Ramadan daylight fasting is one of the five pillars of the Islamic faith.

This June, our blog site Guest Author is Teba Abdul Lateef, a Registered Dietitian from Pakistan who is contributing to a two-part blog series on Ramadan. Teba is sharing some of her expertise as a devout Muslim when it comes to Islamic traditions. Please see Part 1 of this two-part blog series for links to Teba’s background. (Grand Mosque picture courtesy of barunpatro at rgbstock).

Part 1 covers some background from Teba concerning Ramadan as well as some reported culinary trends during Ramadan for Muslims living in various parts of the world. This Part 2 includes some thoughts from Teba for devout Muslims to consider when it comes to maintaining their health during Ramadan.

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G’s Heavenly Cinnamon Rolls recipe was adapted from other cinnamon rolls recipes by our webmaster to have a more heathful profile overall for baking a yeast-based cinnamon roll.

Each 3+” diameter cinnamon roll from the adapted recipe features an overall lower fat and lower saturated fat content than other typical cinnamon rolls, features applesauce as a replacement for fat in the actual dough, is higher in whole grain content through the use of some* white whole wheat flour to replace some of the all-purpose unbleached flour, is lower in overall sugars, yet when iced still offers the appeal of those typical mall or rest stop type cinnamon roll bakery offerings.

*Next we’re going to try increasing the proportion of white whole wheat flour in the recipe to see if we can’t get closer to having half whole grains in the rolls.

The following approximate nutrient content was quickly calculated using the free Lose It! app version 3.9.3 since we know that is a favorite of many and was a 2012 First Place winner in the Surgeon General’s Healthy App Challenge in the category of Fitness/Physical Activity.

G’s Heavenly Cinnamon Rolls UNiced recipe (roll shown above, which is low-fat) will come in at ~ 200 calories/roll w/ ~>110 mg sodium. Using whole eggs, the total fat will come in ~<2 g w/ ~0.3 g saturated fat, ~36 mg cholesterol. Each roll also has ~6 g protein, ~40 g CHO, which includes ~<3 g fiber and ~<10 g sugars. We’d like to decrease the sugar profile.

G’s Heavenly Cinnamon Rolls recipe ICED (roll shown at bottom of blog post below) will come in at ~<250 calories/roll w/ ~>139 mg sodium. Using whole eggs & the icing, the total fat will come in ~<5.5 g w/ ~1.6 g saturated fat, ~>40 mg cholesterol. Each roll also has ~6 g protein, ~43 g CHO, which includes ~<3 g fiber and ~>12 g sugars. We still need to work on tweaking the icing to decrease that fat and sugar profile.

All photographs used in this blog post, including the one above of an UNiced cinnamon roll are ©2012 courtesy of the staff at sensorynutrition.com

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