The other day, I cooked with an artichoke; the end product was to be spinach and artichoke pizza with garlic/black pepper/oregano infused olive oil as the sauce on a whole wheat crust. As a sidenote, I suggest you try making it yourself because it was incredible. Anyway, as with most foods, I get curious as to the nutritional value. Since artichokes don't come with a label, I turned to Al Gore's brainchild, the interweb.
What I found was stunning. Artichokes only provide 76 calories. On the same webpage in the prior link, it also states that it is a good food for weight loss. After preparing the unique looking vegetable, I must say that I find this conclusion patently obvious and borderline trivial. Anyone who's ever dealt with an artichoke knows what I'm talking about. It is a heck of a lot of work! I surmise that one would burn off more calories trying to prepare the food than one would take in from eating it.
As a corollary, I will argue that chocolate is great for weight gain. It's got many more calories, and it's much easier to procure the end product from its (somewhat less naturally occurring) wrapper.
Rather than just complain about the caloric mathematics of artichokes, I would like to pose a solution that was given to me by a faithful reader. His idea involved tipping the balance of calories in/calories out by increasing calories in (while improving taste). It had to be that way because the "calories out" is pretty much constant, whereas adding things to the artichoke can increase the "calories in." The solution is so elegant and refined that I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I wasn't able to come up with it on my own: Wrap it in bacon!
-FSG
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