Chow Line

Boost nutri­ents, cut fat in recipes

I’m look­ing for easy ways to make some of my recipes and meals health­ier. Any ideas?

This is a great way to start the new year, and yes, there are plenty of ideas to increase nutri­ents and reduce fat and calo­ries in the foods you pre­pare at home. Below are some favorites, pri­mar­ily from Ohio State Uni­ver­sity Exten­sion (see “Mod­i­fy­ing a Recipe to be Health­ier” at http://ohioline.osu.edu) and eXten­sion (see “Recipe Sub­sti­tu­tions” at http://www.extension.org).

To reduce fat:

•Use evap­o­rated skim milk instead of cream.

•Use 1/4 cup egg sub­sti­tute or two egg whites in place of a whole egg.

•In quick breads, muffins, brown­ies or cakes, sub­sti­tute half or all of the oil, but­ter or other short­en­ing with unsweet­ened apple­sauce, mashed bananas or fruit puree. Note: Mak­ing this sub­sti­tu­tion will increase car­bo­hy­drates in the end prod­uct — some­thing to be aware of if you have diabetes.

•Use low-fat or non­fat yogurt in place of sour cream.

•Use low-fat cot­tage cheese pureed until smooth or low-fat cream cheese in place of full-fat cream cheese.

•Try lower-fat or non­fat ver­sions of a vari­ety of foods, espe­cially milk, cheese, cream cheese, may­on­naise, salad dress­ing and margarine.

•Use an air pop­per for popcorn.

To increase fiber:

•Replace half the all-purpose flour in baked goods with whole-wheat flour.

•Add oats or finely ground fiber-rich non-sweetened cereal to replace some or all of the bread crumbs in a recipe, or to the crust or bat­ter when mak­ing desserts.

•Add beans or bar­ley to soups, stews and casseroles.

•Add sauteed veg­eta­bles — cherry toma­toes, onions, spinach or zuc­chini, for exam­ple — to scram­bled eggs.

•Don’t peel apples, cucum­bers, zuc­chini or pota­toes before eat­ing them or using them in recipes.

•Choose high-fiber alter­na­tives for cereal, bread and pasta — look at the Nutri­tion Facts labels.

To increase other nutrients:

•Add cooked and mashed cau­li­flower to mashed pota­toes, or add cooked chopped cau­li­flower to mac­a­roni and cheese.

•Add chopped spinach or zuc­chini to pasta sauce, soups and casseroles.

•For sal­ads, choose romaine, endive or other dark-green leafy let­tuce instead of ice­berg let­tuce, and include baby spinach leaves.

•Increase cal­cium by adding non­fat milk or dry milk to a casserole’s cream sauce or to cream soups.

•Increase antiox­i­dants by sprin­kling hot sauce on foods. The cap­saicin in it shows promise in anti-cancer stud­ies, though it may take quite a bit to have a dis­cernible effect.

Chow Line is a ser­vice of Ohio State Uni­ver­sity Exten­sion and the Ohio Agri­cul­tural Research and Devel­op­ment Cen­ter. Send ques­tions to Chow Line, c/o Martha Fil­ipic, 2021 Cof­fey Road, Colum­bus, OH, 43210–1044, or filipic.3@osu.edu.

Posted by Guest 2 Columnist on Jan 15 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.