Have some delicious artichoke dip, just choose well.
Spinach and artichoke dips are popular appetizers. They are delicious additions to any meal or party. But, with a variety of cheese and creamy sauce, the healthy considerations are note worthy. Taking time to check the nutrition labels or consider the ingredients can make a big difference in the health benefits of the dip. Likewise, whether chips or bread is used can have an impact too.
Calories
When looking at calories, two factors must be taken into consideration. How many calories are there in the dish overall, and how many of those calories come from fat. Generally speaking, no more than 30 percent of a days total calories should come from fat. Since nine calories appear for every gram of fat, knowing how many calories there are from fat, means that a simple division by nine indicates how many grams of fat in the food.
In a restaurant, this dip will have up to 600 calories, 225 coming from fat. To calculate total fat, just divide the 225 by nine, and the final fat content is 25g. That is about one third of the fat needed for an entire day.
Whereas, made at home a serving can be as little as 162 calories in total, with far less fat.
Fat
The restaurant servings also have twice as much fat at 25g, than a homemade version. Perhaps due to the richer, heavy cream that is used. Even worse however is that there aren't any beneficial saturated fats in it.
The fat content is especially important for those with concerns about obesity in their family.
Cholesterol and Sodium
Salt gets piled in during preparation at most restaurants.
Restaurant dips have more cholesterol and sodium. Actually, twice as much sodium, with a total of 1300mg - more than half of the RDA.
The amount of sodium in this dish is almost an entire days worth. Since sodium is linked to increased blood pressure, those with medical concerns should be wary of dishes like this. In actuality, a person with high blood pressure should not consume any more sodium in a day than this dish offers.
Protein
The protein content by making the dip at home is better too. The recipes that are common to a household cook put 7.3g of protein into the recipe, but the restaurants don't offer any.
Taking all of the health benefits into consideration, enjoying a good Tuscan Spinach Dip is probably best done at home, where the negative nutritional effects of the dish can be limited. Eating well can mean that the food is healthy and delicious, but attention to the details is important in making this happen.
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