Nutrition
Hamburgers can be a healthy meal if you load them with vegetables, use wholegrain buns and eat them with a side salad.
Hamburgers can be a healthy meal if you load them with vegetables.
By day, the crowds seek out raw, plantbased foods, dodge additives and preservatives and hail wholefoods and organics. But once the sun sets and food trucks start to line city streets, a secret other life emerges in which gourmet burgers dominate the menu. These burgers have exploded in 2016, with Wellington on a Plate’s “Burger Wellington” challenge receiving a record 116 entries from restaurants and food trucks. But can we have our burger and our health, too?
Legend has it that in the 1800s, cooks on a German Hamburg-Amerika Line ship that took
The days of white buns are gone, and now the more typical gourmet burger base is brioche or ciabatta buns.
emigrants to the US served minced-beef patties between two pieces of bread, creating the hamburger. Although there is still no consensus on its origins, there is general agreement about what a hamburger is: a sliced bread roll or bun containing a cooked minced-meat patty, usually beef.
There is nothing inherently unhealthy about a meat patty or a bread roll. The issue is often in the ingredients that accompany the patty, such as the slathering of sauces and cheeses, with fresh vegetables often limited or non-existent and sides of salty, high-fat fries that make for an arteryclogging meal.
The Ministry of Health’s 2015 Eating and Activity Guidelines for New Zealand Adults recommends including three daily servings of vegetables and two of fruit – one serving of vegetables equates to about half a cup of salad or cooked vegetables, and one serving of fruit is equivalent to a medium apple or banana, two small plums or half a cup of fruit salad. The guidelines also recommend including grains and opting mostly
for wholegrain varieties. With this in mind, it’s possible to increase the healthy components of a home-made burger while still maintaining that gourmet flavour.
The days of plain white buns are gone, and now the more typical gourmet burger base is brioche or ciabatta buns. But if good health is your goal, opt for a wholegrain bun, as wholegrain breads typically contain more fibre. Most of us need to eat more fibre, because the average intake for adults is 20g a day – less than the recommended 25-30g.
According to a 2013/14 survey, less than half (41%) of New Zealand adults ate the recommended amount of fruit and vegetables. So to create a more nutritious patty, add grated vegetables and herbs. The Heart Foundation recommends adding half a cup of parsley, half a cup of grated carrot and half a cup of diced onion to 200g of lean beef mince, with an egg and breadcrumbs to create four patties. Chef Mike Van de Elzen used grated beetroot and courgette in his beef and vege burger in TVNZ’s Food Truck series.
Whatever vegetables you add will make the burger more nourishing.
Try a slice of iceberg lettuce with tomato, a crispy Asian-style coleslaw or a handful of watercress. Other tasty options include onions sautéed in olive oil, shiitake mushrooms, sliced beetroot or avocado, pickles and a handful of sprouts.
Once you’ve loaded up your burger, add a side salad to super-size your vegetable intake. If you can’t face eating a burger without a side of chips, try home-made buffalo chips with the skin on, as it contains much of the potato’s fibre and nutrients.
Finally, a burger needs a flavoursome dressing, but that doesn’t have to be a saturated-fat-laden mayonnaise. Try a Greek-inspired lamb burger with home-made tzatziki, mix a tasty chutney with a little low-fat yoghurt, or add mashed avocado and lime juice to a spoonful or two of mayonnaise.
The only problem you’ll then have is how to fit the burger into your mouth.
If you can’t face eating a burger without fries, try home-made buffalo chips with the skin on.