A leading Rambam Health Care Campus Gastroenterologist, Professor Jesse (Yishai) Lachter, MD is cautioning Jews around the world to carefully monitor their eating habits during Pesach. Beware: even matzah, the famous holiday unleavened bread, has many more calories than a slice of bread.
Lachter says watch out for adding extra pounds as we replace our regular diets with high fat foods, added sugar and salt in many of our favorite Pesach recipes/delights.
Rambam Health Care Campus offers five Passover tips to help maintain your health and weight as you pass through the yomptov:
1. It may surprise you, but matzah is fattening and should be treated as having double the calories as any slice of bread has! It gets a score of 3 on the standard weight watchers dietary point system, so don’t be fooled by its feather-like weight.
2. Matzah is also very binding, which can often lead to constipation and discomfort. Increasing our water intake throughout Pesach will help you avoid this unwanted side-effect and get you into a healthy habit of drinking lots of water, which will be good practice ahead of a much anticipated summer season.
3. The Pesach Seder can be an extraordinarily heavy meal, and is not a great time for counting calories. However, making sure the Seder is complete with an array of fresh and also cooked vegetables will ensure that your guests aren’t struggling to walk out the door on their way home.
4. With such delicious food in front of us it’s often all too easy to get excited and over-indulge ourselves. The Rambam, recommended the following: take your time and eat until you’re 2/3 full, then relax and you’ll soon feel satisfied/satiated. Enjoy your Pesach delicacies but in moderation.
5. The vacation days are an opportunity to get some exercise – get moving!
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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7 Responses
Oh be quiet. Let us enjoy our Yom Tov.
Holidays tend to be fattening, and Pesach is probably not the worse offender since its hard to eat too much matza and corn sweeteners are banned. Most Pesach cuisine results in more fiber.
Purim and Shavuos are probably the worst offenders.
However the fact is all holidays involve food and that applies in all cultures, and one should ask if the person the article is about has some “agenda” that isn’t being publicized.
Realize you are not on the same level as the Chazon ish and you dont have to follow his shiurim and be still be Yotzei
#3, realize that the Chazon Ish did not publish his shiurim just for himself and others on his level! His position was that these are the shiurim intended for everyone. People should follow their family or community minhagim, whether they derive from the shiurim of the Chazon Ish or Rav Moshe or other posek who dealt with these issues.
I HAVE spoken to posken including one who do eat the Chazon Ishes shiurim and even they said, you are more than Yotzei if you eat smaller shiurim .
Rav Moshe’s shiurim are about 1/3 the size of the Chazon Ish. You are more than Yotzei on Rav Moshe’s Shiurim.
We are not on the level of the Chazon Ish and nor should we be. Only the Chazon Ish is on that level.
If you follow Rav Moshe’s piskei halacha then you are yotzai with Rav Moshe’s shiurim l’chatchila. If you follow the Chazon Ish’s piskei halacha, WHICH WERE NOt INTENDED AS PERSONAL CHUMROS FOR HIMSELF ONLY then you are not yotzai l’chatchila with smaller shiurim. Most of Bnai Brak and lots of people all over the world do follow the mehalech of the Chazon Ish. They are not on his level nor do they pretend to be.
Do what you want but please stop misleading others.
The only reason most people are eating Chazon ish portions is because the cards they give out at the yeshivas with the measurements are based on Chazon Ish measurements. If they gave out cards with Rav Moshe measurements , people would eat that amount instead