OCD Muffins

As a coach for CSU, I try to go to as many practices/talks/things as possible. Rob recently set up two nutrition talks, basically one talk divided in two (because we all know the attention span of high-schoolers). Sarah, a grad student at UNH, came down to talk about nutrition specifically taylored to highschool skiers. The main point of session 1 (last monday) was that endurance athletes need to break down their food as: 60-65% carbohydrates, 20-25% fat, and 15% protein. This is all fine and dandy, but I was wondering--if I were to sit at home and eat muffins all day, and only muffins, is there a muffin I can make that would have this ratio? Yup. And I made it this morning.

These are by no means sweet muffins; those cake-like things you get at Dunkin Donuts. I suppose they're more "good-for-you" muffins than anything else, but I think they taste delicious. Of course, its a muffin, naturally I think its delicious. I used 3/4 yoghurt to 1/4 oil, to increase the protein percent and decrease the fat (otherwise it wouldn't fit the criteria of being a well rounded food to eat all day). I expected that this might do some funky things to the way it rose in the oven or something, but they turned out fine. Light and fluffy and poofy on top. I based my recipe off of the zucchini-lemon muffins that I like so much, because I figured zucchini is good for you too, so you may as well have it all. So:

The 25-60-15 Muffin

2C flour
1/2C sugar
1 tbs baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2C walnuts
1/2C raisins
1 zucchini, grated in a cheese grater, skin included (unless you don't want little green bits in your muffins)
2 carrots, also grated
zest of 1 lemon
1/2C milk (I used skim, because that is the only milk we have. It always works out)
2 eggs
3 tbs unsweetened yoghurt (once again, I used skim, because its what we have)
1 tbs vegetable oil

So if you add up all of these ingredients, you get 2,310 calories, 64 grams of fat, 367 grams of carbohydrate, and 65 grams of protein. When you calculate the percentages, you get 25% fat, 64% carbohydrates, and 12% protein. I think thats pretty darn close to the ideal 25-60-15. I suppose if you wanted more protein you could replace all the oil with yoghurt, and you would go down in the fat percentage and up in the protein percentage. Here I'm going all OCD again. Enough.

Mix together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a big bowl. Then take the grated zucchini in your hands and squeeze it over the sink. Add the zucchini, carrots, lemon zest, walnuts, and raisins to the dry ingredients, mix them around until they are well coated.

Mix the rest of the ingredients together in a separate bowl. Make sure the eggs get mostly beaten. Then add the wet ingredients to the dry. Mix just enough to combine (you'll fine there is a lot of "stuff" in this muffin--it might take more mixing than you're used to). Grease a muffin pan and bake at 400 degrees for 10-15 minutes, or until they look done. This made 20 muffins for me, so it was two batches. And then you can eat your muffins feeling good about how healthy you are being! woohoo OCD muffins!

Conclusion: You can sit on your couch and eat muffins all day and still get your exact macronutritional requirements for an endurance athlete (but do endurance athletes sit on their couches and eat muffins all day?)