Down Home Healthy Cooking: Recipes and Tips for Healthy Cooking

Here is good news for all lovers of African American Cooking! The National Cancer Institute offers a 48 page booklet containing low-fat, high-fiber versions of traditional African American recipes:

Down Home Healthy Cooking: Recipes and Tips for Healthy Cooking

A word or two about this publication:
Experts found that African Americans are suffering more often from serious illnesses like high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes 2 and cancer, and often die earlier of these diseases. The problem, as explained in the introduction of the booklet, is not that the African American diet is so totally unhealthy. In contrast, it contains plenty of healthy foods, but they are often prepared with too much fat which then causes the health problems.

What makes this booklet great:

• offers healthier versions of favorite African American dishes to open up ways to a healthier lifestyle
• tips for healthier cooking
• advice which foods you should replace with other healthier ones
• nutritional information for each recipe which makes it a great asset if you want to lose weight

Interested? You can:

• view the booklet online, print the whole document or individual recipes by visiting http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/down-home-healthy-cooking
  
• view and save the pdf-version on http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/down-home-healthy-cooking.pdf
  

Hope you will enjoy it! I think it sounds great, although it’s not a large recipe collection.

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Enjoying A Healthy Diet - 3 Easy Ways To Create A Delicious Healthy Dessert

For most of us, desserts are THE symbol of calorie bombs – meals high to extremely high in sugar and fat. But have you ever given the dream of a healthy dessert a serious thought? A dessert that you don’t need to feel bad about when eating it? Sure, even a high calorie dessert is perfectly okay if you just have it every now and then. But wouldn’t it be great if you could create desserts that are so healthy that you could enjoy them almost whenever you feel like?

In fact, there are quite some types of desserts that are already fairly healthy, for example everything that contains lots of fruit, little fat (like cream or mascarpone) and sugar. And there are many ways to make the not so healthy ones healthier.

For the not yet healthy recipes that you don’t want to miss, try the following tips!

• Add some fruit
• Reduce fat
• Reduce sugar

Tip #1: Add some fruit
Fruit is one of the healthiest food groups we have. Experts advise us to eat at least five portions of fruit or vegetables every day. But that does not mean that you need to eat five plain and simple fruits every day. You can use them creatively.

Option 1: Fruit salad
For example, make a fruit salad. Choose fruits of different colors to get a nice colorful mix. Then add a bit of pure fruit juice (the non-sweetened, 100% one) as a dressing, and maybe a few raisins. Arrange the salad in a pretty dessert plate and sprinkle some chopped nuts or almond flakes over it. This doesn’t take you long to prepare and it’s one of the healthiest desserts possible. The variety of fruit gives you fiber and many important vitamins. Because many fruits are sweet, you don’t need to add sugar, meaning all calories you eat are fructose, which is still a healthier sugar than table sugar. And because of the fiber, the fruit fills you quicker than any sweets. It’s not so easy to overeat on fruit.

Option 2: Pudding with fruit
Serve fruit with a homemade vanilla or chocolate cream or sauce. If you use low-fat or fat-free milk and a minimum of sugar (or no sugar at all), then you get all the health benefits of milk (without the calories in the fat) in addition to the ones of the fruit. Did you know that milk contains almost all nutrients in perfect balance?

Option 3: Yoghurt with fruit
Make your own fruit yoghurt. It tastes much nicer than the fruit yoghurts you buy (because you are actually using fruit) and is much healthier. In Germany, we have a wide variety of nice fruit yoghurts, but here in South Africa, I don’t like to buy fruit yoghurt because they are all sweetened and full of preservatives. It’s much better to buy plain yoghurt and mix it with fresh fruit. If you don’t like the pieces in there, put everything in an electric blender until smooth. Yoghurt mixed with home made jam also makes a nice dessert. You can add treats like dried fruit, chopped nuts or grated chocolate to make it even tastier (dark chocolate doesn’t contain so many calories, so this should be your preferred choice).

Option 4: Ice cream with fruit of fruit puree
We all love ice cream. Serve a scoop or two together with a handful of grapes or berries, or make a fruit puree to pour over it. Fruit purees are very easy to make and only take you a couple of minutes to prepare. You can even stew fruit and thicken the liquid with a bit of corn flour and serve the hot fruit with your ice cream. Vanilla ice cream for example goes very nice with hot cherries or raspberry puree. If you stew fruit, adding some spices like vanilla pod or cinnamon can give it a very irresistible taste.

Tip #2: Reduce fat
Many desserts unfortunately contain quite a bit of fat, using cream or high fat cheese types like mascarpone. Never mind! You can solve that problem very easily.

Option 1: Use low-fat or fat-free dairy products
As I mentioned above, use low-fat or fat free milk instead of full cream milk for your chocolate or vanilla sauce or cream. Replace the high-fat cheese in your cheese cake, trifle or brownies with a smooth low-fat cottage cheese or ricotta. It will still taste great.

Buy low-fat yoghurt instead of the full cream version. It’s also nice, and especially if you top it up with fruit or nuts, you won’t really miss the extra fat.
A great basis for smoothies and fruit shakes is buttermilk which is very low in fat compared to other products (only 1%). You can even use it for baking cakes or muffins.

Option 2: Choose healthier fats
Coconut milk is a great alternative for cream in many recipes. It contains significantly less fat, especially if you buy a low-fat version (12-14% fat, whilst cream has 30%). Check the label, as the fat content of different products can vary greatly.

In many baking recipes you can use margarine instead of butter. It still does contain quite a bit of fat, but it’s made of vegetable fats which are healthier than animal fats and don’t have such a negative impact on your cholesterol level. Check on the label if the margarine is suitable for baking, as not every product is.

Tip #3: Reduce sugar
Our taste buds have gotten very used to us adding a lot of sugar to almost everything that is sweet. We often add sugar to things that are already sweet, like fruit salad. But just as we got used to extreme sweetness, we can also get used to eating less sugar. And as time goes by, you will notice how deliciously sweet some foods actually are just the way nature produced them.

Option 1: Use less added sugar
As long as the sugar is not an essential part of the recipe, you can simply reduce the amount. In cakes, muffins, creams, sauces and puddings this is generally not a problem.

Option 2: Use alternatives with lower sugar content
A good alternative is using natural sweeteners like fructose, honey or maple syrup. They are not very nutritious but they some of them still contain a few more nutrients than table sugar which is nothing but “empty calories”.

Option 3: Use naturally sweet foods
The best way to reduce sugar is certainly adding dried fruit like raisins or apricots, or even fresh fruit, to your dessert. Many fruits are naturally sweet and negate the need to add extra sugar. Note that dried fruit has much higher sugar content then the same amount of fresh fruit, so you will need less. If you want a lot of fruit and sweetness, it’s a good idea to combine a larger portion of fresh fruit with a smaller portion of dried fruit.

Conclusion
It’s really easy to create healthy desserts! The possibilities are endless. Eating healthy does not mean that you must sacrifice the delight of a tempting dessert. Not at all. If you have a portion of mascarpone trifle or a piece of cheese cake every now and then for a special occasion, that most definitely won’t harm your health. So there is no need to stress too much about it unless you must closely watch your calorie intake because you got a weight problem, are diabetic or suffer from high cholesterol. But if you can make your dessert healthy, why should you not?

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Useful links
Little Lady Cakes provides a list of substitutes that can help you to make your favorite cake recipes healthier and lower in calories.

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Vegetarian Cooking – How The Cherished Diet Without Meat Can Make You Healthier

In this article:
Why vegetarian cooking?
The basics of vegetarian cooking
Tips for healthy vegetarian cooking

Our overindulgence in meat has lead to numerous health problems like high cholesterol and overweight because it made us consume way too much fat, especially the unhealthy saturated fat. An increased risk of diseases like strokes and heart attacks was the result of this unbalanced way of eating. Now, after people started to understand the importance of healthy and balanced nutrition, vegetarian cooking has become increasingly popular.

Why vegetarian cooking?

• There is in general nothing wrong with eating meat. The secret of eating healthy is in fact to consume all food groups, but the right amount of everything to keep a balance of nutrients. However, vegetarian cooking is certainly a very healthy option of eating, provided that certain rules are followed to ensure your body gets all nutrients it needs. One good example is that vegetarians rarely suffer from overweight since their fat intake is usually much lower than the one of a person eating meat (and thus less vegetables and fiber) every day.
• Especially if you have weight problems or high cholesterol, which are to a large extend caused by an excess of unhealthy fats mainly found in meat animal products, vegetarian cooking can make a huge impact on your health. But there are also other reasons why people follow a vegetarian diet: be it religious reasons or simply the fact that they are against the way the animals we eat are treated.

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The basics of vegetarian cooking

• The main difference between “normal” and vegetarian cooking is that the vegetarian diet does not include meat. Vegetarians do, however, eat animal products like dairies and eggs, which vegans ( a very strict kind of vegetarians) do not.
• The main foods of vegetarian cooking are fruit and vegetables, grains, legumes, eggs and dairy products (milk, cheese, yoghurt). Fat should come from healthy foods like avocadoes, cheese, yoghurt and nuts, and a combination of legumes with grains, nuts or seeds will easily provide you with sufficient proteins without overloading your system with fat.
• Most important for a healthy and balanced vegetarian diet is great variety in your meals. Try to consume as many different foods as possible over the course of the week to ensure you are getting enough of all nutrients.

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Tips for healthy vegetarian cooking

• Choose natural foods, like brown rice, whole grain products and fresh fruit and vegetables rather than processed or refined foods. They still contain more important nutrients, and studies have shown that a diet based on these foods reduces your risk of high blood pressure and heart disease, cancer and diabetes.
• Buy your foods as fresh as possible and avoid storing them too long. Many vegetables lose a lot of nutrients within days already. If you can, buy only what you need for a day or two, otherwise buy frozen or canned foods (not processed!).
• Fruit and vegetables that are “in season” will be cheaper and fresher. If you have a large freezer, you can buy bulks of them. Then blanch and freeze them (blanching contains nutrients and prevents bacterial contamination), or make sauces or purees that you can freeze.
• Be aware of the fats in your food! Don’t assume you are eating healthy simply because you don’t eat meat. Cheese, cream and sour cream, butter and oil also contain fat, and if you consume a lot of these, you will still eat too much fat, even if you are vegetarian. Keep these foods in moderation, or make use of their low-fat versions, especially if you are experiencing weight problems. And rather bake or grill instead of frying. Many fried dishes can also be made in a pan or the oven.
• The same rule as for fat applies for sugar: Keep it as low as possible. If you overeat, your vegetarian diet won’t safe you. Vegetarian cooking is healthy, but only if you do it right.

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Conclusion
For vegetarian cooking, as for any other diet, applies: If you are healthy, there is no need to scientifically work out a plan how much of which food you need to eat. If you stick to a balanced diet with a great variety of foods, if you keep sugar and fat intake low and rather choose healthy fats (vegetable fats, e.g. olive, canola and rapeseed oil, and products made from these), you will be fine, getting all nutrients you need. After all, if you really listen, your body will tell you what kind of food it needs.

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Healthy Cooking – 4 Golden Rules How To Prepare Healthy Meals You Will Love

Food is food, so why should you make a special effort to cook healthy? Because if your meals are healthy, you will be healthy too. Eating healthy can significantly reduce your risk of suffering numerous severe diseases like diabetes, stroke and obesity. You think cooking is an art? It is, but if you know certain basics, you’ll see that it is not so difficult to prepare a healthy meal. Here are four golden rules how to prepare and cook healthy meals:

1. Store foods properly to retain nutrients
2. Use preparation methods that retain nutrients best
3. Use fats responsibly
4. Use sugar sparingly

Rule #1: Store foods properly to retain nutrients

• Don’t store fresh foods too long. Many vegetables lose a lot of vitamins within days already, especially when being exposed to heat (even room temperature) and light, and meat can quickly develop bacteria which can make you ill.
• Vegetables: Ideally, only buy what you need for the day. The best place to store your vegetables is in the veggie compartment of your fridge. Alternately, keep them in a cool dark place like a cellar. Leave the vegetables in their package or cover them to avoid them losing moisture.
• Meat: Keep it in the fridge for the most for a couple of days. Minced meat should be cooked the same day you buy it as it goes off extremely quick.

Rule #2: Use preparation methods that retain nutrients best

• Wash foods thoroughly but short. Avoid soaking them as water-soluble nutrients then get lost.
• Cut foods only shortly before cooking them to avoid loss of vitamins.
• If you cook foods in water, use as little water as possible and use it for a soup or sauce.
• Vegetables: Steam, stew or braise them. Especially stewing retains lots of nutrients.
• Meat: Briefly roast meat on high temperature to close up the pores. If you cook it, add it to boiling water to reach the same effect.

Rule #3: Use fats responsibly

• Add as little fat as possible to your meals. Cut down on oil and butter, but also on high-fat foods like cheese, cream, sour cream. You can also use their low-fat versions to reduce calories.
• If you need fat, choose healthy ones: Olive, canola and rapeseed oil and products made from these are the healthiest options. In general, vegetable fats are healthier than animal fats.
• Avoid frying foods in oil. Pan-frying or baking in the oven uses much less fat.

Rule #4: Use sugar sparingly

• The less sugar you add to your meals the better. Try some alternatives:
• Artificial sweeteners: These are low- to non-caloric sweeteners and a great alternative to sugar. Unfortunately, in some sensitive people they may cause unpleasant side effects.
• Naturally sweet foods, like sweet potatoes, corn, yellow pepper, fresh and dried fruit
• Natural sweeteners, e.g. honey or maple syrup (these contain less sugar than table sugar but they do contain sugar)

As you can see, the principles that determine whether your meals will be healthy are quite simple. If you follow these four golden rules, making sure your foods are stored correctly so that they neither lose their valuable nutrients nor start growing bacteria, if your cooking method retains as many nutrients as possible and you avoid adding extra calories in form of fat and sugar, you can easily prepare the healthiest meals yourself.

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Living Without Sugar – The Healthiest Way To Live Without Sugar And Still Enjoy Sweetness Of Food

You want to cut down on sugar to lose weight, or maybe you need to control your blood sugar because you have been diagnosed with diabetes. But how to live without sugar without giving up the foods and sweetness you love? Artificial sweeteners are generally safe if used reasonably but most of them do have some disadvantages. Natural sweeteners, on the other hand, contain less calories than table sugar but they still do contain calories. So, what to do?

There are basically 2 ways you can go, and you can well combine them:

• Giving up sugar and getting used to less sweetness
• Using naturally sweet foods to add sweetness to your meals

Giving up sugar
Our taste buds simply love sweetness, and it’s somehow addictive. We get used to a certain amount of sugar, and then we want more. By adding more and more sugar to our food, we forget how sweet some foods actually taste on their own. We eventually get to a point where we put sugar in many things that don’t need sweetness added, simply out of habit.

If you now want to give up sugar, it’s like healing an addiction. It will take some time and self-discipline. As you got used to eat more and more sugar, you now need to get used to not having it. If you battle to stop using sugar from one moment to the next, wean yourself gradually. Instead of putting three teaspoons of sugar in your tea, use only two and a half. Once you have gotten used to that, cut down to two spoons until you are comfortable with that, and so on.

In most recipes, you can reduce the sugar amount without problems or even cut it out completely, unless the sugar is an essential part of the recipe.

Naturally sweet foods
There are many fruits and also a few vegetables that have a naturally sweet taste. If you add them to your meals, you can eliminate the need for sugar. And did you know that if you heat up vegetables, they taste sweeter, especially when you roast them?

1. Examples for naturally sweet foods

• rasp-, black-, cranberries
• blue- and strawberries
• peaches, nectarines and apricots
• apples
• papaya
• melons
• sweet potatoes
• butternut
• corn
• red and yellow pepper

Try this, for example: Add a small apple, half a banana and a few grapes to your breakfast oats instead of your two tablespoons of sugar. It will be just as sweet and much healthier as you also get lots of nutrients. Dried fruit and apples are great in muffins, and just a handful of berries can do wonders to sweeten your yoghurt.

2. What to consider when sweetening with fruits and vegetables
You should though be aware of the fact that even fruits and vegetables can contain calories. Prefer fresh fruit and vegetables, as processed foods are often high in carbohydrates, and canned fruit often contains added sugar. Dried fruit is a great source of energy and nutrients, but it contains more calories than the same amount of fresh fruit. Therefore, if you use dried fruit, use only small amounts.

If you really have to watch your sugar intake very carefully, you should also limit foods that are high in sugar or carbohydrates, like these:

• bananas
• mangos
• cherries
• grapes
• pears
• figs
• carrots

At the bottom line, one can certainly say that the healthiest (and cheapest) way of living without sugar is to simply not use it and to rely on naturally sweet but healthy foods to add sweetness to your meals, instead of taking your refuge to natural sweeteners which still contain calories, or artificial sweeteners that may lead to unpleasant side-effects. Take your time to get used to this new style of eating, and remember that your chances of success are usually higher if you make changes gradually.

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Healthy Sweeteners: What Are They And Why Should I Use Them?

The problem with "normal sugar"
First of all, I would like to put your heart at ease. It is not totally correct that sugar is unhealthy and making you fat. As with all other things, it’s a matter of how much sugar you eat. A bit of chocolate every now and then or a delicious dessert once in a while for a special occasion is not going to harm you. Trouble only starts when your sweets are taking over the ruling in your life, driving healthier and more nutritious foods out of your diet.

The problem is that if your diet contains too much sugar, your fat metabolism will change negatively. Our body needs calories to produce energy and those calories we take in either in form of fat or carbohydrates like starchy foods and sugar. Unfortunately, our body first has a tendency of first using the carbo-calories for energy and, if there is enough, rather storing the fat-calories as a reserve for times of undersupply that might occur. If you eat a lot of sugar, your body will meet most of its calorie need from the sugar you consume, with the result that many of the fat-calories will be stored in form of body fat and you pick up weight. If your sugar intake is low, your body won’t have a chance but to burn fat for energy.

Alternatives: Fruits and natural sweeteners
It is though a fact that sugar does not contain any vitamins or minerals and therefore does not benefit your body in any way. A great alternative, maybe the best, are fresh fruits. Besides the fructose they contain lots of vitamins, fiber and other nutrients. And because they fill you much quicker than sweets you are very unlikely to eat too much of them. Dried fruits, e.g. dates and raisins are also a good sweetener. Please notice that their fructose (fruit sugar) is more concentrated so you need to eat less to get the same effect.

Another alternative are the so called natural sweeteners. They are not necessarily greatly nutritious but these whole food sugars contain at least some nutrients like minerals helping your sugar metabolism. If we speak about taste, they offer you more different and more intensive flavors than white sugar. Doesn’t that make them worth a look? I’m going to give you a short overview over the natural sweeteners that you can find the easiest. Any large and good equipped supermarket should stock them.

• Fructose: A product derived from fruit sugar that looks similar to granular white sugar. It has little nutritional value, but it seems to cause less blood sugar level disturbance as sucrose (simple sugar). As it is more concentrated you need less (only about half the amount).
• Honey: Notice that honey is 20% to 60% sweeter than white sugar so use less. Try to use half or a third of the amount of sugar. Make sure you buy unpasteurized honey without added sugar.
• Maple syrup: It has twice as much calcium as milk. The best thing is to buy organic products as not all maple syrup is pure.

Here are some other natural sweeteners that sound great, but you might need to look around a while to find out where to get them:

• Agave nectar: A natural liquid sweetener, less viscous than honey. Because of its sweet but neutral taste it’s a good alternative for maple syrup or honey whose stronger flavor might interfere with certain recipes. Agave nectar is about 1 ½ times sweeter than refined sugar.
• Date sugar: It is not really a sugar but ground from dehydrated dates. These fruits are high in fiber and rich in any vitamins and minerals. Use it just like sugar for cooking and baking but not for sweetening beverages (it won’t dissolve properly).
• Frozen juice concentrates (e.g. pineapple, apple and orange): The ones in the supermarket have been pasteurized, but are still much healthier sweeteners than white sugar. They are great for salad dressings. If you have the time, you can make them yourself (see the link below).
• Molasses: The most nutritious in this group is blackstrap molasses, the residue of cane syrup after the sugar crystals have been separated. It contains much calcium, iron and potassium.
• Sucanat: Sugar Cane NATural, a product of intense flavor, made from evaporated sugar cane juice. It contains less sucrose than white sugar and more vitamins, minerals and other nutrients of cane sugar, thus it is highly nutritious. Sucanat can be used instead of white and brown sugar, just replace it 1-to-1.

You can change the amount of sugar in a meal as long as the sugar is not an essential part of the recipe. If you want to replace the sugar with a natural sweetener, follow these guidelines for best results:

• Cookies: Use dry, granular sweeteners like date sugar, otherwise you will have to add too much flour to make up for the liquid increase.
• Breads and pies: Liquid sweeteners like fruit juice concentrates
• Cakes: Sucanat, so that the original flavor won’t change much.

Helpful links

• http://www.livrite.com/sweeten.htm
• natural sweeteners, including a short description, how to use them and what you can use them for
• http://www.care2.com/greenliving/directory-of-natural-sweeteners.html
• information about natural sweeteners, their nutritional value and how to use them, including a chart of equivalents and a recipe how to make frozen juice concentrates
• http://www.freedomyou.com/recipes/natural%20sweeteners.htm
• Excerpt from” Whole Foods & Healing Recipes”, a complete guide to natural, delicious recipes. There is a direct link to purchase the book in paper form or as an ebook.

If you are on a diet and need to cut down on sugar, you might also be interested in this:

Naturally Sweet Desserts: The Sugar-free Dessert Cookbook, by Marcea Weber
It’s a book with various dessert recipes free from refined sugar and artificial sweeteners. I have not read it and most likely many of the recipes will not necessarily be as quick to make as we would like to, but maybe you still want to take a chance. After all, even people searching the net for quick recipes sometimes have time…
Check http://www.amazon.com/Naturally-Sweet-Desserts-Sugar-free-Cookbook/dp/0895294435, ask Google or your local bookstore.

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Foods That Go Quick

Is it one of those days where you don’t have much time to prepare food? Be wise in the choice of the things you want to cook! Some foods take more preparation than others, some take longer to cook and some go much quicker. It also depends on how you prepare your ingredients whether you will take long or not. Here are some tips of which foods or food groups are done quick and how you can speed up the “slower ones”. For more tips about how to make cooking quicker, please check my article “Tips for quick cooking”!

Starchy foods
Pasta and rice are done quicker than potatoes because they require less preparation. If making pasta, you can also safe time by pre-boiling the water with the kettle.

Another excellent quick starchy food is couscous. It tastes great with vegetables like marrows, red pepper, tomato etc. And it’s a healthy meal, too, because it’s low in fat. You can find the basic recipe in a separate blog post.

Vegetables/ Fruit
Most kinds of fruit don’t take long to cook, and fruit prepared in a “veggie style” can be very tasty. Preferably use bigger fruits because otherwise you will “peel yourself to death”.

When you pick your veggies, just keep in mind that some are done much quicker than others. Here’s a list of a few veggies that don’t require much preparation. You just wash them and cut them, and the wonderful thing is, even when you cut big pieces, they are still done quickly.

• Mushrooms
• Marrows
• Tomatoes
• Cucumber
• Brinjal/ aubergines
• Avocados
• Leek
• Spinach

Meat/ hard vegetables
Simply cut the meat or veggies into smaller pieces. The smaller they are, the quicker they will be done. Pieces that are just a “small bite” can be done in 10-30 minutes whereas a 1kg-piece of meat will easily take an hour or more.

But be careful not to overcook them because they will lose important vitamins. Rather bake them covered in the oven or in a non-sticking pan with little fat and just a bit of water or chicken/ vegetable stock if necessary.

Snacks
Good healthy snacks in between are fruit. Just peel that orange or banana, or if that’s still too much work, wash that apple, cherries or grapes and eat them!

You are not a fruit lover? Never mind! Some veggies also give great snacks, like a cucumber, or red or yellow pepper. You just have to wash and slice them.

Desserts
You just feel like having a nice chocolate cream but you don’t want to stand long in the kitchen? Or your kids are begging for pudding which you unfortunately didn’t make? Check the recipe section for my quick chocolate cream recipe that tastes nice and chocolaty and takes only a little longer as milk takes to boil. And I can promise you, it’s not alone!

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The Thing With Fat - Healthy And Unhealthy Fats

Yes, you got it right, not all fats are unhealthy. In fact, fat is very important for our body and it would be dangerous to want to live fat-free.

• It is the nutrient which is highest in energy, and our body gets most of its energy from – fat.
• Fat is essential for the cell growth, especially of the nervous system.
• And there are some highly important vitamins that our body can only absorb in combination with fat.

Ever heard that carrots are good for your eyes? Yes, they are. But if you just eat them raw, they won’t do the trick because you can’t absorb that vitamin A without fat. If you want the carrots to be good for your eyes, you need to add a bit of oil to your carrot juice. Unfortunately, every gram of fat that we eat too much has a tendency of transforming into excess weight.

Our problem is that we eat way too much fat and also the wrong kinds of fat. But which ones are healthy, and in which foods are they hiding?

The different types of fat
First of all, you need to understand that there are different types of fat: animal fats (e.g. butter, milk products, eggs) and vegetable fats (e.g. vegetable margarine and vegetable oil).

Animal fats are mostly saturated fats. They are suspected to cause serious health problems (like high cholesterol and some types of cancer) when consumed in excess. Meat lovers often eat way too much animal fats. Vegetarians, in contrast, barely suffer from being overweight, although there are also saturated fats in certain veggies.

The vegetable fats are either mono- or polyunsaturated fats. Polyunsaturated fats (vegetable oils like sunflower and soy oil) lower the cholesterol level (both good and bad cholesterol), but in high amounts they can lead to cell destruction and arteriosclerosis. Monounsaturated fats (e.g. olive and rape-seed oil), in contrast, reduce the bad cholesterol level and increase the good one, meaning they protect you from heart diseases.

We don’t know yet why, but people who get most of their fat from olive oil are also less likely to get breast or colon cancer. Fat which contains essential fatty acids and is part of foods which also supply other nutrients (e.g. vegetable oils, nuts, avocados, grain) are healthier than the fat in cakes, fried stuff and chocolate.

Fat in our food
Usually, foods contain all types of fat in combination. Rather think of the total amount of fat in your food than worrying too much about how much of which fat it contains. The most important thing is not to eat too much fat because your body eagerly stores excess calories in form of fat as body fat (meaning you pick up weight), whereas excess calories in form of carbohydrates are used for energy. So, if you are overweight, rather reduce your fat intake instead of counting calories.

Our body doesn’t need much fat, and with our diet you are not very likely to suffer from a lack of fat. “But I don’t eat much fat”, you may say. Beware! You are eating more fat than you think. It’s not only butter and oil. Fat is also hiding in meat, polony, fish, milk products, cheese, nuts, and even in certain “healthy” foods like roasted muesli and avocados. That does not mean you cannot eat these. The secret is simply to eat them in moderation.

Let me give you an example: Fat reduced milk might have less fat, but full cream milk contains more of the vitamins that can only be absorbed in combination with fat. So, do you want less fat or more vitamins? Which milk is now healthier? I think it depends on your situation and whether you practice moderation or not. If you in general watch what you eat and you keep up a certain level of physical activity, then your cup of full cream milk in the morning is most certainly not going to make you fat. I can say that it does not make me fat.

So, eating fats healthily means in a nutshell

1. In general not such a lot of fat. Use low-fat spreads instead of butter on your bread and cook your food in a way that requires little or no fat.
2. Mainly vegetable fats, preferably the monounsaturated ones. Eat a lot of vegetables, olive and rape-seed oil, and only a moderate amount of milk, yoghurt, cheese, meat products, eggs, nuts and avocados, and little butter, cream, margarine and vegetable oils.
3. Prefer fat that is in foods which supply other nutrients, and eat less “plain” fat (in cakes, fried stuff etc.).

And: Don’t be a couch potato! The more active you are the more fat you turn into energy and the less likely you are to put on weight. Remember that somebody who is doing hard physical work or a lot of sports burns more fat than someone who is just sitting around the whole day. Children also need more fat than adults because they are still growing.

As a guideline, you can say that women and children need about 30-40g fat per day, men 40-60g, people who are very physically active about 70g and athletes and heavy duty workers 70-80g.

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Super Moms Secrets For Quick, Healthy Recipes

It seems everyone today is looking for quick, healthy recipes they can use for their family. However, they seem to be somewhat difficult as usually recipes be either quick or healthy, but rarely both! But since so many people are working outside the home and are finding their schedules crammed with so many other activities and responsibilities even when they're not working, finding quick, healthy recipes is a priority for many. No one has the time or the desire to stand over the sink chopping vegetables and no one has the time to wait for a dinner that takes hours to fix.

Interestingly enough you can come up with your own quick, healthy recipes simply varying the ingredients of your favorite recipes or by learning how to cook properly with different types of kitchen tools and gadgets.

As an example, when you use a rotisserie you can find quick, healthy recipes for just about any type of meat you might want. By having it cook on the rotisserie you're having the grease and fat drip away from it rather than having the meat cook in its own fats. By using some marinades or seasoning mixes you may find that your main dishes come out much tastier this way then they ever did before and you don't need to use fats to add flavor to your dishes. As a matter of fact, these quick, healthy recipes for your main dishes aren't even really recipes but just better and healthier ways of preparing your meats so you don't even need to follow instructions from a cookbook.

Some other ways of coming up with your own quick, healthy recipes is to reduce the amount of sugar you use to cook with when making desserts and other items. If you bake from scratch, try using applesauce as a sweetener or reducing your sugar by one-third. Use reduced fat mayonnaise or salad dressing; you don't need to go with fat free completely as this might be too much of a change for you, but by just reducing fat and sugar you can come up with some great quick, healthy recipes that are still very palatable to you and your family. You can also cut back just a little bit to start with and then gradually work your way up to how much you want to reduce your sugar and fat content overall.

Sneak vegetables into your cooking whenever you can; this is how quick, healthy recipes are created in a professional kitchen. If you make meatloaf, add some chopped peppers and onions. Do the same when cooking soup - add additional chopped carrots, onions, and anything else your family enjoys. Slip some spinach into an omelet. These are all easy and quick tips but you would be surprised how often people ignore these tips when cooking. Making up your own quick, healthy recipes simply means being creative with your ingredients and your methods.

Of course it does no good to come up with these quick, healthy recipes if you and your family never actually eat the things you cook this way. Get into the habit of having a small salad or bowl of vegetable soup before each dinner and lunch. This doesn't need to be a huge bowlful; just a few small bites before your main meal can make a tremendous amount of difference. You can also schedule what days you're going to have your quick, healthy recipes and then save your special treats and indulgences for the weekend or another special time. Make sure the family knows that Monday is healthy night, Tuesday you'll have what you want, Wednesday is another healthy night, and so on.

And get your family involved in coming up with and creating quick, healthy recipes. If the kids are busy in the kitchen they're more likely to want to eat what they've prepared. You don't want them to use dangerous knives and other equipment but they can certainly work with measuring and things such as this.

About the Author
Married with two children: Jeremiah (4) and Noah (2) Former Kindergarten Teacher Current Home Maker/Entrepreneur http://www.supermomssecrets.com

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/women's-issues-articles/super-moms-secrets-for-quick-healthy-recipes-458641.html

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