Our Overall Score: 2.75 Amanda: 3.5| Sean: 2.0 Special Diets: Vegetarian, Dairy Free Overall Satiation: Not Enough Amanda: Still hungry | Sean: Still hungry Our Total Cooking Time: ~30 mins | Reported Cooking Time: 20 mins Our Servings: 2 (1 meal each) | Reported Servings: 4 After having Budget Bytes' chicken version of this dish, we decided to try the vegetarian version - Soy Glazed Eggplant. Ingredient breakdown (recipe (her cost)| what we used (our cost at Aldi via Instacart)):
Her Cost per Serving: $0.97 | Our Cost per Serving: $1.28 Nutrition Breakdown This dish has a few star nutrients along with a high fat content. As usual, the data below if from Happy Forks. I imported Budget Bytes' required ingredients along with 2 cups of white rice. The serving size is based off our serving size. The Nutrition Pros Let's go over a few nutrients! Manganese Like the Forks Over Knives' Garden Tomato Soup with Chickpeas, this dish is high in manganese, which is a component for enzyme reactions related to metabolism, bone growth, reproduction and the immune response. The primary contributors to this dish are the ginger and garlic. Sodium As you would expect, the soy sauce was the main contributor for sodium, but this dish has just the right amount of sodium that you barely go over your day's worth. According to Medline Plus, sodium is necessary for bodily functions, such as nerve and muscle function, along with maintaining homeostasis of fluids in the body. Adults, however, shouldn't have more than 2.3 grams of sodium per day. Although your kidneys typically regulate sodium levels, if you consume more than the kidneys can handle, you end up having higher amounts of sodium in your bloodstream, which can lead to hypertension, or high blood pressure. Total Lipid (Fat) The primary contributor to this dish's fat content is the olive oil with a bit of help from the soy sauce. You've probably heard from other sources that olive oil is a great, healthy fat, because of its high levels of monounsatured fat and polyunsaturated fats. Hint: Omega- 3 and omega-6 are polyunsaturated fats. Together, these fats may be able to lower cholesterol and improve insulin levels and blood sugar. Ipso facto, they could possibly help reduce your risk of heart disease and Type 2 diabetes, but like everything, olive oil should be used in moderation. You can find all this information and more at Mayoclinic.org. Omega 6: Omega 3 As previously mentioned, omega-6 and -3 are polyunsaturated fats, largely coming from the olive oil in this dish. There is, however, a large amount of omega-6 in the soy sauce. In olive oil, there's more omega-3s for every omega-6. Now, I just finished saying that these were good fats, but it's a bit more complicated than that. According to Healthline.com, "scientists believe omega-6s are pro-inflammatory, while omega-3s are anti-inflammatory". Thus, you can picture the interaction like a see-saw, in this dish's case, it's leaning towards more omega-6s, or more inflammation. Inflammation is at the root of many diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, Alzheimers, certain cancers, and the list goes on. It's bad news. Inflammation is necessary for helping combat infections and injuries, but too much of it is when you start to see damage done. Bottom-line - try to keep your omega-6 to omega-3 ratio low. We should have already gone into this dish, knowing that soy sauce wasn't going to be healthy, but now you have a better idea why. Our Thoughts
Now, let's put nutrition aside and just focus on taste and preparation. First, preparation was very easy. The most difficult part is cutting up the eggplant, which wasn't difficult at all. As for taste, from the first to last bite, my tongue tingled from the salt. I highly recommend having this with rice to spread out the flavor and help give your mouth a break from sodium. I finished mine; Sean, however, complained after the first bite, saying it was too salty. He ended up eating just the rice, and I finished up his eggplant. As a side note, we don't typically put much salt in our dishes, so it could be that our taste buds are a tad bit more sensitive. Also, remember we used reduced sodium soy sauce. Now, just imagine how regular soy sauce would be. Be cautious about the sodium and this dish could be fine. #pass #budgetbytes #asian #vegetarian #dairyfree
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Our Overall Score: 2.0 Amanda: 2.0 | Sean: 2.0 Current Forks Over Knives Score Special Diets: Vegan, Vegetarian, Dairy Free, Gluten Free Overall Satiation: May or may not be enough Amanda: Satisfied | Sean: Still hungry Our Total Cooking Time: ~1 hour | Reported Cooking Time: 1 hour 10 mins Our Servings: 4 (2 meals each) | Reported Servings: 7 cups (can't compare apples to oranges) There's no photo for this one, because there wasn't really any way to make this one appealing. This week, Sean and I tried Forks over Knives' Garden Tomato Soup with Chickpeas. Ingredient breakdown (recipe| what we used (cost at Aldi via Instacart)):
Nutrition Breakdown Health-wise this dish is up there. The nutrition details below are based off the original recipe ingredients (not what we ended up purchasing) and the serving size that met our needs. About the Major Nutritional Benefits of this Dish In this section, I'm just going to point out the health benefits of the nutrients in green. Vitamin C According to a Harvard newsletter, Vitamin C is important for the immune system, bone growth, iron absorption and healthy skin. Our bodies are unable to produce our own Vitamin C, so we can thank tomatoes for providing with large amounts of it. The Recommended Dietary Allowance for vitamin C is 90 milligrams for men and 75 milligrams for women per day. One tomato, which weighs an average of about 0.125 pounds, has about 14 mg of Vitamin C, so this entire dish has about 477 mg of Vitamin C and a quarter of the dish (one serving for us) has at least 100 mg, more than enough of your daily dose, whether you're male, female or however you identify. Then, add the Vitamin C content from red bell peppers and you're set. Vitamin A (Provitamin A) Here, I specify provitamin A, which is unique to fruits, vegetables, and plants and typically exists as beta-carotene. Our bodies convert beta-carotene into Vitamin A, which then helps with the immune system, vision, reproduction, cellular growth and differentiation (https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminA-HealthProfessional/). For this recipe, we have the red bell peppers to thank for the high levels. According to the National Institutes of Health, 1 cup of red bell peppers provides 94% of your daily vitamin A, so if we divide this by 4, pretending that each serving had an equal amount of red bell peppers, we actually only get 23.5% of our daily vitamin A. So I'm having my doubts about the accuracy of this Happy Forks data *rubs chin while squinting*, if you can find the error, let me know in the comments below! Manganese Alright, hopefully this comes out supported, unlike the vitamin A. For this recipe, we can thank the pumpkin seeds for the manganese. Manganese is involved in numerous enzymatic reactions, and when combined with these enzymes, together they are involved with metabolism, bone growth, reproduction, and immune response. Our Thoughts
Described as a vibrant summertime soup, the only hint of summer was the call for a lifeguard to save this soup from drowning in itself. Demanding 3 pounds of tomato, which we thankfully fell short of by half a pound, this soup was just that, tomatoes. As Sean concisely put it, "too much tomato." Not even salt could save this sour sucker. I felt like crying while eating this sad, watery meal. Never again. Perhaps you love tomatoes, you might not after this one. I'm not sure if the type of the tomato would have a difference (if you're a more experienced home cook or an actual chef, comment and let us know), but Roma tomatoes definitely did not make the cut. The pumpkin seeds helped a little, but all I know is that Sean and I avoided eating leftovers for a full 24 hours. Instead, this whole mishap contributed to us spontaneously eating out for a few meals. The issue with this soup is that it needed more aromatics to detract from what it was - a blended mess of tomatoes. If you think about it, 3 lbs of tomatoes is equal to 48 oz, 1 cup of onions is about 5 oz and 1 cup of bell peppers is about 6 oz, so the base of this soup is 81% tomato ((48/(48+5+6)) * 100%), 8% onions ((5/(48+5+6)) * 100%), and 6% bell peppers ((6/(48+5+6)) * 100%). That's a whole lot of tomatoes. Some onions and garlic could have really helped this recipe, but the recipe creators were trying to avoid using oil, which making aromatics, well, problematic. Adding a base would have also helped to balance the high acidity of the dish. I wouldn't even try this one again, but that's our opinion. Maybe you give it a try and like it. Surely a few other people seemed to be okay with it, as shown in the Forks Over Knives rating. Comment below if you gave this one a try and what you thought about it. Heck, try to come up with a better metaphor than our lifeguard one, whether it's positive or negative. #pass #forksoverknives #tomato #chickpeas #soup #vegan #vegetarian #dairy free #gluten free |
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