O.M.G. This was an absolutely outstanding dinner- and it was totally unexpected! I highly recommend this one!!! It’s a Cooking Light recipe; I actually followed this one pretty close, so I will just link the recipe! The only change I made was I substituted kidney beans for the ground sirloin, only because I didn’t have any on hand! It was so rich, filling, and had an incredible flavor- so smoky and savory!
I read an article in Cooking Light’s April edition, entitled “How Calories Really Count,” in which the Janet Helm, MS, RD, tackled an age old nutrition question: are all calories created equal? This article presented “Twinkie Diet” fellow who managed to lose weight on an all refined/processed food diet, just by virtue of the fact that he was taking in fewer calories/day than before his “diet.” Helm then presented some wonderful studies from a California university which suggest that all calories are not created equal. Apparently, and I’m paraphrasing here, the studies show that calories from whole foods (unprocessed, unrefined) actually burn faster during eating and digesting than calories from refined/processed foods; called the “Thermic Effect.” The processed foods may actually slow metabolism of those calories by almost 50%!! Here’s the original study:
Processed v. Unprocessed Food Study
Sound intuitive? I thought so. For example, I guess I’ve thought that a person on a diet which provides 1800 calories/day based on fruits, veggies, and whole grains would find it easier to lose weight than a person on a diet which provides 1800 calories/day based on processed/refined grains & fats. That, and, man cannot live by Twinkies alone!