How to Turn an Unhealthy Recipe into a Healthy One

Are you trying to get healthy, but every recipe you look at has loads of fat, salt or sugar? Or maybe it calls for white flour, or rice? There have been many times where I've looked at either a new recipe or one of my old favorites and thought to myself that I couldn't make it because the ingredients would prevent me from staying with my goals to eat healthy. So, what do you do when the recipe you want to use calls for ingredients that you don't want in your diet because they aren't healthy?

Believe it or not the solution is far easier than most people realize. The first key you want to remember here is "substitute." That's right substitute, often people don't realize that when it comes to turning a recipe into a healthy one, one of the keys is substituting healthy ingredients for unhealthy ones. So, when a recipe calls for say white rice or noodles, replace it with brown rice, and wheat noodles, replace high-fat ground beef with low-fat lean ground beef, if the recipe calls for a vegetable you don't care for then change it to a vegetable that you do like, when the recipe calls for whole milk choose skim and low-fat options, and replace sugar with fruit juice concentrate or honey. Another thing to keep in mind particularly if you are trying to cut back on your salt intake is that many canned items now come in low or no sodium options, you may even find you like the taste of these better than their high sodium counterparts. And even if you don't like them as well, you can pick up your saltshaker and add the amount you want for taste. Chances are it still will not be the same amount that the version with salt added has; it is still healthier to add it yourself.