The Hannukah Miracle that will Never Happen — a Low-Calorie Donut

December 5, 2006 - 9:10 AM by

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Anyone who has every tried to stick to a diet in Israel knows that the Chanukah donut – called a “soovganiah” – is a caloric disaster zone. Traditionally soaked in oil, and in recent years draped with chocolate glaze, sprinkles, and filled with everything from bavarian creme to dulce de leche to vodka-laced vanilla pudding, every year they are under your nose for a month while the media screams how bad they are for you.

The donut-pushing bakery chains keep trying to think up new and ingenious ways of justifying giving in to temptations. Check out their clever strategies:

In previous years the sufganiya has shrunk from 100 grams (about 3.5 ounces) to half its size.
This new sized doughnut has been given the name “mini”, with fewer calories. There is even a “bite-sized sufganiya” on the market now, and this stands at about 1.2 ounces. Anything to keep the consumer happy.

The coming Hanukkah will witness a further donut upgrade. The Roladin bakery chain has declared a doughnut revolution, offering even healthier doughnuts this year: No longer will the doughnuts be fried in regular oil, but rather in canola oil, which is known for its cholesterol reducing capacities, will be used instead.

Roladin CEO Kobi Hakak explained that this year the sufganiya will be “smaller, healthier, and better – the mini jelly sufganiya will only contain 169 calories.” According to Hakak, this year, 90 percent of the chain’s doughnut products will be mini sufganiyot.

Canola or not, it’s like trying to make chocolate a healthy food. There are just some kinds of foods that will never be healthy, no matter what you do to them.

At Lehem Erez they have declared a “Hanukkah miracle” by offering non fried doughnuts. They propose to do this by making brioche, a “baked doughnut”. This has a slightly different look and texture, but is similar enough to the original sufganiya. Brioche is a French pastry, which is light and fluffy compared to the heavy, fried sufganiya.

“An amazing pastry with little sugar and a lot of butter, stuffed with cream,” the chain explained. “About a third or more of the brioche’s weight is butter.”

So where does the health come in? Erez Komrovsky , one of the chain’s owners explained that “butter is much healthier than margarine, since is doesn’t have trans fats, so we should make sure the amount of butter flowing in the veins is increased.”

Yeah, right, butter….that famous health food.

See you at the gym.

Tags: • Category: Holidays 

Comments

One Comment on The Hannukah Miracle that will Never Happen — a Low-Calorie Donut

  1. David on Wed, Dec 6th 2006 1:11 AM

    2. Dont blame the manufacturers or the bakers. Responsibility rests only with the individuals who open their mouths and eat the fat.

    Unless a person has a medical problem of sorts, then it is a lack of personal control why people eat too much of anything and become fat.

    Secondly, chocolate is not unhealthy – there is sufficient research to back that up.

    Thirdly – just say “no”. People do not “become” fat and suffer the consequential results, they do it to themselves.

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