Vanishing Calories Vegan Sour Cream

Everyone knows the more high-calorie fatty foods we eat, like sour cream, the more weight we gain, right? Wrong! That is, if you're eating our Vanishing Calories Vegan Sour Cream. We recommend a dollop of our sour cream as a delicious accompaniment to our borscht. It can also be used to make our terrific ranch salad dressing (don’t miss the recipe below!).

Find out how something so rich and creamy and full of calories doesn't have to make you gain weight!

For a long time, people thought nuts were fattening, and rightly so. Nuts contain a lot of fat. And fat contains a lot of calories, whether it’s the healthy unsaturated fat in nuts or the unhealthy saturated fat in animal products. In fact, nuts are among the most calorie dense foods you can possibly eat, containing more calories per ounce than a hamburger or a hunk of cheese. But in recent years, a trove of scientific evidence has accumulated indicating that eating nuts does not contribute to weight gain, and may actually help to prevent it (1),(2),(3),(4),(5),(6)!

So...when we talk about calories, we are talking about a measure of the amount of energy contained in our food. Because energy is very valuable, it is never wasted. When people eat more calories than can be immediately utilized, the body turns those calories into fat. The fat is stored in the body as fuel and causes weight gain. But in the aforementioned studies, people would often take in thousands of extra calories per month just by eating nuts, yet not gain weight!

Why? And where did all those calories go?

We now know nuts have special properties that are unlike other foods, so if we take in more calories in nuts than we immediately need, those calories DO NOT end up being stored as body fat. How do nuts do this? A small amount of the excess calories remains bound to the fiber material in the nut and is not absorbed, passing out with our stool. A larger amount of the excess calories are accounted for by nuts’ special ability to increase the body’s basal metabolism, the burning of fuel at rest. But the lion's share, about 70% of the excess calories, are accounted for by what's called "nut satiation." When we eat nuts, they make us feel satiated or more full, so we end up eating less of other foods (7),(8),(9).

Nuts’ abilities to not contribute to weight gain is just one powerful way we have discovered they help us. Every edible plant contains many natural compounds that are likely to benefit our health in a multitude of ways. That's why our dishes are designed to contain as large a variety of whole plant ingredients as possible.

Imagine if you were to combine a lot of different whole plants into a complete diet... you would access a powerful nutritional symphony with many players, capable of preventing and reversing disease. So strive to eat a large variety of whole plant foods daily, because they all work in concert and in so many wonderful ways, to bring us good health.

- Ron Weiss M.D.

* Ranch Dressing Recipe:

2 TBS of Sour Cream

¼ tsp garlic powder

¼ tsp onion powder

¼ tsp dried dill

1/3 tsp dried parsley

1/8 tsp dried chives

Dash of ground black or white pepper

1 tsp apple cider vinegar

Directions: Mix all ingredients in a bowl. Chill for 15 min before serving.

(1) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3383470/pdf/1475-2891-11-20.pdf