My favorite vietnamese dish!

What I had consumed for lunch was Vietnamese noodle soup, which in Vietnamese is called pho.  My mother prepared this dish for lunch and pho is something that I love to eat everyday if I could.  I usually eat this dish about twice a week and what is basically is, is a broth made from chicken or beef and usually that takes two days or overnight to prepare but since she made a small batch it only took about two hours.  And it is served with rice noodles and whatever kind of meat is preferred to be served with it along with some other things such as onions, scallions, been sprouts, basil, and lime.  Some pastes that are optional that can be added to pho to make it either sweeter or more spicy is a brown paste we call tuong and that is what would make the pho more sweet.  In English, it is called hoison sauce and another paste called tuong ot, which would make the pho more spicy, and the product in English is called Sriracha.  So, I had my pho with beef, which is Vietnamese is called pho tai.  The pieces of beef were cut thinly and into medium strips and served on top of the noodles and I also added the two pastes and lime.  

Now there isn't a standard calorie count for this dish only because there are so many different components put together for this dish.  There is the broth which can be made with either chicken or beef, the noodles, the pastes so each of those has different calories.  According to www.mypyramidtracker.gov they did have vietnamese pho bo on there which I was surprised to see because that was what I had exactly and in order to figure the calories for this dish we would have to break everything down and figure the calories separately.  So according to www.mypyramidtracker.gov I put that I had three servings of one cup of vietnamese pho bo which I think they only calculated the broth plus the noodles, so the total calories is 527 which I think sounds reasonable because the pastes would add more calories.  Below is a picture of my favorite brand of hoisin sauce.

Nutrition Facts for Hoisin Sauce (serving size one tbsp)

Calories: 35

Calories from fat: 5

Total fat: 0.5g

Saturated fat: 0.1g

Polyunsaturated fat: 0.3g

Monounsaturated fat: 0.2g

Cholesterol: 0mg

Sodium: 258mg

Total carbohydrates: 7.1g

Dietary fiber: 0.4g

Sugars: 4.4g

Protein: 0.5g

Calcium: 1%

Iron: 1%

I would say that I put about one a half tablespoons of hoisin sauce into my pho so that would be an extra 52.5 calories.  The popular chili sauce that is sold in stores is called Sriracha and the picture is below.

Nutrition Facts for Sriracha (serving size is one tsp)

Calories: 5

Calories from fat: 0

Total fat: 0g

Monounsaturated fat: 0g

Polyunsaturated fat: 0g

Trans fat: 0g

Cholesterol: 0mg

Sodium: 100mg

Total carbohydrate: 1g

Dietary fiber: 06

Sugars: 1g

Protein: 0g

I would say that I use about two teaspoons worth of sriracha sauce, so a total of 10 calories.  So the total amount of pastes that I put into my pho totals to 62.5 calories, if I add the calories of the two paste to the calories from the pho it would total to 589.5 calories, which I think is about right since I only add the two pastes along with lime to my pho so I stand by that calorie count.  I think this is a pretty healthy meal, but the other thing that I would look out for is the sodium that this meal contains.  I would say that it is pretty high in sodium count so people would want to watch out for that.  The total amount of calories also depends on what people put in it as well.  People could add more hoisin sauce if they like it sweeter or if they like it more spicy they could add more sriracha.  People could add bean sprouts, basil, and all the other vegetables included.  Instead of beef, other people prefer chicken, or just plain old pho with rice noodles and broth.  Pho is made differently each time to that person's liking so it all just varies from the that person who is preparing their own pho.  So I would not say that there is another dish that would be a healthy alternative to this one, it just depends on what you put in it.  My boyfriend puts absolutely nothing in his pho, he just likes to eat it plain with just the broth and rice noodles, on the other hand my mom likes to put the whole works in there including the basil, lime, bean sprouts, both pastes, so it all just depends on the person.