So we have been talking about the Round Meal again, and I thought as part of Cookiehouse Reprogram it would be helpful to include a few with their nutritional profile so we can discuss exactly what is in these meals and see what they are doing for us.
This first one is a very nice one to begin with, super simple, quick, and can use up whatever you have in the pantry.
Okay, so here we have scrambled eggs and bits. On the plate at the back this was with two pieces of toast (gluten free in this case, but I profiled it as wholemeal regular bread to suit more people), on the plate at the front, which was mine and therefore grain free, I used green banana instead as my bulk carbohydrate.
Let's start with the recipe.
Makes two serves.
3 eggs
1 teaspoon margarine or butter if you prefer
2 tablespoons almond milk or whatever milk you prefer
Heat a small pot to a lower medium heat, maybe a 3 out of 9 if you are using an electric hob, add the marg/butter to melt, break your eggs into a large bowl, splash in the milk , give it all a good whisk and then pour into the hot pot over the melted marg/butter. Allow that to sit for a good 30 seconds and then drag a spoon along the bottom to turn the egg, we are simply bringing the cooked egg to the top and allowing the uncooked access to the heat at the bottom, don't tamper with it too much or be tempted to beat, scrambled eggs requires a loving hand. Give it another thirty seconds, scrape and turn again until the eggs are done to your satisfaction. Spoon onto two plates and add your bits.
For me the bits here were a handful of cashews toasted in a small pan before the eggs were cooked, a teaspoon each of linseed popped in the same pan, a few drained sundried tomatoes, four stuffed green olives each, chives from the garden and some lovely stalks of celery. For me, the fried green banana, for Mr T the toast with a scrape of margarine.
Right, let's get to the interesting bit. We will look at Mr Ts meal because his is a little less restricted.
On the plate at the back, with the toast, we are looking at -
2080 kJ of energy
22g protein
23g fat (5g saturated fat, 11g monounsaturated, 6g polyunsaturated, 0.6g trans)
45g carbohydrate
9g fibre
So already we are looking at a pretty nicely balanced round meal, but remember, not all kilojoules are created equal, fat has a lot more kJ per gram than carbohydrate or protein, so let's have a look at the ratios.
Okay, so we have
protein - 18%
fat - 42% (saturated 9%)
Carbohydrate - 36%
So this gives us a bit of a different picture, doesn't it?
Australian Government guidelines at present recommend our daily kJ intake ratios -
45-65% carbohydrate
20-35% fats (saturated and trans fats combined less than 10% of total daily kJ intake)
protein - 46g per day for an adult woman or .75g per kg of body weight
- 64g per day for an adult man or .84g per kg of body weight
So let's compare this to our meal.
We have 22g of protein, so this is about half of our recommended alotment for women, about a third for men, I am happy with that.
We have 42% fats, yes, the vast majority of those fats are good fats, but still, that is a bit high if we were eating a meal of this structure for all three of our daily meals.
We have 36% carbohydrate, which is a bit low if this meal were typical of every meal we eat in a day.
Our fibre from this meal is sitting at 9g - for women, our daily target is 25g, for men, 30g, so this is pretty much bang on where we want it to be.
For one meal of three, this is a pretty good option, it is giving us some nice nutrition, but we need to understand that this is a meal high in fat, good fats, yes, but fats never the less. I would be wanting to temper this meal with a second meal for the day focusing on unrefined carbohydrates and lower in fats, we will look at some of those as we go along. In the meantime I want you to look at these numbers.
I keep getting asked, what does a kJ look like in real life? Well here you go.
2080kJ for the meal
250kJ for the small banana smoothie that went with it.