Saturday, January 31, 2009

Kebab update

Slightly mixed news on the kebab front for UK fans of saturated fat. While a single average doner can give you, if you're a woman, a cracking 346% of you nanny state saturated fat allowance, the down side is that some kebabs contain trans fats. While I'm probably not as phobic about trans fats as some (since reading this table here, where 2.2% of calories from trans fats was associated with significantly less progression of CAD than 1.0%! Discussed here), I'd still prefer not to eat them at all. Of course, with the level of disingenuity in this and similar reports, they could be refering to vaccenic acid and conjugated linoleic acid from ruminal bacteria. Who knows?

A wine glass and a half, nearly two, of fairly saturated animal fat seems to be an excellent base for a meal, although the article describes this as drinking, pardon my quick retch in the corner, that much "cooking oil"!!!!!

Main stream nutrition seems to have it in for kebabs at the moment. There must be something seriously good about that much fat to draw such fire...

This evening's kebab was very good.

Peter

7 comments:

Stan Bleszynski said...

Kebabs are the only reasonably priced meals I am able to eat on my business trips to Ireland! On my longest trip, 5 weaks of donners almost every day! There was just nothing else available unless I cooked myself. They even cut fat off the rashers! There used to be excellent very fat roasted ducks at Chinese take-aways until they spoiled that with a new low fat bread of ducks, so that's out. The second good places are, surprisingly, some upmarket Indian restaurants: everything lathered in rich buttery sauces, lovely! And quite pricey.

Peter said...

Hi Stan,

That's about how I see it too. Some of the better Indian restaurants use serious amounts of butter... Mmmmmmmm

They're usually gluten free too. Sometimes the waiters/chef even understand gluten!

Peter

Stan Bleszynski said...

I found that Asians do not seem to share our Western "phatofobia" and do not at all seem to feel offended if I point something out. Try to say something to an American or a European - forget it!
It's often a matter of taste and money, what they would eat or cook. I wonder what must they thought of Dr. Colin T Campbell. 8-:)

Stargazey said...

I was hoping somebody else would ask this, but no luck so far.

As far as I know, "doner kebab" has not yet reached the state of Texas. In fact, I'd never heard of it.

After looking it up on Google, it looks like something we call gyros. Yes? No? Thanks for any explanation you can provide!

Anna said...

Stargazey,

That right, gyros in the US. My husband is English, he says doner kebab, too, which always make me think of the Donner party stuck in the winter snows of the Sierro Mountains in the 1840s! ha!

Unknown said...

Doner Kebab is a Turkish dish. Gyros is the Greek version. Similar but not exactly the same.

Stargazey said...

Anna, you said what I was thinking! The Donner Party had to resort to cannibalism to survive, so I envisioned doner kebab as one way of preparing those meals. Doner kebab vendors would probably have to come up with a different name for their product in the U.S.