Changing the way we cook our food can have a dramatic effect on our health.
If we make wiser choices with our food and the way we cook it, we can
significantly reduce our risk of contracting cancer and heart disease.
Here are some top tips for healthy cooking:-
1. Invest in non stick pans - With quality non-stick pans you can get away with
not using oil at all or by using a low fat cooking spray. You can also 'fry'
some foods in a little water to prevent them sticking. If you have to use oil,
use olive oil and pat food with kitchen roll after cooking to remove excess
oil.
2. Look through your recipes collection for diet recipes and low fat recipes.
Cook them in batches and freeze so that you always have a healthy meal option
available.
3. Steam or stir-fry vegetables - Cooking them using these methods will help
the vegetables to retain their nutrients, colour and taste. Look for healthy
recipes like Chinese stir-fries and invest in a wok and steamer. You can buy Chinese
bamboo steamers, which just sit on top of a pan of boiling water, or you can
buy electric steamers. You can get a good electric steamer for less than the
cost of one meal out and the ease of use is a real time saver.
4. Use olive oil - Replace other oils or fats with olive oil which is a
mono-unsaturated oil and actually helps to reduce cholesterol. Make your own
salad dressings from olive oil and balsamic vinegar to give your salad a
Mediterranean taste and this will be lower in fat than commercial salad
dressings. Search online for free recipes using olive oil. Some muffin recipes
use olive oil or corn oil instead of solid fats.
5. Use fat free milk in cooking and baking to cut the fat content of your
healthy recipes.
6. Replace fat in baking - Look for low fat recipes for cakes and biscuits or
replace half the fat in recipes with pureed prunes, yogurt or mashed banana.
Search for diet recipes for sweet treats.
7. Use fat-free yogurt or creme fraiche instead of using cream for pouring on
dessert recipes or fruit.
8. Add more vegetables to casseroles and soups and use fresh or frozen
vegetables rather than canned.
9. Don't add salt to food - Season food with herbs, spices, garlic and lemon
juice instead of salt.
10. Trim visible fat off meat and use lean meat in your low fat recipes. Cut
down on how much red meat you consume and replace with fish and chicken or
turkey.
Remember, cooking and eating healthy food is not hard work and definitely not
expensive. If you play your cards right you can change you whole family's diet
and they won't suspect a thing.
That isn't to say that they won't notice anything though, because they will -
they may well notice that they are losing weight, feeling better and getting
fewer minor illnesses.
If that isn't reason enough to try out a few of these tips, I don't know what
is!
About the Author: Roger Wakefield is an author and
publisher who writes content for the Recipe File site, which is one of the most
useful collections of recipes on the web. The Recipe File website contains more
than 40,000 recipes ranging from dessert
recipes to herb and spice recipes. Cooking at home can
be simple and pleasurable if you use the right cookbook. The Recipe File
guarantees that you will never have trouble finding a tasty new recipe in
minutes.
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