Nutrition Cove: Making Your Family Recipes Healthier

Almost every family has some recipes that have been passed down for generations. Who doesn’t love Grandma’s cooking? However, over the decades, our eating habits have changed. We eat a lot more processed foods and meals prepared outside of the house than ever before. Poor health and preventable diseases are rampant. We have also learned a lot about our nutrition’s role in our overall health.

It is a common misconception that you can’t have good food without tons of cholesterol, fat, salt, and sugar. This simply isn’t true. There are lots of small changes you can make to your home cooking to make your meals healthier, without sacrificing flavor. 

• Reduce or remove salt from your recipes. Processed foods use a lot of salt as a preservative. At home, you can get tons of flavor without the salt by adding other spices, herbs, lemon or lime juice, and different vinegars. 
• Try reducing the amount of added sugar. A lot of recipes call for more sugar than necessary. You can often reduce the sugar by half and it won’t be missed when it comes to the taste test. Experiment.
• Substitute the dairy you use for reduced fat options. Instead of heavy cream, try half and half. Instead of whole milk, try 1%. Try subbing in part skim cheeses. 
• Substitute lower fat meats for the higher fat meats. Ground turkey is delicious in a lot of recipes that call for ground beef. 
• Try baking, broiling, roasting, or grilling meats and veggies instead of pan or deep frying them. You might discover some unique and delicious flavors. 
• If you must fry your meat and vegetables, swap out the crisco, lard, and butter, for healthier vegetable oils.
• Use fresh or frozen vegetables and fruit in your recipes as much as possible. If you are using canned, choose options with reduced or eliminated sodium, and options with no sugar added.

Go slowly and try out one adjustment at a time. Eventually you will develop new, healthier recipes that taste delicious while considering the health of your family and generations to come.