A Matter of Fat, Part Four: Building a Lower Fat Meal

Table of Contents

Speaker's Notes

The purpose of this presentation is to help you (adults) understand the sources of fat in the diet, and to learn ways to reduce and balance the total amount of fat you eat.
In this short presentation, we will look at ways to reduce fat in preparing a meal.

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How can you lower the fat during the preparation
and cooking of meat, fish and poultry ???

Speaker's Notes

Note to leaders:
Ask the group to generate discussion and ideas. Responses are listed in the next two slides.

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1. Trim and discard visible fat from meats and skin from poultry.
2. Allow 120 g (4 oz) raw meat per person. This will provide 100 g (3.5 oz) cooked portion � the size of a deck of cards.
3. Omit oil from marinades.

Speaker's Notes

In preparation it is important to:

• Reduce the visible fat � the fat that you can easily see and remove.
• Avoid large portions (or supersize options in restaurants).
• Reduce or eliminate the added fats, like the oil in marinades; this will not change the flavour.

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1. Broil, bake, barbecue, roast, microwave, stir-fry or brown in a non-stick pan.
2. Brown ground meat or poultry in a pan or microwave in a plastic sieve and drain off fat before adding other ingredients.
3. Refrigerate stews, soups, chilies and meat sauces and remove hardened fat that rises to the surface.

Speaker's Notes

In cooking, it is important to:

• Choose methods that do not add fat to the food (deep frying adds the most fat compared to other cooking methods).
• Remove fat formed in cooking by draining the fat or removing hardened fat in soups, stews or sauces.
• Choose cream sauces and gravies less often as they add fat to your diet.

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= 4 grams of fat

Speaker's Notes

Throughout the presentation, a teaspoon symbol will be used to represent 4 grams of fat.
Note for leaders:

• One teaspoon (or pat) of butter or margarine contains 4 grams of fat.
• One teaspoon of oil actually has 4.6 grams of fat.
• The amount of fat listed for the foods is a guide. Amounts are taken from the Canadian Nutrient File, package label, product web site listings or recipes.
• The amount of fat may differ depending on the brand, the recipe or how the food is prepared.
• This is a guide only.

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• Contains almost 15 teaspoons of fat

How would you lower the fat in this dinner?

Speaker's Notes

Let�s discuss ways in which we could change this dinner menu to decrease the fat content.

Note to leaders:

• Have an open discussion with your group to determine if they can use some of the information from previous slides to think of lower-fat alternatives.

• Contains three and a half teaspoons of fat

Speaker's Notes

Here is an example of a lower-fat dinner with similar foods as the previous slide.
Other options include:

• Soup � use any broth-based, or thick soup with blended vegetables rather than cream.
• Vegetables - any steamed vegetables; grilled vegetables are another option with some fat but still lower than adding sauces or frying vegetables.
• Any lean meat � beef steak, pork loin/tenderloin, chicken breast as long as the meat is trimmed of fat, there is no added sauce, and the method of cooking is not frying but broiling, baking or grilling instead.
• Drinks � water, low-fat milk, 100% fruit juice are healthy options. Alcoholic drinks should be limited to 1-2 drinks maximum per day.
• In addition to whole wheat bread, other low-fat grain options would be plain rice, couscous, other whole grain breads, pasta with a tomato based sauce, etc.

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Speaker's Notes

• All the cuts of beef in this slide have been trimmed of all visible fat.
• All cuts of beef, except short ribs, when trimmed of visible fat contain no more than 10% fat.
• Most beef cuts, like those in the slide, are extra lean � that is, no more than 7.5% fat when trimmed of visible fat.
• Although 45% of the fat in beef is saturated, one-third of this is stearic acid, which does not affect blood cholesterol.

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Speaker's Notes

• Meat, fish, poultry and tofu (soybeans) are comparable when it comes to total fat.
• All are excellent sources of protein.
• Choose a variety of lean meats, poultry and fish, as well as dried peas, beans and lentils.

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What are some lower fat options?

Speaker's Notes

Here are some common dessert or coffee break items. What are some options for dessert that would be lower in fat?

Let�s discuss a variety of options.
Remember:

• Foods that are fried are higher in fat.
• Foods made with a lot of butter, cheese or shortening (pie crusts) tend to be higher in fat.
• Milk products have a number of lower-fat options.

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Speaker's Notes

• Here are some examples taken from the booklet that are lower-fat desserts.
• Adding fresh fruit or a fruit pur�e makes the angel food cake seem much richer and more flavourful.

• Baked fruit (1 1/2 teaspoons of fat)
• Lower-fat muffins (1/2 teaspoon of fat ) � tim hortons low fat muffin options
• Sherbets (0 teaspoons of fat)
• Lower-fat granola bars (1 1/2 tsp or less of fat).

Note to leaders:
The crisp value above is from a recipe using 50 mL of melted butter instead of 1/2 cup of solid butter in the recipe.

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How can we reduce the fat or make better choices?

Speaker's Notes

How can we reduce the fat or make better choices in the drinks we have?

Note to leaders:

• Have a discussion with the group on lower-fat or healthier choices for drinks. Although the soda does not have any fat, it also has no nutrients (other than sugar � carbohydrate).
• These examples are in the booklet, except for the iced cappuccino made with cream (nutritional information from Tim Horton�s).

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Speaker's Notes

• Here are some suggestions for healthier lower-fat drinks.
• All quantities are 250 mL so that they can be compared � this may not be the typical size when purchased.
• When having drinks like iced cappuccino, ask for them to be made with milk instead of cream.

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Nutrition Labelling resources:
www.healthcanada.ca/nutritionlabelling
www.healthyeatingisinstore.ca/
Canada�s Food Guide to Healthy Eating:
www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hpfb-dgpsa/onpp-bppn/food_guide_e.html
Nutrition information and activities:
http://www.dietitians.ca/
Recipes and more nutrition information about beef:
http://www.beefinfo.org/

Written by: Laura Pasut, MSc, RD, Nutridata Consulting Services

Developed by: The team of Registered Dietitians at the Beef Information Centre

June 2004