HealthKitchen.hu

 

  

Mom is slowly starting to realize that lately I haven’t been riding a trend or going through a fleeting passion, but that I have truly undergone a complete lifestyle change in the past few months. As a result, she now only tries to foist Nutella pancakes on me once a week instead of the initial three times a day. Since my parents live three houses away and Mom feels it's her mission to bring me breakfast from the corner shop every other day, instead of chocolate snails and chocolate donuts, the bag now contains rye bread, ham, and tomatoes. Sometimes, a "mine" of chocolate biscuits still gets left behind, but the situation is far from as dire as it was a few weeks ago. Consequently, Mom calls me during her usual daily phone call to say they're ordering food from a new place and want to know what I'd like. At one point, anticipating such calls, I thought about recording a stock phrase so that when my mom called, I could just play it and wouldn't have to say, "No, Mom, I don't need anything, I have everything, you know I can't eat that, just leave me alone, damn it."

 

I was just about to say that, when, to my great surprise, the conversation took a turn. My ears perked up at the phrase "healthy kitchen," and since I usually completely switch off my brain during these phone calls, I now asked, "What healthy kitchen? What is it? Is this something new?" "Yes," my mom replied, and then continued that you can get special diet meals for vegetarians, organic foods, and low-carb meals, and they're going to order from there for a week in advance because you can do that too. Of course, my parents couldn't be left out of my big healthy lifestyle storm, so the winds of health have been sweeping them along for some time now. Dad has issues with his cholesterol level and has been taking blood pressure medication for years, even though he has a background in sports. Mom is a completely different category. She is the type of woman who is perfectly unsuited for any diet. She has some excess weight, but that's not even the point, because it's one thing that she's been dieting for 35 years, but she does such things in the meantime that I want to jump out the window. Her diet looks like this: coffee in the morning, yogurt at noon, and usually that's about it, because the end usually comes around 5-6 PM when, dizzy with hunger, she makes up for the day's food intake. But don't think this is just characteristic of my mom, because women over 40 operate according to a similar method. Tasting raw dough during a strict diet to see if it needs anything else, drinking the prescribed 3 liters of liquid per day with sweetened tea, and treating every emotional breakdown with sweets because it doesn't count, because it was needed. But the biggest line I heard recently was, "I'm menstruating right now, so chocolate is good and necessary."

The point is, I put serious pressure on my parents every time I visit them. I check the fridge and visually execute them with my gaze when I see my dad go to the store at 8 PM and come back with a pack of biscuits and a bottle of Fanta. With persistent effort, I've already managed to get them to drink only mineral water instead of sugary rubbish, and when I say they should eat chicken or quality meat, they no longer order creamy Roquefort chicken breast strips with potato croquettes, but rather salmon salad. Although my mom admitted last time that if they know I'm coming, they hide all food from me that they know I would make a fuss about. This is huge in a way, as if I wasn't doing it for their own good.

So, a healthy kitchen. I haven't really heard about it yet, the girls in the office haven't ordered from here yet, I haven't heard any woman recommend it to each other saying "oh, they have such good food there," and most importantly... There's an inner circle on this office floor, which we call the matriarch circle. The group consists of about 9-11 women. Back office, reception, marketing girls and a few saleswomen, in other words, there's huge gossiping all day long here. These are the ones who know everything about everyone, from their clothing size, who likes whom, who hooked up with whom at the company party, how much everyone earns, and generally really everything, but their main characteristic is that by 9 AM, their main topic is where they should go for lunch today or where they should order food from. Now, what they don't talk about doesn't exist, and I haven't heard of a place called "healthy kitchen." But why would I have heard about it, when 90% of them are in relationships, meaning they don't give a damn about what they eat. So, from this, I knew that what my mom was saying now must really be a good thing, because if I haven't heard about this eatery from the matriarch circle, then it's certainly serving healthy and diet meals.

Ákos and I have long planned to open a place or even an online restaurant where only and exclusively healthy and diet meals would be available for order, where there would be no sugar-free desserts, low-carb pasta, or chocolate-free chocolate cakes, but only and exclusively healthy foods. Seriously, I don't understand why something like this doesn't exist yet, because I think there would be an insane demand for it. I see that others have already thought of this, and the idea was followed by action, but at some point, the basic concept always deviates in a direction it shouldn't go. Let's say you can earn 400,000 forints a day with healthy food. But if you open up to the mainstream masses and include sweets and "tasty" foods in the menu, then the profit immediately jumps to 1,500,000 a day, and at that point, they completely disregard the starting point, because, as we know, money talks, and if you can rake in 1.5 million a day, you're not going to bother with 400,000.

I had hoped that the healthy kitchen would be one of those 400-thousand-forint-a-day ventures, because even if we can't do it (we don't have 30 million), at least someone else would, and thereby the healthy lifestyle, which is now so important to me, would spread. I don't really know what I was hoping for, because disappointment arrived punctually. I'm not saying we're talking about Pizza Hut-level crap, because at least they don't build castles in the air, but it's not quite what you'd expect from a "healthy kitchen" name. Before we dive into the menu, a little explanation of its interpretation is needed.

Next to the dishes are symbols that mean the following: Green for organic foods, Red for low-calorie, Orange for low-carb (so low, not free), Light blue for "sportline" (I couldn't figure out what this means, if anyone has an idea, let me know. Maybe it's for athletes, I have no idea), and Dark blue for vegetarian stuff.

What deserves special praise is that they wrote down the calorie count next to the dishes that are meant to be or are considered diet-friendly. This is definitely commendable, but if we consider that a law was just passed in Great Britain stating that from 2012, it will be mandatory to label EVERYTHING with its calorie content. If we start from this, then this should be the norm, but why would we start from this? Let's be glad that they at least display it here.

M7-M8 body shaping zone. Now, I'm not really sure how they conceived this, and this zone for me is bleeding from more wounds than Fukushima. In the Gastroyal article, I already explained how many calories an average woman needs per day to lose weight (1,500). In the Healthy Kitchen's body shaping zone, there are portions with 700-900 calories for lunch + dinner. There would still be three more meals if we wanted to follow diet manuals, but something here really bothered me. Namely, the calorie values, so since all the data was available, I did a little recalculation of the portions. You can see the quantity of the served portions in the picture, and since I just posted a cool little calorie chart yesterday, I thought I'd recalculate.

 

Well then, let's see. Cauliflower soup 3dl 315Kcal, 20dkg chicken breast strips 244kcal, smoked cheese 5dkg 186kcal, chicken stew 330kcal, corn 10dkg 102kcal, salad 17kcal. = 1.194 Kcal instead of 865 Kcal. Well, yes, this is what happens in Budapest. The portion is accounted for with 329 calories more, and this might not seem like a lot, and some might say it's acceptable, but it will have a slight implication in the future. Let me put it differently. This +329 kcal is three!!! Kinder Bueno bars, and if you only deviate this much from your diet every day, that's 7,700 calories in a month, and everyone remembers that 9,000 calories equals +-1 kg of body fat. Not to mention, this number only applies to two meals; in addition, a hearty breakfast + 2 daytime meals would also be needed. Dieting is a very strict system that you either adhere to or you can go to hell, everyone should finally understand this. This is why you diet and still don't lose weight, and then the desperate excuses come. "There's something wrong with me," "I don't have time," "my life isn't like that," "I'm unhappy," "it must be my thyroid," "I'm unable to lose weight because I'm not built that way..." This is the best: "I'm not built that way." At times like these, a gun would come in handy. There's no such thing as being unable to lose weight; you just approach diets cluelessly. Drinking sugary drinks, exceeding the allowed amount even of diet foods, alcohol, and everyone forgets that a latte contains 4 deciliters of milk, at 50 calories per deciliter, and you think you're on a regimen, when in fact you're constantly screwing yourself over because the whole thing always fails on things you don't even know about or wouldn't think would sabotage your weight loss. It's a damn simple thing. You have a basic calorie requirement. If you go below it, you lose weight; if you go above it, you gain weight; if you exercise alongside it, you lose weight faster and get more toned. This is the basic starting point that is over-elaborated, from which the multi-billion euro fitness business grew, along with endless scammers. The problem is, I'm not in the state of mind right now to mention the cheating and criminal consumption of chocolates, but if anyone wants to know what I think about it, they can feel free to look into the mind of a deranged killer.

I'd like to return a little to the world of women, because what you girls do is absolutely astonishing. My friend had his wisdom tooth extracted a few days ago, and as after any tooth extraction, the doctor tells you not to eat or drink any dairy products for 3 days. The guy goes home, tells his girlfriend that he can't eat or drink ANY DAIRY PRODUCTS for 3 days. What's his girlfriend's first reaction to this? "Okay, then I'll make you some rice pudding!!!!!!!!!!!!!" This is it. But what else can I say about this? I swear, this is why we die 15 years earlier than women. I don't even dare to imagine how a woman sees the world, or what goes through her mind when it comes to diets and regimens involving calorie restriction. Usually, it's total chaos, which is partly why a woman diets her whole life, even though it really wouldn't hurt if she tried it once. When it comes to women, you have to be prepared for everything x3. This is my grandfather's greatest legacy to me.

One last remark about the Healthy Kitchen menu. The K33 line, F1, F3, and E1 to E6 are also designated as diet-friendly. I deliberately left D4, the sugar-free dessert category, for last. I would copy what it's about here, but I don't want to add anything.

All in all, the Healthy Kitchen is a disappointment for me. My parents order from here constantly, and it's still better than eating the crap they bring home from Princess. The urge to take serious steps towards opening a truly professionally based healthy restaurant, where no trashy garbage would be available, is growing stronger in me. If anyone wants to invest 30 million, please send an email.