natural God-given nutrients from the flour to make a finer flour that also has a longer shelf life.  Then in an attempt to make it healthy they add back the nutrients they just removed.  Here is something interesting I found “When the bran and the germ (the parts of the wheat that contain vitamins and minerals) are removed, your body absorbs wheat differently. Instead of being a slow, steady process through which you get steady bursts of energy, your body breaks down enriched flour too quickly, flooding the blood stream with too much sugar at once. Your body then has to work hard to absorb the excess and stores it as fat. This causes quick highs and lows in your blood-sugar level which can lead to type-two diabetes and obesity. All this and you’re not even getting close to the amount of nutrients that whole grains contain.” Source: http://www.bhawkindustries.com/blank?pageid=174&catstart=0&prodstart=0  Sure sounds “healthy” to me, what about you?

Ok so we know the enriching process is a bad deal, what else can we find on their list?  Soybean Oil.  We know from GMO class that soybeans are pretty much all GMO unless they are Organic.  Sorry Subway… you lose again.  Then we see “yeast nutrients” which from my research is just a hidden way to put some yummy MSG in our food.  See hidden sources for MSG here.  Plus we have “natural flavor” again a good hiding place for MSG and “caramel color” which is what exactly?  Certainly that must be natural right?

I wasn’t giving up though.  I thought ok, so there must be one option on their menu that would be healthy.  I scrolled down and read “honey oat bread” I saw organic cane juice solids there, now we are on to something!  But after further reading they use the same “wheat bread” as a base for almost every bread they make.  There are no healthy bread options at Subway.  At which point I became discouraged and quit reading.  I figure if I can’t get a healthy sandwich at a place that is supposed to sell healthy sandwiches, then I didn’t need anything from them.  *sigh*  I have to admit I was pretty disappointed, I thought for sure with as healthy as we are being told these guys are that there would be a healthy sandwich option.

Just goes to show you that reading ingredients is very important.  I used to love to be blind to the things I was stuffing my face with, but no more.  It seems like now I’m obsessed in a completely different way, and I have to tell you I like this new Corri!

 

 

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Free EBook: Soaking Grains

 

Let’s call today Free Friday!  I just love free 🙂  I have downloaded this Ebook a while ago and was reminded of it today.  It’s called Is Your Flour Wet?  It talks all about the importance of soaking our grains,  why and it gives recipes too! No need to be in the US for this free item! Check it out and reference it often 🙂

http://theprairiehomestead.com/isyourflourwet.pdf

 

Happy Free Friday!

 

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Inspired by Bloggers

I’ve been taking quite a bit of time to read other people’s blogs, what a fun world this is that we can read about what others are doing on the other side of the world!  I also enjoy that there are so many like-minded people.  Many people are “getting back to the land” and going more traditional in their cooking and eating.  I’ve read a couple this morning that really inspired me.  http://livegrownourishcreate.wordpress.com/ one of my blogging friends has a book that we both share, Nourishing Traditions.  My life gets off onto tangents a lot and I get lost in doing this or researching that.  Honestly in the natural traditional world it’s easy to find the next best thing and get off track.  I’ve been doing that recently with raw food.  Now, don’t get me wrong I think eating 51% of our meals raw is important, but I’m also losing touch that in fact the raw butter we use, and the raw milk we drink, are in fact…raw.  I was really inspired by this post: http://livegrownourishcreate.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/creamy-coconut-soaked-porridge/  I’m getting really lax soaking my grains.  This practice has got to stop and I started that with making some sourdough bread last night.

If you don’t have this book, I highly recommend it.  It’s huge and packed full of amazing recipes and ideas to eating more traditionally, less chemically, less artificially, more God given.  It seems so simple, eating fruit instead of fruit flavored candy.  Eating home-baked soaked grain, bread instead of the stuff that has to add BACK the nutrients to the flour, and add preservatives to keep it good on the shelf for two weeks.  True story:  Hubby had a friend who worked in a local flour mill.  This friend, Jack, would get us bags of freshly ground flour.  He could get two kinds, the whole wheat which was brown and lovely, and white which looked like every white processed flour there is out there.  But get this… after they milled the grain they had to then add back nutrients to the flour!  (read more about the milling process here)  That is why when you look at most breads and crackers you will see “enriched flour.”  What it’s basically saying is “fake processed flour” because they take out the God given nutrients to replace it with fake nutrients.  This is from the link I posted above “When grain is made into refined white flour, more than 30 essential nutrients are largely removed. Only four of those nutrients are added back in a process called “enrichment.” Using this same logic, if a person were robbed of 30 dollars and the thief then returned 4 dollars to his victim for cab fare home, then that person should be considered “enriched” by 4 dollars, not robbed of 26 dollars. How would you feel in that situation? You should feel the same about “enriched” white flour and bread? Only vitamins B₁, B₂, B₃, and iron are added back. Nutrients which are removed and not returned include 44% of the vitamin E, 52% of the pantothenic acid, 65% of the folic acid, 76% of the biotin, 84% of the vitamin B₆, and half or more of 20 minerals and trace elements, including magnesium, calcium, zinc, chromium, manganese, selenium, vanadium, and copper” (from http://www.drcranton.com/nutrition/bread.htm)  We are being robbed!  I just watched a webinar from GNOWFGLINS.com (they give free webinars so if you are interested sign up to receive notification in your email) about grain mills.  They are currently giving away a free grain mill (USA only…sorry my out of the country friends!) if you go to http://gnowfglins.com/2012/03/09/nutrimill-berries-giveaway/ you can sign up until this Sunday 3/18/12.  There are thousands who have entered, but everyone has a fair shot at it. 🙂

I’m planning on pulling out my Nourishing Traditions book this weekend and start going to town on recipes.  I’ll be posting some recipes and some photos as I go along.  Hope you enjoy the ride as much as I do 🙂

Hugs,

Corri

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Sourdough Success!

Fermented foods is my new passion.  I am learning a lot about it, how healthy it is for us, especially grains.  Most people who have issues with eating regular wheat flour can actually tolerate sourdough because the grains have been soaked and soured, it breaks down enzymes in the flour that are generally the cause of the intolerance.  I don’t seem to have issues with wheat, although I don’t know that for sure, I’ve never been tested.  However it is quite the “fad” to be gluten-free.   I made sourdough pizza for a friend who was gluten sensitive and he didn’t report any issues back after.  Anyway, I bought a sourdough Ebook from gnowfglins.com and got started right away getting my starter going.  The Ebook is awesome!  I highly recommend it, it has tons of recipes, tricks, and help for your sourdough needs.

After I got my starter ready I tried all types of things, rolls, pancakes, crackers, pizza.  But my favorite and the easiest is something they call Bucket Bread.  Basically it’s a combination of flour, water, and sourdough starter and you make a large batch of it and put it in, you guessed it, a bucket. 😉  I use a gallon bucket that use to hold our coconut oil.  My first few buckets were pretty good.  I got good rise on my dough and although there were a few doughy breads, for the most part I did well.  Then it stopped, I think maybe with the colder weather change.  But I’ve made two buckets (which is quite a bit of flour and several breads) and the stupid dough wouldn’t rise!  I’ve laughed at myself a lot calling them hockey pucks.  They have been perfect chew toys for the dogs, I’m sure they got quite a jaw work out too.  Hubby was always pretty generous and ate the bread anyway.  One turned out like a pancake and I left it out to rise and had nice bubbles on top, I couldn’t figure it out!  It was so frustrating.

Last night was the break through moment, thanks to Hubby.  I had the last bit of dough in my bucket, I’ve had ZERO success with this bucket, but I had to make the dough.  It was getting quite sour!  So I added a bit more flour, and then hubby suggested something, he actually said use some baking soda.  The light bulb went off!  When I make sourdough pancakes, I add baking soda to give it fluff.  What a wonderful idea!  So I eyeball and dump some in.  Instantly my dough started to get puffy!  I did a little dance. 🙂  Hubby came in later and said “did you put in baking powder?”  and I said “no baking soda.”  He had said soda but had meant powder, but just that little mix up gave me the ah-ha moment I needed.  We were actually out of power, so I’m glad I didn’t need that.  So I covered them (I made two loafs) for the first 15 minutes per the instructions, and hoped for the best.  After 15 minutes I took off the covers and they were looking plump and brown.  I had a fear of a doughy middle, like most of them have turned out recently so I left it in a bit longer, another 15 minutes.  When I pulled them out they looked fluffy, but with that same sourdough crisp crust.  One looked a little too done… so I dumped them on to the cutting board and sliced into the big one.  It was fluffy!!! YAHOO!!  It made my whole week actually, is that sad?  Taste test with Hubby and our friend turned out great, we put some raw butter on there with some homemade peach jam, er syrup, it didn’t quite set up right.  Everyone loved it and went back for more!  I found my solution to my hockey puck bread, and it was so wonderful.  I see lots of bread in our future.

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