Cooking sprays are always a "sticking" point for people who
use VLF diets. (Bad pun) I think new convertees ask about
them more than any other food product.
Certainly non-stick sprays are MUCH less fat than oil, and
by comparison are so much less so that they are ALMOST FF.
Pam says that 1/3rd second spray contains no fat...according
to the published guidelines for food content...no fat means
less than 1 gm/serving. The basic ingredient of Pam is Canola
oil--which they say is "trivial." A writer recently said that
a one second spray contains about 1 gm of fat.
I rarely find that a third of a second is enough to cover a
large frying pan. (How about you readers?) I count "one
thousand and one" when I spray a pan and try to make sure
that is enough. I never spray any pan that I'm going to saute
onions in, because the onions "sweat" a great deal of water,
making any pan spray unnecessary as long as the heat isn't too
high. (A trick I learned when things start to stick to a non-stick
pan is to lower the heat and keep the pan covered to let the steam
"de-stick" the food at the bottom--it works very well, and makes
the pan easier to clean after).
I can't believe it's not butter tastes very good to me...probably
because of the salt. I noted that 5 sprays has 1 gm of fat. Its
main ingredient is water of course, but also liquid soy bean oil.
I don't think it is hydrogenated. It does also contain buttermilk
and sweet cream. I'm not sure I like it enough to add another two
gms of fat to each piece of bread or roll that I eat. I can hardly
taste it and it makes the bread "just moist" to my palate. Sooo, I
think that I will stop using it on bread and rolls. It seems like
a particularly easy way to cut more fat out. After all, I can
hardly notice it anyway.
Mike Rosenblatt
------------------------------