"Healthy."
I've been scanning Pinterest and the Googles for new recipes lately and it seems I have a very different definition of what "healthy" means when it comes to food. As I am a born-and-raised Minnesotan (with an inate love of hot dishes, Midwestern meat-and-potatoes sensibility, butter, and bread), I am surprised that I am the skeptical one, as I read recipe descriptions. Nevertheless, here are some guidelines I thought were obvious:
- Just because a food is "baked, not fried" does not mean it is healthy. Example: baked mozzerella sticks, baked potato chips.
- If a recipe has a vegetable clearly stated in the title, it is not necessarily healthy. Example: zucchini bread, carrot cake.
- If there are equal parts vegetable and sugar, a food is healthy. Example: see above.
- When cheese, mayonnaise, and/or pasta are the majority of the main ingredients, the food cannot be classified as healthy. Example: most Italian-American food, Minnesotan casseroles.
- When there is no identifiable vegetable in a recipe, it may not be labeled healthy. Example: meatloaf.
- If a vegetable is identifiable, but is smothered, fried, or mostly obscured by cheese, it is no longer healthy. Example: stuffed mushrooms caps.
- When the label touts low sugar/sugar-free or low fat/fat-free, "light", or "diet", it is probably not healthy. Example: Diet Coke.
- If cereal AND marshmallows or corn syrup are involved, it is not healthy. Example: rice krispie bars.
Someone tell me I'm wrong on the cereal/corn syrup one, so I can write off all my breakfasts in my 20s as wins.
