Low Fat Cooking
The obvious advice when seeking to eat healthier is to reduce the weekly or monthly occurrences of dining out, but it’s good advice to take things when step further: when planning meals for home, plan on low fat cooking. Many of the recipes from grandma’s cookbook undoubtedly taste great – that’s why they’ve survived the generations – but they’re throwbacks from the time when no one gave any consideration to the nutritional value of meals. In these health-conscious times cooking still needs to taste good, but it needs to be healthy as well, and low fat cooking is a way of achieving this status.
One of the main concerns in healthy eating is reducing the consumption of saturated fats and trans fatty acids, both of which have been shown to make significant contributions to the risk of cardiovascular disease and high blood pressure. Low fat cooking seeks to eliminate, or at least reduce, the amount of these fats in the food we eat, and it begins with preparation. Butter and cooking oils such as canola and olive (which do contain heart-healthy fats but must still be used in moderation) are the standard for cooking, but can be easily replaced by nonstick cooking sprays that serve the same purpose yet significantly reduce the fat content of cooked foods. Low fat cooking also pays close attention to cooking styles; frying food may make it taste good, but it’s a much less healthy option than baking, broiling, steaming, or poaching, all of which remove the need for added fats.
Low fat cooking also makes use of the leaner cuts of meat: with poultry, skinless white chicken or turkey breast; for beef, round, sirloin, or tenderloin cuts; for pork, tenderloin cuts as well. In order to retain the same juicy, flavorful taste, simply wait until after cooking to trim off any excess fat. This aspect of low fat cooking will enable meals to have the same tasty appeal while having a much healthier nutritional content.
