Sodium Watch

Of late, I've been steadily increasing the amount of chili powder I've been putting in dishes in an effort to not use as much Tabasco. Things came to a head the other day when I noticed just how salty my Minestrone soup (Progresso, 200 calories for a pretty healthy-sized can) tasted.

Yeah, that's when I finally looked at the label. More closely than simply verifying that chili powder has no (reported calories).

There's quite a bit of sodium in the stuff.

And salt is a pretty high up ingredient.

I tend not to worry about sodium—I've always had pretty low blood pressure—but I also stray strongly from adding salt to dishes. My diet is heavy on canned and frozen foods, which are loaded with plenty. I never felt like I missed it.

Of course, my other condiments add plenty.

But chili powder? Lots of salt. A scary amount. I threw what I had away when I started doing the math.

Oh. And I just started Googling and it does appear to be caloric.

Great.

I'm starting to suspect my spiciness cravings are more like salt cravings.

I can re-train myself not to want it. I've done it before.

Back to black pepper, and probably looking for a new Tabasco replacement, because that stuff is pretty salty too.

I think red pepper flakes might be safe, but they don't do all that much for flavor for me. They work with pizza but that's pretty salty to begin with.

Blurgh.

Part of This Nutritious Breakfast

Ah, oatmeal.

One piece of advice stands out as constant in most literature about diet and nutrition: eat breakfast consistently. When I started really focusing on what I eat, I quickly settled on oatmeal as the "anchor" food in my breafasts.

My current choice while at work is Hodgson Mill Hot Cereal with Milled Flaxseed and Soy.

I guess it's not technically even oatmeal; it's "hot cereal."

And kind of sawdusty. There's not much texture aside from the little indigestible fibrous bits of husk or bran or whatever is in there. It doesn't really even have much flavor, and I'm not one to start adding sugar or fruit. (I'd consider adding blueberries or blackberries or strawberries if they weren't so expensive. But I think I prefer eating those fruits by themselves.)

I'm not even sure why I continue to buy it, except I suppose I've gotten used to it. I look forward to its heartiness in the morning.

I'm always still hungry after the oatmeal, apple, and banana that is my standard breakfast (and if someone's put out chocolate or baked goods, watch out), but if I focus and stay vigilant it gets me to lunch.

I eyeball an amount into a bistro mug I formerly used for coffee, add about twice as much water, microwave at 60% power for four minutes and pray it doesn't spill out everywhere.

After this initial cooking, I heat for about 25 more seconds on full, watching carefully for it puffing up and almost spilling over the brim.

If I do it just right it seems to lose a lot of wateriness and almost tastes, like, browned. Even when watery, I think it's still absorbing , so the last half doesn't taste as watery as the first.

There's supposed to be eleven servings in the box—I'm pretty sure one box lasts me just slightly more than eleven days, but I haven't kept careful track. I may be shortchanging myself, in my servings, but I'd far rather overestimate calories than underestimate.

It's a shame the healthier oatmeals and hot cereals with no added sugar don't seem to come in premeasured packets like the junky ones do. But maybe somewhere there's a new type I'll fall in love with.

(I do eat steel-cut oats at home, but I need something more "instant" while at work.)

160 calories per 1/3 cup serving.

Small Spinach Salad

I felt like a lunch addendum today. I was briefly tempted to get a bag of chips, probably Sun Chips, but it's such a fleeting and ultimately nonfilling experience. I hit the salad bar with a small-size tray.

It's a bed of spinach, with beets, onions, tomato slices, banana peppers and pepperoncini, about 1/4 of a hard-boiled egg, a sprinkle of cheese, a small spoonful of sunflower seed kernels, and maybe a heaping tablespoon of tuna salad. This place doesn't seem to make their tuna salad too mayonnaisey, fortunately.

I have to imagine the dressing is full-fat Italian, although I'm not seeing any of those characteristic fat beads. Perhaps all the fat floats to the top with those spigot things, and it's pulling up the less fatty stuff from the bottom. I figure it's about a tablespoon.

It's just got to be somewhere between 200 and 250 calories, although I recognize I tend to overestimate.

I'll go with 225.

Pacifist Vegetarianism

Gigantic family dinner at Maggiano's yesterday. 3000 calories is my rough estimate. I definitely haven't been that full since Thanksgiving, full to the point of pain.

"So what appetizers?"

"Spinach and artichoke dip and stuffed mushrooms," says my sister.

"What's in the mushrooms?"

"They're definitely vegetarian."

"Oh, I'll be the judge of that."

I didn't think about it again that night, but today I checked out Maggiano's menu online and, naturally, the stuffed mushrooms are prepared with chicken broth.

Meat eaters and vegetarians; we don't think the same way.

(Disclaimer: I eat seafood.)

Shake Well

My current "everything" condiment is Tabasco Chipotle. I put this on everything at home—Soup, Amy's frozen meals, veggies.

It's good. Smoky, spicy—maybe not as spicy as the Sriracha hot sauce I used to use though. That's all right; pepper and chili powder restore some of the kick I'm missing. I sometimes miss the taste of Sriracha, though.

Better yet, according to the nutrition label, Tabasco Chipotle has no calories.

Seriously?

Something this flavorful is calorie-free?

Doubtful. Anecdotal evidence suggests that U.S. law allows manufacturers to report a calorie count as zero when each serving contains five or fewer calories. That makes sense, but the conspiratorial side of me says manufacturers are intentionally abusing a rule intended to allow for rounding to increments of five calories. When was the last time you saw a nutritional label with the calorie count not ending in 5 or 10? Helen's Kitchen's products are one of the only ones I can think of, at least with entrees.

(And what's stopping manufacturers from shrinking serving sizes so that just about any food can be zero calories? I may have to look into that. [UPDATE: Slate's Explainer has written a piece about just this thing.])

Let's check the ingredients: chipotle pepper, distilled vinegar, water, salt, sugar, onion powder, garlic powder, spices, natural flavor, TABASCO (R) Brand Pepper Pulp (distilled vinegar, red pepper, salt).

(Sidenote: the original Tabasco sauce only lists those last three as ingredients: distilled vinegar, red pepper, salt. I'm stuck with a large bottle of the original at work. It's not bad, but it's no Chipotle—it's so vinegary—and I'd prefer to be rid of it. Although it may legitimately be calorie-free, or at the very least, pretty close.)

Of these, sugar troubles me the most. It's listed after salt, though, which is promising, but it's there, and sugar means calories.

The question isn't does Tabasco Chipotle have calories. The question is how many?

With condiments, I like to figure out how many the entire bottle has, as the small serving sizes make it too hard to maintain caloric consistency. When I dip vegetables in mustard, how am I to know if I just ate two or three servings, or some fraction? But when I go through a mustard bottle in, say, eight sessions, and I know how many the entire bottle contains, I have a better idea of how many calories I'm ingesting per session.

Sriracha was my previous go-to condiment, and it unfortunately was loaded with sugar: it was the second ingredient listed after chili. At 5 calories per serving (teaspoon) and 96 servings per bottle, I was adding nearly 500 calories per week and a half to my diet. or about 50 a day. That's assuming the 5 per serving is believable; maybe they can round down 9 calories to 5 on the label. Who knows.

Tabasco Chipotle lists 0 grams of sugar per serving. Since sugar's an ingredient, they've clearly rounded down, but by what amount? It's impossible to say.

I can figure out an upper limit on calories per bottle, assuming sugar is nearly the sole caloric contributor. At 4 calories per gram of sugar, and "about 30" servings per 5 oz. bottle, the entire bottle shouldn't contain more than 120 calories, since there has to be less than one gram of sugar per serving.

I'd take that a step further and say, conservatively, I can't believe there's more than 90 calories in a bottle. It's probably less than that, but I'm comfortable with 90.

Now, it's still early in my Chipotle run, but once I start using it exclusively I'll probably run through a 5 oz. bottle every week and a half, just like with Sriracha.

This much flavor and only 10 calories per day?

I think I can live with that.