Anne P. Jackson

Cooking Healthy and With Less Fat

Weight for weight, dietary fats supply far more energy than all the other nutrients in our diet. If you eat a diet that is high in fats and don't exercise enough to use up that energy, you will put on weight.

By cutting down on fat, you can easily reduce your energy intake without affecting the other essential nutrients. And by choosing the right types of fat, using low fat and fat free products whenever possible, and making small, simple changes to the way you cook and prepare food, you can reduce your overall fat intake quite dramatically and enjoy a much healthier diet without really noticing any difference.

Watching your fat intake doesn't have to mean dieting and deprivation. Using the right ingredients and using substitutions can result in tremendous weight loss, while retaining the great taste and texture of many of your favorite foods.

For instance, if you have a recipe that calls for ½ cup of vegetable oil try substituting the oil with ½ cup of fruit puree. To make a fruit puree, you simply put 4oz of any dried fruit into your blender with about 5 tablespoons of water, then blend until it's smooth. There is no real conversion “factor”. If the recipe calls for ½ cup of oil, just substitute with ½ cup of your puree. This substitution works quite well with almost any recipe except for pastries which require the actual fat for consistency and baking.

The best fruits to use for your puree are prunes, peaches, apricots and apples. You can also use fresh fruit by eliminating the water to make the puree. Applesauce works quite well in many recipes that call for vegetable or other oil.

Another method of reducing fat in your cooking is to use non-stick cookware.

Also, when baking foods such as chicken or fish, rather than adding a pat of butter to the food, try baking the food in a loosely sealed package of foil or greaseproof paper and adding some wine or fruit juice and herbs and spices to the food before sealing the package.

Other methods of reducing fat intake are to steam or boil, rather than bake. Marinate your meat or poultry in mixtures of alcohol, herbs and spices; or use fruit juice. Marinating helps to tenderize meats, adds unique flavors and, in addition, the marinate can be used to baste the food while it's cooking.

For vegetables, resist the urge to add a pat of butter to your serving. Instead sprinkle with chopped fresh herbs or ground spices.

Simply by rethinking the way you cook, can greatly reduce the amount of fats you eat each day. You NEED fat, but controlling how much you consume can help to reduce the amount of fat calories that you consume each day.

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