Plantains and Product Reviews

Yesterday for Nutrition Lab, we had a giant food tasting!  I got to try so many foods that I had never had before.  Foods like choke cherries, rutabaga, purple potato, watermelon radish, black garlic, and plantains!Speaking of plantains, two of my classmates come from Hispanic countries and both have family recipes involving plantains. For them, these starchy bananas are a staple food and are used as a potato or other starch replacement in all meals.

This chapter is obviously on starches...!

These plantains were so good, I stuffed myself of them!  Each girl made them 2 different ways that their families like to prepare them.  Girl 1 used very very ripe plantains; the skin was completely black!  She peeled them and boiled one and pan fried the other in a little bit of oil.  They were both very sweet and had a little bit of a banana flavor.  Girl 2 used very green plantains, which are much more firm and starchy.  Her aunt made fried plantains (aka plantain chips) and another way of pan frying them.  I actually liked the pan-fried one better and can definitely see myself using more plantains to cook with (maybe for the holidays??)

Here are the other tastings

After all this tasting, you know I had to do some nutritional research, so here's what I found...
Although 3/4 of the recipes involved frying, it was in healthy oils and not a lot of it, but the nutrition facts I found are for 1 cup of sliced, plain cooked plantains:

• 179 calories
• 47.97 g carbohydrates
• 21.56 g sugar
• 716 mg potassium
• 16.8 mg vitamin C
• 1400 IU vitamin A
• 3.5 g fiber
• resource

Overall, this is a pretty healthy food and would make a decent replacement for other starches.  As with all starchy foods, though, it is important to not over do it.

And last, but certainly not least, I got a confirmation for my first product review on Luana ola!!  I'm not going to spoil the surprise, but the company will be mailing some samples for me to review, so keep checking in to see when it comes!!  I am so excited!

Luana ola!