Healthy Kosher Pastries (or: The Danger Lurking in Kosher Pastries)

Even though zero-calorie and certified-kosher (pareve) Miracle Noodle was created for people with special dietary needs, be it gluten-free, low-carb, diabetes-approved, and for those interested in just losing a few pounds, the Miracle Noodle team understands that you gotta live a little.

L’Chaim!

The powers that be behind Miracle Noodle are not Diet Dictators. We like to have our kosher cake, and eat it, too!

But most kosher desserts that you can order either in a deli or online have a primary ingredient that has been scientifically proven to be a killer: margarine.

Read the ingredients label of any kosher pastry and margarine is likely to be one of the first few ingredients.

Some people--including many who keep kosher--still believe that margarine is healthy.   A little butter for a dairy meal or coconut oil or coconut flour for a meat meal is always going to be healthier than using margarine.   

Though reviewing the origins of how and why margarine came to market is a topic for another blog, clinical evidence over the last several decades has concluded that margarine, as well as shortenings and vegetable oils can cause heart disease.

This is especially true of these three food-stuffs that have hydrogen added to them, in order to prolong the shelf-life of the food. Kosher foods typically contain at least one, if not all three of these heart-disease inducing ingredients.

Noodle Kugel dishes are delicious, but are they worth getting heart disease? (Try this Miracle Noodle healthy kugel recipe!)

What’s a kosher dessert lover to do?

Some kosher recipes call for using Canola oil, at least in part, instead of a full dose of margarine, to lower the overall fat content. But there are two problems with Canola oil, which is one of the ubiquitous vegetable oils found in pastries and other prepared foods:

• Canola oil can easily go rancid (Read: Why You Should Avoid Canola Oil on the Miracle Noodle blog)

• Fat is not necessarily bad (more on this in subsequent blogs); sacrificing fat usually results in adding more sugar, which ends up stored as bodyfat.

The easiest way to make kosher pastries healthier--and not have to wait six hours for dessert if your main meal contains meat--is to cook with coconut flour or coconut oil, which contains a few health benefits, such as being high in:

• --fiber; use more water than traditional recipes call for as coconut flour soaks up moisture more so than white and wheat flours due to its high fiber content

• --healthy fats; particularly lauric acid, vital for strong immune systems and healthy skin

• --manganese; a co-factor of several vitamins and minerals, helping to absorb, for example, vitamin C

Can you wait to have dessert?

Again, if you eat a vegetarian Pareve lunch or dinner, you won’t have to wait several hours after the meal if you eat a pastry that has been cooked with butter.

If it wasn’t around when your great-great zadie was alive, don’t eat it!

If you want to keep enjoying tasty kosher desserts but don’t want to risk your health, there’s a simple solution: if you can read an ingredients list for a specific kosher pastry, ask yourself if your ancestors from at least three generations ago were alive to see ingredients like Canola oil or margarine.

If the answer is ‘no,’ chances are it’s not a healthy kosher dessert. While it’s true that life spans are increasing and one would assume that inventions like margarine are in part responsible for collective life extension, think about quality of life.

Despite a struggling contemporary global economy, our standard of living is far easier than a century or two ago. Plus, rates of heart disease have gone up, not down, in conjunction with the mass consumption of hydrogenated, man-made foods like margarine.

You likely believe in the miracle of the natural world, so use all-natural ingredients

The original miracle, of course, is not Miracle Noodle. (But we will provide you kosher dessert recipes that use Miracle Noodle in future blogs). No, the miracle of all miracles is the natural splendor of our planet. If you believe that, then believe that all-natural ingredients are far healthier for you to eat.

Learn more about Miracle Noodle Kosher Certification

Miracle Noodle is certified pareve kosher by Orthodox Union (OU). Find out more about our certification process here.

Save money on Miracle Noodle!

Share the joys of eating all the kosher noodles you want without the guilt. As incentive, when you share Miracle Noodle on Facebook, Twitter or via email, and your friends click your share link, both you and your friend will receive 13% off your next order. Here’s the link:  ?saopen=share  …

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