Question about Jewel's green beans

[AnnaC]

Jewel, I'll have you know that I used your garlicky green beans recipe as my guinea pig to learn how to import into mastercook, and it was a success!! I'm dying to make them b/c they have had such great reviews on this bb, but when i imported the recipe and it calculated the nutritional analysis, it came up w/ a 56% fat content, I almost fell over. So I changed the 2tbsp butter to olive oil since I usually cook w/ olive oil anyway, and then it became 60% fat!! How can that be? Where is all that fat coming from? I'll still make them, fat or no fat, but it surprised me to see this.

Anna

[ClaraB]

Often with a vegetable recipe, the % calories from fat seems very high, because the calorie content overall is so low (vegetable usually have very few calories). Don't shy away from the recipe, though, because the overall grams of fat per serving is probably pretty low. BTW, oil has more fat than butter per tbsp, so that's why the fat content went up when you subbed.

[aggie94]

I suspect the reason the percentage of fat is so high is because the rest of the recipe is low in calories. After all, it's just green beans, a little wine, and some seasonings.

[Jewel]

I agree! There is no fat in that recipe but the butter, so it's the percentages that are off not the calories/fat content in general. There are 11 grams of fat per TBS of butter, so if you're using 2 TBS that's 22 grams total. A pound of green beans feeds 4 'normal' people so that would be about 5.5 grams of fat per serving, right? Green beans are low in calories, so 5.5 grams is quite a bit for only about 100 calories worth of beans and butter! That IS over 50%. But if you look at it overall, it's not bad at all. Try decreasing the butter if you'd like, but don't worry about the percentages when you're using a very low calorie/lowfat main ingredient and then slapping butter on it! :)

[AnnaC]

Ohh! the lightbulb just clicked!! of course that's why there's so much fat (percentage-wise that is!) Thanks ladies!

[Jewel]

By the way Anna, I know it's a matter of personal preference...but just try it with the butter first instead of olive oil. I'll bet you never try the olive oil. ;)