By Todd Barron @ FoodieCusine.com
Turkey is good for you
Food was being ordered at a meeting I was at yesterday and I made a comment about how I wanted a turkey sandwich over a chicken sandwich. A colleague seemed surprised at my choice and I explained to him that I chose turkey over chicken because turkey is lower in calories. What surprised me was that he didn’t know this fact. It started me thinking about how most people may now know about this so here is the information front and center.
When you compare the two, and are looking at breast meat (not the dark stuff,) turkey has about half the calories of chicken. It also has about one ninth of the same grams of fat! That means that you can eat twice as much turkey in a meal and consume the same amount of calories.
When you are on a diet, you can use every bit of food you can get and twice as much meat can mean a huge difference. This is the primary reason I eat so much turkey when losing weight. I make turkey picatta, turkey Parmesan, turkey meatloaf, and many other things with turkey instead of using chicken, beef, or pork. The only time you need to be careful is if you consume liver as turkey liver has twice the number of calories as chicken liver. I’m really only talking about white meat here though so keep that in mind.
The only time you need to look at chicken is if you are watching the amount of protein you consume. Chicken has twice the protein as turkey. I do not recommend high protein diets though as they do not promote long-term healthy eating habits.
Here are a few tips for using turkey over chicken in your cooking:
- Buy a whole breast of turkey and cut it into medallions for quick cooking or buy the medallions pre-cut
- Sear medallions using a small amount of oil and butter and then cook at 400 degrees in an oven until its done
- Turkey will dry out very quickly
- Do not try grilling turkey breast (see above)
- Buy 97/3 turkey when using it in ground taco meat or meatloaf (100% fat free will be too dry)
Enjoy!
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