Category Archives: Food Stuff

Food Stuff

Bread Works

So, I have been driving myself crazy trying to come up with the number of calories in a cup of flour. The first problem is dealing with the American system of measurement. A cup is not a cup is not a cup. Weights range from 115 to140 grams per cup. I am trending to ~125 grams per cup, for flour. And then there are the calories per cup of flour. Again, they are flying all over the map.

I decided to try the 100 gram approach. How many calories are there per 100 grams? Things seem to stabilize a bit. Values aren’t fluctuating quite as much. Your strong flours seem to be in the 360-365 calorie range, the cake flours in the 300-340 calorie range. But, there still is some variety, even amongst the same type of flours, so I went looking for an authoritative source and found – The USDA.

https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/?query=flour

Here they have a variety of flour types, all the nutrition information you want, and they serve it up in 100 gram portions. So I go and take a look at Flour, bread, white, enriched, unbleached (I am using King Arthur bread flour at the moment) and see lots and lots of nutrient information. They’ve got proximates, minerals, even vitamins; they even have TWO values of calories! I didn’t know about the two values of calories; I always thought a calorie was a calorie, except when it was a fiber. They list calories as energy, measured by the Atwater General Factors and the Atwater Specific Factors. These numbers are not the same. I will leave it to the gentle reader to chase the Atwater Factors down the “Google” or “Duck Duck Go” rabbit hole.

I shall move forward using the Atwater General Factor of 366 Calories for 100 grams of bread flour. I am still debating as to whether a cup of flour is 125 grams or 130 grams.

Food Stuff, General

One goal reached

I weighed myself this morning at 199.2 pounds, thereby reaching my primary goal of 200 lbs. I started right after Labor Day 2016 so it has been about 200 days to drop 40 pounds.

I’m feeling pretty good, and, after some blood work I had done last month, all the blood numbers are in the good range. (I am no longer pre-diabetic.)

After seeing how my daily weight fluctuates through the day with my diet, I decided to  lose a few more pounds. I would like to end up about 195 pounds so my daily fluctuations don’t take me over 200 (keeping it under 90 kg).

A few  things I have learned over the past half-year:

  1. I am using lunch plates, 8″ across, instead of dinner plates, 10″ across. Don’t need as much food to fill the plate. 6″ bread plates are a little too small, my omelette flops over the edges.
  2. Using the online food diary really does help me keep focused on the total calorie and nutrient intakes each day.
  3. It is a lot easier for me to lose weight on a low/no carb (ketogenic) diet rather than a balanced carb diet with the same calorie total. I think I can maintain with a higher carb diet but I don’t seem to lose with it.
  4. Until I start getting out and getting more exercise, just less than 2000 calories a day seems to be a good number for me.
  5. There are a lot of good low-carb foods out there. I have found riced cauliflower or spiraled zucchini to be an excellent base for dishes. And I have learned a new appreciation for cabbage, in many forms.
  6. The biggest long-term concern is the amount of sodium I am taking in from processed meats. Once I go back to the regular carb diet, I expect the sodium intake will drop as well.

Off to the future.

Food Stuff, Geek Stuff

Nutrients in tea

I am trying to find out more on the nutrients in tea, since I drink quite a lot of it, and I am running into a confusing issue. My tea bags weigh in at ~2.2 g per bag.  From one source, I am seeing that would be about 22 mg of potassium per gram of tea.  So, 2.2 g per bag would be ~50 mg of potassium per bag.  I have always thought it was supposed to be 1 bag per cup. My tea bag box says 1 serving makes 8 fluid ounces per bag.  I stretch it a bit and use one bag for ~ 14 ounces of boiling water in my travel mug. But, I figure that I will get all 50 mg in my cup.

Then I come to a site like this that presents the nutrition information for tea in fluid measures. Here they are saying 100 ml of brewed tea has 88 mg of potassium. Does that mean they used 2 tea bags to brew 100 ml of tea? 1 cup of brewed tea is 240 ml and it has 211 mg of K. (K is the atomic abbreviation for Potassium). Did they use 4 teabags to brew a cup of tea?

So, if the tea bag has a finite amount of K and water shouldn’t be adding anything to the mix, why does a cup of tea have so much more K than the bag.

And it isn’t just this site. Most of the sites I have seen seem to have a lot more K  per cup than in the bag.  No, actually, they seem to be all over the place.

http://www.dilmahtea.com/faqs-about-tea

Food Stuff

Unclear on concept

I and looking at a recipe for some bread I plan to bake and I see the following times noted:

crusty bread

save print
Prep time 
Cook time 
Total time 
No Knead Dutch Oven Crusty Bread – no kneading required, 4 simple ingredients, baked in a Dutch Oven! The result is simple perfection, hands down the best bread you’ll ever eat!
What they fail to take into account is the 12-18 hours needed to let the dough set up after mixing in the flour, salt, yeast, and water. You are not going to have a delicious loaf of bread in 50 minutes!