Greek Food - souvlaka is healthiest choice - Statistical Data Included

Nutrition Action Healthletter, Nov, 2000 by Jayne Hurley, Bonnie Liebman

Baklava

One glance at a baklava recipe and your arteries may start to quake. Each ultra-thin layer of phyllo dough is brushed with melted butter and layered with a mixture of chopped nuts and spices. Then it's baked and drenched with syrup made of honey, sugar, and lemon juice. What pastry could possibly be worse?

A croissant, Cinnabon, scone, or danish, for starters. All have two to four times more saturated fat than a typical portion of baklava. All that brushing apparently delivers just two teaspoons of butter (five grams of artery-clogging fat).

That's not to say that baklava is a health food. The calories hit 550 (in the same league as most other pastries) and the fat hits 21 grams. Even the sodium--620 mg--is a mouthful. And don't forget the eight teaspoons of sugar. Still, many other restaurant desserts are far worse.

To make it better: Share it with a friend.

It's Greek to Me

The highlighted foods in bold are dishes that we analyzed from Greek restaurants. To put them in perspective, the chart includes foods from our previous restaurant studies. Numbers for Burger King, McDonald's, and Pizza Hut come from the companies. Within each category, dishes are ranked from best to worst--from least to most artery-clogging fat (saturated plus trans), then total fat.