Welcome! I am a mom of a busy 8 year old and an adventurous 6 year old. I also happen to work for a great company called NuVal. NuVal is a nutritional scoring system that rates foods on a scale of 1-100, based on how nutritious they are. We are implementing NuVal in grocery stores around the country.
NuVal may not be in your area yet. But I see the scores while they are "hot off the press" and because of that I am able to make better decisions about what to feed my family.
I am not a registered dietitian. I am just a mom who happens to work for NuVal. I am also an AFAA-certified Group Exercise Instructor. NuVal is a system designed to lead customers to the most nutritious food choices. It is not a diet or weight-loss plan. Before starting a diet, you should always consult your personal physician. The opinions expressed in this blog are the opinions of the writer and not the opinions of NuVal LLC.
Do you tofu? By that I mean do you normally pick up a container of tofu and toss it into your grocery cart each week? I’d love to hear your comments on this!
I do tofu – but really just for recipes. Although now that I’ve seen the NuVal scores for tofu, I might just start eating more of it!
But before I let you know the amazing scores for tofu, how about a little tofu primer. I found this fantastic article on the Cleveland Clinic website and it answered all my burning questions about tofu.
What is Tofu?
Tofu is soybean curd. It is made much like the way that cheese is made. The process involves heating soymilk and then separating the curds from the whey. The curds are pressed at different intensities (thus you have soft tofu, firm tofu and extra firm tofu). Silken tofu is more like the consistency of yogurt and made by adding thick soy milk to a coagulant and lactone.
Here at A Better Bag of Groceries, you may recall me using tofu in two of my favorite recipes. First, there is Miss Conduct’s Easy Greek Casserole. This is one of my favorite dishes to make on a Sunday and then take for lunch all week long. It calls for firm tofu.
If you read both of those posts, from November 2009 and March 2010 respectively, you will notice that I said that we had not yet scored tofu yet. I was wondering how it would score. Well, guess what? We’ve scored it now. Our goal at NuVal is to score virtually everything in the grocery store. It takes time – but eventually we will get there!
So (drum roll please), here are some of the tofu scores.
Nasoya Extra Firm Tofu: NuVal score of 91 (not the 6, that was for another product)
Nasoya Firm Tofu: NuVal score of 100
Nasoya Soft Tofu: NuVal score of 100
Wow – awesome scores! Now I want to eat more tofu. So, please do share your tofu ideas, if you in fact tofu. Or your recipes! I’d love to hear.
Yesterday’s Giveaway
First of all, thank you all so much for your comments yesterday. You all had me laughing and crying all day as I read your rants about Too Early Christmas and your heartfelt words of thanks for this season of Thanksgiving! I loved it!
Congratulations to Commenter #72 Leah! You’ve won the Farewell to Autumn Giveaway. Please send me an email at abetterbagofgroceries@gmail.com so that I can mail your prize right out to you. I want you to get it right away so you can savor it these last few days before the Christmas Crush begins. Again, thanks to everyone who entered!
Passover Greetings! In observance of this Jewish holiday commemorating the biblical event of Hebrews’ escape from enslavement in Egypt, I am most honored to bring you a post – and a recipe, of course – from my friend, Robin Abrahams. Robin writes the Miss Conduct column in the Boston Sunday Globe Magazine and it is the first thing I read every Sunday. I am a huge fan of her witty advice in this complicated social world that we live in today. Robin has two blogs, Miss Conduct and Robin Abrahams.com, and is the author of Mind Over Manners. While our relationship began as me-fan/she-celebrity, we have become friends over the years and she recently offered to me a guest post of her Passover post from her Miss Conduct blog in April 2008. I hope you enjoy Robin as much as I do!
So, without further ado, I bring you Miss Conduct!
During Passover, observant (or even kinda-observant) Jews do not eat leavened bread. This means no subs, no doughnuts, no pizza–and no croutons in your salad.
Until now! For I have invented the breadless crouton to spare my people and the righteous and health-conscious gentiles from boring salads! Let me show you it.
Take a block of extra-firm tofu and drain it. I realize I have been putting up a lot of tofu recipes where I say to drain the tofu, and I haven’t explained how to do that. Not very empowering of me! You can drain tofu in a lot of different ways, but here’s what I do: put a flat cheese grater over a bowl, put the tofu on the grater, put a flat-bottomed bowl or plate on the tofu, and put a can of beans or something in the bowl. Let sit for 30 minutes or longer. The idea is to press some of the liquid out of the tofu, and give it somewhere to drain into–them’s the technical specs, work it out as you will.
Heat the oven to 400. Cut the drained tofu into cubes about 1/2″ all around. Spread them out on a nonstick baking sheet. You can spray them with olive oil Pam, but you don’t have to. Sprinkle heavily with onion powder, garlic powder, and anything else you like–Cavendar’s would be good, and I like cumin because it nicely complexifies tastes. (If you feel that cumin body-odorifies tastes, then don’t use cumin.) Bake for about 25 minutes, turning once, until croutons are nice and chewy.
A spinach salad with tofu croutons? Hello, can you say nutrition? Have one of these for lunch and you’ll realize what Popeye’s been on about all that time.
Note from Melissa: While NuVal has not yet scored tofu, we have scored matzoh. My Jewish friends can feel good over the next few days as they crunch their unleavened crackers. Manischewitz Matzoh crackers score an 82 on the NuVal scale! Robin also mentioned to me that some Jews do not eat tofu on Passover. It depends on their level of observance. For those of you who are interested in learning more about Kosher foods, this cartoon gives you a sense of what they’re all about!
The NuVal Nutritional Scoring System gives nutritional guidance to consumers frustrated with complicated nutrition labels and misleading packaging promises. Under NuVal, all foods and beverages are rated on a scale between 1 to 100. The higher the score, the higher the overall nutrition.
Awards
A Better Bag of Groceries was recently named by Medical Assistant Colleges as a Top 50 Blog for Understanding and Preventing Childhood Obesity. Hooray!
