Strive to cook using less fat. In order to use less fat in your cooking you need to remember to remove, replace, and reduce. It is important to remove as much of the fat from your cooking as possible. Remove fatty ingredients and add natural favor instead. Cook with onions, spinach, mushrooms and garlic to bring out the flavor in foods instead of using fat to flavor.
You can replace fatty foods in recipes with more nutritious ingredients such as when a recipe calls for sausage replace the sausage in the recipe with turkey kielbasa.
You can also reduce the amount of a fatty ingredient in a recipe such as when making a hamburger dish use half the amount of one meat that contains fat and then use half of another meat that is less fat such as for recipes calling for a pound of ground beef – use 1/2 pound of ground beef and 1/2 pound of ground turkey. You won’t miss the 1/2-pound of fat and the recipe will turn out great. You can also use the “light” version of an item instead of replacing half of it. An example would be to use light mayonnaise instead of regular mayonnaise.
You can also use a better fat when cooking Use mono-unsaturated fats in cooking such as olive oil. Do not buy the extra light or virgin, as it will change the flavor in your food. Avoid food items that have “saturated fats” on the label.
When cooking try to cut down on the amount of sugar in recipes. Less sugar means fewer calories. Items like soft drinks, baked goods, candy, and frozen milk desserts all contain sugar. An average adult should have no more than about nine teaspoons of sugar content a day.
Cook with whole grains including brown rice instead of white rice and whole-wheat flour in recipes that call for flour instead of using white flour. If this is difficult for you or your family just like with the fats you can go half and half – half white flour and half whole-wheat flour. Whole grain food has more nutrients, and also more fiber and more beta-carotene. All healthy stuff for a pattern of healthier eating.
Another healthy thing you can do for your family is to use flaxseed whenever possible. Flaxseed is rich in antioxidants, which protect healthy cells. It is also a great source of fiber. You can add flaxseed to muffins, stew, smoothies, shakes, baked into breads, and put on hot cereals. When you add to your muffin recipe be sure to decrease the amount of all-purpose flour by 1/4 cup and replace that with 1/4 cup of flaxseed. Just sprinkle the flaxseed into stews and soups. Add one to two tablespoons of flaxseed into your smoothies or shakes before blending them.
Add fruits and vegetables to your recipes to add color, fiber and betacarotene. Pasta dishes are easy to add fruits and vegetables to. Think about adding bananas, cantaloupes, grapes, kale, cabbage, oranges, spinach, sprouts, and tomatoes to recipes. Beans are also an excellent source of fiber and betacarotene.
When choosing your meat make sure you go for the leaner meats such as chicken, turkey breasts, pork tenderloin, ground sirloin, the center cut of pork loin, and if you eat ham, go for the extra lean ham. A serving size should be no more than 3 to 4 ounces of lean meat.
When following recipes and butter is called for, use less or replace the butter with light or non-fat sour cream. You can replace butter in cake mixes with oil, liqueur, sherry, fruit juice, pureed fruit, or crushed pineapple. Try fat free sour cream in brownie mixes. You can also substitute half the oil amount with applesauce. You body does need to have some fat so substituting half is better than taking all the fat out of a recipe.
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