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Mayonnaise is
not Vegan and it is Fattening. Is there a Good Mayonnaise Substitute?
If we want to lose weight, we have to find a decent low fat mayonnaise
substitute. Classic mayonnaise is 70 - 80% fat. It is made of egg yolks
and vegetable oil, with a little vinegar and salt. But
there are some vegan products. Let's compare them. If
you get lost during our discussion, here
is a brief course in how to read nutrition labels.
Vegenaise
Thousands of vegans agree that Vegenaise is delicious. It tastes just
like mayonnaise on sandwiches, potato salad, and in many other dishes.
But what will it do for our weight loss plan?
For the answer, we need
to read the Nutrition Facts label:
This product is clearly not good for weight
loss. Is it even healthy? Let's look at the ingredients:
- Oil is the first ingredient, just as with
traditional mayonnaise.
Canola oil contains omega 3 fats, but it is not a whole food. Flaxseed
or walnuts are better sources of omega 3's.
- Brown rice syrup is a type of sugar. It is OK
in small quantities.
The oil is much worse.
- Soy protein is isolated soy protein, which we
try to avoid. It would
have been healthier to use whole soybeans or tofu instead of oil and
isolated soy protein.
- The other ingredients look fine.
We can understand why many vegans love this product. At least
it does not contain chemicals, "natural flavors", and other junk. But
we need a mayonnaise substitute that will be safe for our weight loss
program.
Fat Free Nayonnaise
This product is made by Nasoya. They also have a version that contains
oil. Let's see if this one passes our tests.
The Nutrition Facts label is a little hard to read. We will translate
parts of it for you:
- There are 10 calories in 1 Tbsp and 0 calories
from fat. That sounds
terrific, at least for now.
- There are 100 mgs of sodium in a 10-calorie
serving. Yikes. That is ten
times as much sodium as we want.
- The calorie density is 10/15, or .67 calories
per gram. That is the
same as 19 calories per ounce. That is a nice low calorie density.
- A serving contains no fiber.
Except for the high sodium level, this product seems pretty good so
far. It is time to look at the list of ingredients:
- The first ingredient is soy milk. But when we analyzed soy milk, we
found it was about 44% fat.
How can the company claim that this mayonnaise substitute is
"fat-free"? Because if there is 0.5 g of fat
or less in a serving, they can round the fat grams down to
zero. Let's assume that 1 Tbsp actually contains 0.5 g of fat. A half
gram of fat has 4.5 calories. So 4.5 calories out of 10 would make this
product 45% fat.
- Dehydrated cane juice is sugar. The
label says there
is 1 gram of sugar in a serving, and 2 grams of carbohydrate.
A gram of any pure carbohydrate is 4 calories. So 40% of
the calories come from sugar and another 40% from the carbs in the soy
milk and cornstarch. The fat and protein in the soymilk make
up the remaining 20% of calories.
- The other ingredients seem fine, and they don't
contribute many
calories to the product. We are always suspicious of "natural flavor",
which could be almost anything.
So what conclusion can we reach about this product? It is truly low in
fat, perhaps in the range of 10 -15% of calories. It is 40% sugar, but
the sodium level is our biggest concern. If you have a food
processor, use our
easy Tofu Mayonnaise recipe to make a better mayo substitute.
It works fine for sandwiches, potato salad, and creamy dips.
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