Most of us who are trying to eat healthfully make a concerted effort to avoid mayonnaise. We're all smart enough to know that anything made of primarily vegetable oil and egg yolks just can't be good for our waistlines or our poor little arteries! Now, we hope that you are already aware of the fact that foods like tuna salad, potato salad, and most macaroni salads are all saturated with mayo. Unfortunately, though, many restaurants and food companies are sneaky bastards and they're using mayo in several other dishes and doing a damn good job of hiding it. And then many of us who eat out often or buy prepackaged food wonder why we can't lose those last five pounds. Well, this may be why: hidden mayo can add hundreds of calories to your day without you even knowing that it's there. Here are the five places it is most often hidden. Be on the lookout.
#1 - Spicy Tuna Rolls
This is an evil secret that most sushi restaurants share. Many of them make their spicy tuna roll by mixing the tuna with a bunch of mayonnaise! They really bury it in there with a bunch of spicy sauce so that you barely even notice it, but it's lurking there in our healthy sushi, waiting to make us fat. We were so bummed when we learned this, because spicy tuna was previously one of our favorites, but not anymore. Don't waste your expensive, sushi-grade albacore on glorified tuna salad. We recommend swapping the spicy tuna roll for regular tuna or even tuna avocado, where you'll at least enjoy the source of fat and get a little potassium into your body. Just add a little extra wasabi and you'll barely notice the difference.
#2 - Guacamole
Any self-respecting Mexican restaurant would never use mayo in their guac, but several less prideful ones do. It is an easy and cheap way to thin out the guacamole, since avocados are a lot more expensive than mayonnaise. Pay attention to color. If the guac is pale, celery green, it's most likely loaded with mayo. And notice a certain tang that some guacamoles have and keep in mind that avocados are creamy, buttery and delicious, but certainly not tangy.
#3 - Artichoke Dip
We were at a friend's dinner party the other night and she served a delicious artichoke dip made from fresh artichokes. It tasted light and fresh and we gobbled up nearly the entire bowlful. We enjoyed it so much that we asked her for the recipe and almost slapped her in the face when she handed it to us. There was absolutely no sign of mayonnaise in that dip, and yet it contained quite a bit. We already knew that most packaged, blended dips contained mayo, but now we'll be suspicious of these chunky, home-made versions, too. Now, we don't want you to offend your friend and be one of those lame chicks who doesn't eat at a party, but learn from our mistake and just have a few tastes. That bowlful of mayo did not look good on us the next day.
#4 - Aioli
Traditional aioli is made from garlic, olive oil and sometimes egg, so it was never a diet food to begin with. But at a nice restaurant with a glass of vino and yummy piece of fresh baked bread, this stuff is well worth the million calories. However, some companies and restaurants have tried to make their lives easier by adding globs of mayo instead of emulsifying the oil and egg themselves. Of course, traditional aioli is common around the world, where they have much lower obesity rates than here in America, where we get lazy and add mayo. We doubt that this is a coincidence.
#5 - Dressings
Mayonnaise serves as a base for many bottled salad dressings, particularly Thousand Island and ranch. In the UK, Thousand Island dressing is called "fry sauce," and that makes sense to us. This thick, creamy mixture of ketchup and mayo works better as a dip for french fries than it does weighing down iceberg lettuce (literally and figuratively). As for ranch, go ahead and have it with your hot wings, but pouring mayo all over your salad just doesn't make sense. Keep your salad healthy and you'll feel less guilty splurging on dip when you'll enjoy it.
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This statement is not based on science. Please stop spreading misinformation. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on the Women's Health Initiative (2006?). They found no measurable connection between heart disease and dietary fat intake.
As for your waistline, what's more fattening -- 500 calories of mayo or 500 calories of corn syrup? French people eat a ton of fat and they are thin. And it isn't because of the wine. It's because they don't eat crap food designed by "food scientists" that comes out of factories. They also sit down to eat together ( *slowly* ) with other people at a proper meal.
But it's not just the fault of Kraft Foods. We want this stuff. We eat like 5-year-olds. It's no accident that the poorest and most uneducated Americans are the fattest. There's no longer any such thing as grown-up food. There is no kid's menu in America because the whole menu is the kid's menu.
A depressing chart:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Bmi30chart.png
I feel the problem isn't so much calorie counting or education or reading food labels, it's that no one cooks for themselves anymore. And furthermore because we rarely eat fresh food that's been cooked by a loved one, we overcompensate for the missing taste by gorging on convenient foods that are sweet or salty or loaded with MSG. And we're still not satisfied so we eat even more and more. And then we get fat so we start playing around with weird food combinations like low-carb diets and slim fast shakes that only compound the problem.
And if you think there might be mayo in your restaurant guacamole, why not simply ask the kitchen staff? Then you can make a sensible decision for yourself, in the moment. But to be unwilling to eat anything with mayo in it, ever, is a bit compulsive, don't you think?
While I do feel compassion for the self-loathing you express here, I suggest you seek therapy instead of trying to enlist HuffPo's readership in your food-related compulsions.
It's not what you eat, folks, it's HOW MUCH you eat. And most Americans eat way too much.
We went out to eat when I visited, and I ordered a BLT with the mayo on the side. When my sandwich arrived, it was slathered with the stuff, plus a small cupful on the plate.
Steve
Then again, anybody who didn't already know this has to be living in a dream world.
http://www.cliffordawright.com/caw/recipes/display/recipe_id/816/
Why don't you at least take the trouble to read a recipe before you cite it? I see, incidentally, that Mr. Wright describes himself as "the premier source of Mediterranean food, cooking and recipes". Quite a claim. Made on what basis? Not a modest man, our Mr. Wright.