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Adapting Recipes

Adapting Recipes- Make your Cake and Eat it to

We all have those recipes that look and taste great but are loaded with fat or sugar or both so here are a few ideas on how to turn those to-die-for indulgent treats into healthier alternatives.

You can lower the fat and cholesterol of a recipe by replacing:

Any full fat dairy products with their reduced fat version, e.g. blue top milk to yellow top; sour cream to lite sour cream etc.
Cream with evaporated milk
Sour cream with low fat yoghurt
Coconut cream with coconut flavoured evaporated milk
Hard cheese e.g. Tasty with cottage cheese (the garlic & chives is my favourite) or lower fat cheese e.g. ricotta, mozzarella, edam
Butter with canola oil or margarine
Streaky bacon with middle eye rasher
Puff & regular pastry with filo pastry and use either milk or spray oil to layer the sheets.

Remember though that just because something is labeled as ‘Lite’ or ‘reduced fat’ this does not mean that it is low in fat, it may just contain less fat than the full fat varieties. For example Edam cheese still has 24g fat (that’s 5 teaspoons) per 100g.

You can lower the sodium content of a dish by:

Using lemon juice, herbs & spices to add flavour instead of salt
Choosing canned foods that are in spring water rather than brine or by selecting reduced salt varieties of canned goods.

You can reduce the sugar in a recipe by:

Reducing the quantity or by using another ingredient to create the sweetness e.g. fresh or dried fruit.
Alternatively you could use a liquid or powder artificial sweetener e.g. equal.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that a recipe contains less sugar or calories just because you have used honey instead, because these are basically the same the thing!

You can increase the fibre of recipes by:

Replacing white flours, rice and pasta with wholemeal varieties
Keeping the skin on your vegetable
Using wholemeal breadcrumbs instead of white bread crumbs
Replacing some of the flour with rolled oats or unprocessed bran

There are some things that just aren’t the same without the extra calories, like macaroni cheese for instance. Sure you can make this dish with cottage cheese but at the expense of taste. In cases like this you have to accept a higher calorie content for it to still taste like macaroni cheese. Don’t worry, you probably don’t have this dish often. Count it as one of your cheese serves, bulk it out with vegetables and remember you still have control over portion size. If it's a dish you don't eat daily then there's no harm in a compromise every now and then. Make it the way you like it and enjoy it – after all, eating food is about creating a pleasurable experience!

By Kath Fouhy, BSc, PG DipDiet, NZRD - 22/04/07

Adapting Recipes