Friday, October 2, 2009

A Healthy Way To Cook Low Fat Recipes

By Fiona Wyresdle

Low fat cooking is a great way to change your life to becoming a healthier you. The first to step to switching to low fat cooking is making sure you have low fat food products to cook with. There are some great low fat recipes that should be used. Low fat food should not be bland and your low fat cooking should use plenty of herbs, seasonings and spices.

Some excellent foods that are great low fat substitutes include applesauce, pretzels, maple syrup, seeds, whole grain breads, spices, soups, grains, vegetables, canned fish, oils, fruits, legumes, pasta, stocks, herbs, seasonings, dried fruits, nuts, honey, popcorn, and sugar free/fat free pudding. You can make the same recipes as before but with low fat products and you family will come to love this new style of cooking.

Some of the items that should be eliminated from your kitchen include oil based dressings, regular mayonnaise, shortening, oil packed fish and tuna, canned meats, chowders and creamed soups, boxed macaroni and cheese, rice mixes, flavored pasta, gravy mixes, pancake mixes, cheese sauces, sugary cereals, anything that contains partially hydrogenated, corn chips, potato chips, coffee creamer and white bread.

There are many other foods that contain fat of which you may be unaware. While whole milk has plenty of calcium and other important nutrients it also is high in fat. In order to reduce the fat in milk enough you would need to change to drinking at minimum 1% milk though skim milk is the best. Other dairy products should also be low fat if possible as cheese and regular yogurt can have a lot of fat.

Butter and margarine are full of fat and margarine is full of Trans fat. If you still want to use products like butter or margarine try liquid spreads that have no Trans fat or products that blend oils with the butter. Eggs have a lot of cholesterol but they are choke full of good nutrients and vitamins. Instead of using whole eggs, use egg white or egg substitutes and keep your use of whole eggs to a minimum.

When purchasing meats you want to get as lean a cut as you can. It is also important to keep an eye out for the sodium in meats. If you enjoy eating hotdogs then switch to turkey dogs and go for veggie burgers instead of beef ones. Pork tenderloin is a very lean cut of meat and skinless chicken is also an excellent meat choice.

You can still have meats but you should try to purchase lean cuts instead. Also when eating meat you need to look out for the sodium content as canned meats can be very salty. There are alternatives to your favorite hotdogs and bee burgers. Instead try turkey dogs and veggie burgers. An excellent lean cut of meat is pork tenderloin and skinless chicken is also a good choice.

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