Whey to Go: Eat Low Fat Ricotta Cheese and Yogurt Cheese

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PHOTO: AGE FOTOSTOCK
Ricotta cheese and yogurt cheese are deliciously soft and creamy.

“The primary priority for dietary change is to reduce intake of total fats … At present, dietary fat accounts for about 37 percent of the total energy intake of Americans — well above the recommended upper limit of 30 percent.” — The Surgeon General’s Report on Nutrition and Health 

DAMN. You realize, of course, what the Surgeon General is meddling with. Our fried chicken. Our hamburgers. Our chocolate. Our cheese. Cheese?

You betcha. An ounce of Cheddar has 113 calories and nine grams of fat. At nine calories per gram, this venerable English cheese gets 72 percent of its calories from fat. Colby and Monterey also weigh in at nine grams of fat per ounce, Gouda and Edam at eight. All are prime candidates for the nutritional hit list.

Yet who wants to give up cheese? Americans love it. In fact, we’ve almost doubled our consumption in the last 15 years, up to an average of 26 pounds per person per year. And cheese is a fine food — flavorful, versatile and affordable, a good source of protein, calcium, riboflavin and vitamin A. How then are we to heed the warnings of the Surgeon General and the USDA and the American Heart Association and the American Cancer Society — all of whom are trumpeting the evils of fat — and still keep cheese on our tables?

There’s always evasive action — cutting fat from other parts of our diet. (After all, the issue is total intake, not the percentage in any given food.) We can (shudder) reduce the size of our servings, sprinkling cheese over the top of a casserole rather than mixing it throughout, and never, ever order a pizza with double cheese.

  • Published on Mar 1, 1989
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