Making Diet foods at home

[Shalmanese]

So Diet foods which attempt to imitate the full fat versions are made with a combination of high tech gums and extracts and other chemicals which are not normally found in a home kitchen. Which means you can't make your own flavour or play around a bit with the texture like you can with home made foods.

Is it even remotely possible to make these diet foods at home or is it simply beyond the technological capabilities of a home kitchen? If it's not, have people tried it? Whats easy to make, whats impossible?

[highchef]

I caught one episode of a ftv show with some guy who's all gung ho about showing people how to eat lower fat, carbs etc..It had to do with chili cheese fries, which I dearly love. I could not bring myself to buy the 'diet' cheese though. The rest was common sense, like baking the fries instead of frying them, using turkey meat instead of chuck, etc. That's the kind of thing I can incorporate into daily cooking for the family. I'm not interested in duplicating factory produced diet food, I'd rather eat fruit and veggies than baked chips, but baked fries work rather well I think.

edit: it helps if it makes sense....

Edited July 7, 2006 by highchef (log)

[Tess]

Several years back, Jeffrey Steingarten had an article in (I'm pretty sure) Vogue about cooking at home with olestra. At the time, olestra was hard to procure. I don't know how useful this will be if you're actually planning to experiment but the article was fascinating at a time when olestra was very controversial.

[jsolomon]

Erm, why? How about just changing your diet?

[Ling]

I once saw an episode of Alton Brown where he made protein bars. They had to be kept in the fridge and were only good for a week because they didn't contain any preservatives though. Maybe the recipe is available online.

[Badiane]

Would this be a just for the science of it experiement? Because that stuff really isn't good for you. Olestra causes, among other things, anal leakage. I could elaborate but I haven't had lunch yet and I don't wish to be grossed out.

I do find brown rice syrup a handy binder for granola bars, if that sort of 'diet food' is of any interest to you. And I am the queen of low carb desserts that taste like crap but look nice and aren't fattening Happy to share recipes if desired.

But somehow I get the feeling you are more interesting in that sort of frankenfood like fat free mayonnaise and fat free ice cream. Closest I can get you to that is how to make pudding pops with sugar free jello.

[therese]

So Diet foods which attempt to imitate the full fat versions are made with a combination of high tech gums and extracts and other chemicals which are not normally found in a home kitchen. Which means you can't make your own flavour or play around a bit with the texture like you can with home made foods.

Is it even remotely possible to make these diet foods at home or is it simply beyond the technological capabilities of a home kitchen? If it's not, have people tried it? Whats easy to make, whats impossible?

←

Commercial diet foods use high tech stuff because they have to be shelf stable in addition to low fat or whatever. If you're making things at home you can take advantage of much more conventional gums and/or protein matrices (like gelatin and agar and egg whites) that are widely available to home cooks and give nicer results.

Tinker away.

[jsolomon]

You may also want to check out Alton Brown's recipes with yogurt. Starch/protein gels can come close to mimicking the mouthfeel of fats.

But, ice milk is ice milk. It needs cream to be ice cream. I look at diet foods as a bowdlerization of good food, and I never can support bowdlerizations. I think if you desensitize yourself with foods that taste like fatty foods, then you are more likely to overindulge when it comes to fatty foods. It just seems like a very slippery slope that a lot of people get trapped by.

[malarkey]

My question would be, why would you want to??

Just eat foods that are naturally low-cal that taste fabulous. Chemically altered diet foods don't usually taste very good at all, and anyone remotely interested in food won't stick to a diet of such foods.

Salads with homemade vineagrette, grilled or poached fish, roasted meats, vegetables simply steamed with a touch of olive oil & butter and a bit of sea salt... All lovely tasting and easily worked into a reduced calorie diet.

[Shalmanese]

Sure, ok. They taste bad, they might be bad for you (no proof is ever given however) and they are all that is wrong with the modern food industry. That doesn't address my question. Is it technically feasible? What are the processes, can they be adapted to home use and has anyone tried to do it? I'm asking not because I am interested in eating diet foods at home, but beacause I find the science and process of it interesting and I feel it would be a worthwhile area to look at if possible.

People already experiment with baking with fake sugars and there have been a number of highly technical threads in the pastry forum about it which I find highly interesting. For everything else, knowledge and debate seems completely absent.

And FYI: Everything I've heard about Olestra is that the anal leakage claims are far overblown. I would love to get my hands on some Olestra but it seems impossible to get in retail channels.

[rooftop1000]

Hmmm potato chips made with olestra -vs- Activia yogurt gimme the chips and keep the Fibercon. Now if you are already hyper regular I wouldnt advise any of them

What ya need is to understand what these chemicals names in products really mean, like isnt Polysorbate80 just a seaweed extract...if we call it "Asian vegan gelatin" is that better?

tracey

[TPO]

What kind of homemade foods do you want to make? I have substituted applesauce or prune puree for half the fat in baked goods such as muffins, fruit bread, and cookies. In some recipes the missing fat was barely noticeable. I have made diet root beer using root beer concentrate and sugar substitute, fat-free french fries by baking them in the oven, fat-free potato chips in the microwave using something called Micro Chip, and low-fat donut holes using an electric donut hole maker.

When I had health problems that forced me to eat a very low-fat diet, I prefered making my own food rather than store-bought low-fat foods which, as you said, can be loaded with chemicals and such. Which probably is why I never tried cooking with the high tech gums and extracts used in commercial products -- I didn't want to duplicate them, I wanted more natural versions of them.

So although this post might not be helpful to you, I would be interested in learning what types of diet products you would like to try making.

[Shalmanese]

I'm maining interested because in almost ever area of cooking, homemade foods are vastly superior to anything store bought yet diet foods seem a curious exception. I could make a fantastic vanilla ice-cream but if you asked me to make a vanilla ice-cream-like-product that was less than 5% fat, then I would fail abysmally compared to a store bought version. It seems a curious deficiency for home cooks to be lacking in the skills of texture manipulation that big commercial processors use to make diet foods taste less awful. It seems to me that proper mastery of this area should in theory give much more range to all sorts of foods, diet or not. Even if it is only to subtly alter a recipe so that less fat can be used without the taste being compromised.

[therese]

I'm maining interested because in almost ever area of cooking, homemade foods are vastly superior to anything store bought yet diet foods seem a curious exception. I could make a fantastic vanilla ice-cream but if you asked me to make a vanilla ice-cream-like-product that was less than 5% fat, then I would fail abysmally compared to a store bought version.

←

So, we're going to have to agree to disagree on this one, because I've never tasted a store bought vanilla (or any other flavor) ice cream-like product that was worth putting in my mouth a second time.

If I can afford the calories I eat the ice cream. If I can't I eat vanilla non-fat yogurt (which I flavor at home, as the commercial stuff, even the non-diet, isn't as good).

Though I have to admit to now wanting to make home-made low cal ice cream (or something akin to it) just to say I can do better than the commercial enterprises.

[johnder]

The company I work for does a lot of online versions of popular diet plans and as a result we get huge pallets of the various diet food products, many before they are released to the public and are guinea pigs for them. Everyone in the office tends to shy away from eating them due to the large amount of sugar alcohols that are prevelant in the product.

Too much sugar alcohol is a "very bad thing"

John

[therese]

Too much sugar alcohol is a "very bad thing"

←

Yep. Waaay worse than Olestra, though it is an excellent means of teaching portion control.

[TPO]

I don't think diet foods are always superior. For example, I don't care for store-bought low-fat ice cream but I like my homemade versions. I have experiemented with recipes by substituting evaporated skim milk for the cream and milk for the half-and-half, and as long as it is a cooked recipe it turns out better tasting (to me) than the store-bought kind. If I'm looking for frozen foods that are low fat, I'm more likely to purchase those that are naturally low in fat like sherbets or sorbets.

I think a lot of store-bought diet foods make up for the lack of fat by adding extra sweeteners and salt, which could be what makes these foods less appealing to me. I would rather make up for the fat by using fresh ingredients instead of sweeteners and salt.

Although I can handle baked goods and other recipes with good results, there will always be exceptions. I have never had fat-free potato chips but I bet they taste better than the ones I make in my microwave. I never tried to make low-fat mayonnaise and I imagine it would be difficult without the stabilizers and chemicals that food manufacturers have. And while I can make low-fat brownies that can compete against low-fat brownie mixes, I doubt I could make a fat-free brownie that is as edible as a No Pudge brownie.

[Tess]

I find it interesting that the only things you see Olestra in are a few brands of chips. I wish I could recall what else Steingarten used it for.

I have eaten Lay's chips with Olestra by accident and thought they tasted strange and they left my mouth feeling unpleasantly greasy. (Is was the off taste and texture that made me look at the label.) They didn't give me any side effects but they didn't seem worth eating. On the other hand, I don't really like the originals of those chips either. I'll stick with Stacey's Soy Chips.

Sugar alcohol is just gross and it also tastes funny. I have an older relative who puts "diet" ice cream and hot fudge sauce with those alcohols out for dessert every night. I always feel like warning the other guests of what might happen if they eat a bowel-- excuse me, a bowl-- of that stuff.

It's strange about diet food. Lots of people I know who diet hate most diet foods but have a small handful that they use. I will confess to Weight Watchers ice cream pops, but no other WW product. A couple of low-fat cheeses. Also, the secret-formula low-fat mayonnaise the Foodstuffs chain uses in their salads. And I don't even like mayonnaise. Sometimes you just go a little crazy when you're dieting.

[misstenacity]

I have to agree with Shalmanese on the ice cream thing, anyway. I've made pretty darn good homemade ice milks, some in interesting and non-commercially-available flavors, BUT: when I purchase and then eat the first few spoonfuls of Stonyfield Farm's Lowfat Frozen Yogurt and feel the rich, dense mouthfeel and lack of ice crystals.... I am humbled.

I, too, am interested in this application both for personal eating reasons and for general cooking knowledge.....

Andrea

http://foodpart.com