Hey Reader!
In the 38th issue of The MF Kitchen, you'll slice into the details of:
- Recipes for my Queso Beef Chalupas and Fruity Pebble Mini Protein Ice Cream Cakes!
- One of the most popular bite-sized food creations...
- Are artificial sweeteners really that bad? Here's the truth...
- New macro-friendly food exceeds my expectations!
Preheat your ovens…
Weekly Recipe Roundup 🍽️
Queso Beef Chalupas
These Queso Beef Chalupas are only 257 calories with 28 protein!
Aka this whole plate is only 514 calories!
Click below to download the recipe and make it easy yourself:
Queso Beef Chalupas.pdf
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Fruity Pebble Mini Protein Ice Cream Cakes
If you are looking for a 3 ingredient, no-bake dessert, that is incredibly easy to make...
These protein mini ice cream cakes are perfect!
Click below to download the recipe and make it easy yourself:
Fruity Pebble Protein Mini Ice Cream Cakes.pdf
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Recipe Recreations Of The Week 🤌
Chalupa Gang is STRONG! Buffalo Chicken, Queso Beef & BBQ Chicken! Let me know which flavors you want me to make next.
Buffalo Chicken
👉 https://www.instagram.com/p/C4djELtrrQv/
Queso Beef
👉 Queso Beef Chalupas.pdf
BBQ Chicken
👉 https://www.instagram.com/p/C897d9jOdc4/
And if you’ve made any recipes lately, hit reply and let me know what you thought!
Zach's Beats 🎧
Weird Food Fact 🤓
In the US, we love us some BIG meals.
Everything here is supersized.
Well it used to be haha.
The uptick in inflation had brands sneakily giving MUCH less food than they used to.
Alright what the heck am I getting at?
There is something we love more than supersized here in the US.
It’s bite-sized.
And amongst the bite-size revolution, a new category of food was created.
In the 1950s, we had the birth of the...
Chicken Nugget!
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But have you ever wondered how these bite-sized beauties came to be?
I had never really dove into it but spoiler alert, it’s a lot weirder than you think 😅
Let’s set the stage.
Picture it: post-WWII America, where convenience was king, and the fast-food revolution was just getting started.
Enter Robert C. Baker, a food scientist at Cornell University.
Before Baker’s invention, chicken was mostly consumed on the bone.
But Baker had a vision:
Deboned chicken that could be shaped, breaded, and fried in any way you wanted.
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His breakthrough was a unique method that ground up chicken meat, mixed it with a special binder (aka “meat glue”), and then shaped it into the perfect nugget size.
“Meat Glue” wtf is that?
*Meat Glue enters the room.
“Transglutaminase is my name thank you very much!”
What is it exactly?
A lot of science jargon to sort through but here is my short concise version:
It’s an enzyme.
And enzymes are proteins that speed up chemical reactions (and in the case of transglutaminase) it works by creating cross-links between proteins.
Specifically, transglutaminase links glutamine and lysine residues in proteins which causes them to bind together.
This process is what allows smaller pieces of meat or proteins to "stick" and form a cohesive product, like a chicken nugget.
So, while it may sound like a "glue," it's actually a biological protein cross-linker.
DUH 🤣
My initial thought after reading all this was, “WTF is in the chicken nugget though!"
Did they just use this “meat glue” to throw scraps of chicken no one eats into a chicken nugget? 🥴
From what they say, no. Supposedly it was always chicken breast for the most part due to people liking the taste/texture better.
Haha I know you and I have our suspicions.
“All white meat...” SURE McDonalds!
So that’s why I make my nuggies at home with a fraction of the calories (32 calories per nuggy!)
And they are incredibly easy to make with endless flavor combinations!
Here are a few of my favorites to give a try:
One FAQ ❓
Question from Bill (Pinole, California):
“What’s the deal with artificial sweeteners? Are they really that bad for you, or is it all bad publicity?”
Answer: My answer and tactical advice here might surprise you.
This isn’t your typical “artificial sweeteners are ok” response.
And first, I want to share a name for artificial sweeteners I heard many many years ago that’s stuck in my head and makes me chuckle.
“Satan’s sugar.”
Brilliant branding tbh!
But are artificial sweeteners that bad? Kinda.
First, let’s cover what are “artificial sweeteners?”
They are called non-nutritive sweeteners that are a virtually zero-calorie alternative to regular sugar.
AND big point here is that they are usually 200-700 times sweeter than table sugar so only a super tiny amount has to be used to create the same level of sweetness that sugar provides.
The most common are aspartame, sucralose (Splenda), stevia, and monk fruit.
- Aspartame is most common in diet sodas
- Sucralose is most common in lower-calorie food products
- Stevia is used in the “healthier” options like soda or food (same with monk fruit)
There is a massive rabbit hole I could go down with all this setting context but let’s just get into the facts.
Water...
If you’ve ever tried to drink a gallon of water in a day, you know that shit is pretty hard and annoying.
And too much water can be bad for you leading to poor micronutrient absorption.
And tooooooo much water can lead to water intoxication which can kill you.
The same analogy needs to be applied to artificial sweeteners.
Let’s use aspartame to help paint this picture.
For aspartame, one of the most common artificial sweeteners, the safe ADI (average daily intake) is around 50 mg per kilogram of body weight per day in the U.S. (or 40 mg/kg in the EU). To put that into perspective:
- A typical 12-ounce (355 mL) can of diet soda contains about 180 mg of aspartame.
- For a person weighing around 150 pounds (68 kg), the ADI would be approximately 3,400 mg of aspartame per day.
- That would translate to roughly 19 cans of diet soda per day to reach the ADI.
And this isn’t to have a negative impact on your health for one day.
This would need to be consumed over many many years to have a negative effect.
19 cans of soda are about 1.78 gallons of liquid.
That would need to be a full-time job to consume that much.
AND granted, if you are consuming that much diet soda (or even 25% of that amount), I think you have MUCH bigger problems to deal with.
So do I think you should not give AF about artificial sweeteners?
Kinda.
I want zero negative impact. I don’t necessarily 10000% trust the FDA's regulation.
Lol not a conspiracy theorist but would rather just be safe.
The research about aspartame (and all other artificial sweetener research) is the effect of only that artificial sweetener.
What I mean is that your body doesn’t just group them all into “artificial sweeteners.”
They are all metabolized differently.
So I like to vary my intake to spread out the risk.
I’ll go with aspartame or stevia for my sodas.
Sucralose or stevia for my recipes.
Don’t really use monk fruit much (not my favorite because of the taste).
So by diversifying my artificial sweetener intake, I spread out that risk to virtually negate it to zero.
And I believe IF it is providing even the slightest bit of health risk, the happiness it provides via the drinks/foods I am able to consume with it outweighs that tremendously.
A perfect diet (if that even exists) that is full of stress is FAR worse than one that is good enough and makes you happy/less stressed.
80/20 all day, errrrday vs. 100% and stressed.
Stress is what kills us.
If a diet soda or two a day really brings you happiness and helps you to stay at a healthy body fat percentage, then it WILL help you live a longer life.
Life is ALL pros vs cons.
Hope this helps!
One question I’d love to hear your answer to is which sweeteners do you use in recipes most?
Want to take a poll of which are the most popular amongst this community.
Serving Surprise 😮
ALL the way back in issue #4 of the Macro Friendly Kitchen (what you are reading right now), I talked about how awesome popcorn is as a high-volume/macro-friendly option.
I love me some popcorn!
So when I saw these at the store claiming to be BETTER than popcorn, I had to call their bluff and give them a try.
150 calories seems ehh when it’s only for 28g.
But just like popcorn, grams don’t tell the whole story because of how light they are.
The battle of volume vs weight.
So what does a serving size actually look like?
NOT TOO SHABBY! That’s 50 pieces for 150 calories.
But how do they taste?
They are indeed “like air” like what they claim to be lol.
They have a subtle crunch and definitely melt in your mouth
Flavor is pretty good.
Overall, they exceeded my expectations!
I think they are worth snagging a bag to test them out.
Any other products you think are underrated as macro-friendly options that I should try next? Let me know!
To give you a little update, I'm still getting through the 1300+ replies you all sent last week.
Whether you were or weren't one of those people, just know your feedback is always appreciated.
I want to make eating delicious food while reaching your goals as easy as possible for you.
So anytime you have questions or want to see me talk more about something specific, just reply to an email and let me know!
I do actually read all of them (it just might take me a week or two to respond 😁).
Your macro-friendly pal,
Zach
