Lots of Salt, Fat & Calories in Holiday Meals…May Not “Passover” After 8 Days
HAIFA, ISRAEL – A leading Rambam Health Care Campus Gastroenterologist, Professor Jesse (Yishai) Lachter, M.D. is cautioning Jews around the world to carefully monitor their eating habits during the eight-day holiday of Passover. Beware: even matzah, the famous holiday unleavened bread, has many more calories than a slice of bread.
Lachter says watch out for adding extra pounds as we replace our regular diets with high fat foods, added sugar and salt in many of our favorite Passover recipes/delights.
Rambam Health Care Campus offers five Passover tips to help maintain your health and weight as you pass through the eight days:
- It may surprise you, but matzah is fattening and should be treated as having double the calories as any slice of bread has! It gets a score of 3 on the standard weight watchers dietary point system, so don’t be fooled by its feather-like weight.
- Matzah is also very binding, which can often lead to constipation and discomfort. Increasing our water intake throughout Passover will help you avoid this unwanted side-effect and get you into a healthy habit of drinking lots of water, which will be good practice ahead of a much anticipated summer season.
- The Passover Seder can be an extraordinarily heavy meal, and is not a great time for counting calories. However, making sure the Seder is complete with an array of fresh and also cooked vegetables will ensure that your guests aren’t struggling to walk out the door on their way home.
- With such delicious food in front of us it’s often all too easy to get excited and over-indulge ourselves. The Rambam, Maimonides, recommended the following: take your time and eat until you’re 2/3 full, then relax and you’ll soon feel satisfied/satiated. Enjoy your Passover delicacies but in moderation.
- The vacation days are an opportunity to get some exercise – get moving!
Wishing a Happy Pesach, holiday of spring, holiday of Matzot, and holiday of freedom to all!
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Rambam Health Care Campus is a 1,000-bed academic hospital serving the over 2 million residents of Northern Israel. Providing comprehensive medical services in all medical specialties, Rambam is the tertiary referral center for 12 district hospitals. Rambam Health Care Campus’s garage can be converted into a 2,000-bed full-service underground hospital, the largest in the world. In addition to the citizens of Northern Israel, Rambam serves the Israel Defense Forces Northern Command, UN Peacekeeping Forces, and the U.S. 6th Fleet. Many of Rambam’s physicians participate in cutting-edge research projects to bring new therapies and treatments not only to their patients, but the greater community of the world. Rambam Heath Care Campus staff believes that everyone deserves the highest quality of care and has always proudly opened its doors to all those in need, regardless of their religious, race, and ethnicity. Visit http://www.rambam.org.il/EnglishSite.
