In today's ODT is an article about the chef Michael van de Elzen who is taking his message about healthy food to schools to encourage youngsters to cook and eat healthily. The article also promotes his latest book called Good from Scratch. I did a double take when I looked at one of his recipes printed in the paper, a berry walnut shortbread. The recipe calls for 1 cup of flour, 6 tablespoons icing sugar and a whopping 250 g butter as well as other ingredients and is supposed to serve six. I bet the slice will taste great but healthy? With that amount of butter? Not in my opinion. What do you think?

Edited to say that the headline for the article is called Tackling Obesity.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/24/2018 06:49AM by Chris.

I often wonder if these 'celebrities' or names, jump on a health bandwagon to promote their books and that is their tunnel vision to adopt a theme to stand out? ie Buy my book - I promote healthiness (but my recipes don't). Why not just promote the theme of teaching kids/people to cook from scratch?

It would seem that the book and the article aren't exactly well matched. I wouldn't call that recipe healthy either -- but perhaps preferable to a bag of biscuits from the supermarket with all sorts of preservatives and non-food in them. I wonder if that may have been the intent of the book, that you can cook well at home. But in that case, it shouldn't have been tied into an article on healthy eating and reducing obesity.

Jenna Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It would seem that the book and the article aren't
> exactly well matched. I wouldn't call that recipe
> healthy either -- but perhaps preferable to a bag
> of biscuits from the supermarket with all sorts of
> preservatives and non-food in them. I wonder if
> that may have been the intent of the book, that
> you can cook well at home. But in that case, it
> shouldn't have been tied into an article on
> healthy eating and reducing obesity.

My sentiments exactly, Jenna. I also feel that there are plenty of delicious recipes about without resorting to using what I consider a massive amount of butter for such a small amount of flour and just six servings.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/24/2018 11:29PM by Chris.

The most recent studies show that there is nothing unhealthy about butter, but I'd be concerned about the sugar and the flour.

I applaud the drive to help kids learn to cook, but surely there are savoury dishes that would be suitable instead of sugary snack food.

I'm not worried about any of it, as the recipe only makes six portions, so it's not like a packet of bought biscuits that you return to mindlessly time after time (and there will be no transfats in the recipe, but huge quantities in the biscuits). I think the point is that home baking isn't likely (these days) to be a regular thing, it takes time, and we're all time poor. So the occasional baked home treat in an otherwise healthy diet isn't problematic.

Ah well, looks like I am barking up the wrong tree here. We don't eat margarine in our house, only butter and I try to keep up with news about healthy eating. It's the sheer quantity of the butter in relation to the 1 cup of flour that got me. I shall climb off my soap box now.

I agree, Chris. I think the jury is still out on butter (there are plenty of experts who still say it contributes to heart disease and inflammation) and even if it was a healthy fat, it's still extremely dense in calories (as are all fats of course) and that can hardly help the obesity epidemic. I hardly ever bake cakes these days (sob!) but my own rule is not to make things that have more than 100g of butter or sugar.I tend to stick to old recipes as modern ones can have an astonishing amount of sugar in them. I came across one recently that had 500g! That's a LOT of sugar.

One of the interesting things about the science of whether animal fats contribute to heart disease or not is the people who are born with a genetic disorder called familial hypercholesterolemia. "The defect makes the body unable to remove low density lipoprotein (LDL, or bad) cholesterol from the blood. This results in a high level of LDL in the blood. This makes you more likely to have narrowing of the arteries from atherosclerosis at an early age." "The condition begins at birth and can cause heart attacks at an early age."

"Symptoms that may occur include:
Fatty skin deposits called xanthomas over parts of the hands, elbows, knees, ankles and around the cornea of the eye.
Cholesterol deposits in the eyelids (xanthelasmas).
Chest pain (angina) or other signs of coronary artery disease may be present at a young age.
Cramping of one or both calves when walking.
Sores on the toes that do not heal.
Sudden stroke-like symptoms such as trouble speaking, drooping on one side of the face, weakness of an arm or leg, and loss of balance."

The first step in trying to help these people is to change their diet - specifically eliminating saturated fat as much as possible.. Certainly in this case, saturated fat and its impact on cholesterol levels is heavily associated with heart disease and other health issues for these people.

Full info at [medlineplus.gov]

Interesting article, J1-

Shortbread recipes are usually 250g butter but I wonder at only 1 cup of flour to go with it... would that not be just a buttery sticky mess? I would think that you need 2 1/2 cups flour to absorb all the butter.
Also who bakes using a serving number. Baking is usually something like makes 30 biscuits or whatever it may be.
Is it biscuits or a shortbread dessert? still a funny proportion of butter to flour.
Shortbread is delicious but definitely in the treat food category.

Helen, the photo showed a slice that was cut into squares but there were a few more pieces than just six that I could see.