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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