So I’ve probably mentioned my love of hanging out in the kitchen and I might have mentioned my love of hanging out in well fitted outfits… The natural next question is how on earth do these two interests have any reasonable business existing alongside one another? Is it because I found a whole heap of delicious low calorie recipes to keep my waist line in check? I used to think so.

 

But actually, I’ve paid less attention to my ingredients ever since I started paying less attention to the scales and to be honest, my clothes are the same size as they were before. The biggest difference is the satisfaction I get from whipping up delicious treats to share with my friends and family. Now they actually want a slice of my cheesecake, not the thickened low fat yoghurt imposter I was serving up before.

 

Now that’s not to say that ‘healthy’ recipes don’t have their place, but the overwhelming trend towards them makes me wonder how we were getting by as children when our mothers made spaghetti with full fat mince, added cream to beef stroganoff and iced our cupcakes with butter frosting. I don’t remember having a weight problem and I know for a fact that I was hardly ever sick as a child, so Mum must have been doing something right.

 

If you have a moderately active lifestyle and eat appropriately sized meals and reasonably healthy snacks that meet your nutritional needs, then there isn’t any real reason you should have to sacrifice your treats to the ‘low fat, no sugar’ cult that modern cooking has subscribed to.

 

Fat makes you fat. Sugar gives you diabetes. Carbs are the devil. Too much fibre causes wind. Protein causes kidney failure and ‘bulks you up’… Wait, what are we supposed to be eating again? Are superfoods the only exception to the ‘all food is secretly bad for you’ mantra? No, they’ve got plenty of shortcomings too…

 

Read: The Superfood Conspiracy 

 

Most of the hidden evils ‘healthy’ baking are trying to avoid aren’t really that evil after all, and as a result full fat, full sugar recipes are not inherently more or less healthy than their diet friendly counterparts. The only real difference is the kilojoule content.

 

How big of a difference does the kilojoule content really make? Well that depends; if you’re on a strict diet then maybe you’re going to want to save an extra thousand kilojoules wherever you can, however, most people will find that indulging in a high energy treat here and there won’t make any noticeable difference in the long run.

 

In fact, a ‘less is more’ attitude with baking can literally turn into a less becomes more situation. If you’ve got the kind of attitude where two muffins a day becomes appropriate because they are ‘low fat’, you’re going to run into more issues than if you just ate a regular muffin a couple of times a week. If you’re constantly craving something more and turning down social occasions because of the kind of food being served, then your healthy lifestyle is not sustainable.

 

Healthy eating is about so much more than avoiding different tiers of food on the food pyramid. It’s about eating for your physical health while acknowledging the social and psychological benefits of certain foods. Self-deprivation is no way to live. A more satisfying and balanced diet will benefit you in the long run and enable you to have your cake and eat it too…