Cooking lite is tastier and easier than you think.

Cooking Lite? Why should anybody even consider doing it? Well we are getting older, eat more, exercise less, and stress more due to for example high work load, money problems or relationship issues. Thereby we are more susceptible to sickness and disease. Getting and being sick is no picnic, so keeping healthy is from up most importance, especially now with all the commotion about all the different kinds of flu. One thing people can do is of course exercise, but don’t forget about eating healthy. Peoples first reaction is usually that the food is not tasteful and it is hard to do, this is a misconception. The way we prepare our food is often the cause of “heavy/greasy” food. We often use lots of oil/butter and/or sugar and fry it. All the recipes you already have in your arsenal can be altered in some small places to give you a much healthier but still very appetizing dish. By experimenting with different styles, techniques and ingredients we can change a lot in the food we prepare. But some advice and guidance would help everybody on the way to a better diet. But where do we turn, who do we ask?

Well today we’ll try to help you on your first steps in changing your diet by cooking lite. We start of with some basic thing you can do.

• Lite Alternatives

Nowadays we have can choose out of a lot of alternatives when it comes to food and drinks. Just by starting replacing all the ingredients with the lite versions is one of the easiest things we can do. The supermarkets today have alternatives for practically everything. From diet sodas and low fat milk to cheese and butter. So getting the diet versions of all the ingredients and trying cooking lite is easier than ever.

• Oil and Butter

If you have to use oil or butter try using lite cooking sprays. By using these you’ll don’t add as much fat when preparing the food. Another good alternative is using olive oil, of which you can use a lot less of during cooking. There has been a case study called “A Kent’Annos”, which means “I wish you could live 100 years” in Sardinian. In the village of Orroli on Sardinia Italy, at one time populated with the worlds five oldest people. And we all know Italian diet contains large quantities of olive oil. Olive oil also contains vitamins, antioxidants and poly phenols which are essential in a healthy diet. Olive oil also reduces bad cholesterol.

• Sugar

For the people who are sugar addicts, there is an alternative to your normal sugar. This alternative is called Stevia, which is 300 times sweeter than normal sugar. Which is a suitable cooking ingredient as it keeps stable when heated, unlike the artificial sweetener aspartame. Case studies showed that this Stevia sweetener lowers the occurrence of colds and the flu. The Stevia herb can also aid in dieting by reducing ones appetite. It is beneficial to people who are trying to quit smoking and/or drinking. It does this by suppressing the cravings for cigarettes and alcohol. And last but not least it contains essential vitamins A and C, Mg, Zinc and Iron.

• Lite recipes

Broaden your cooking horizon by getting your hand on some good lite recipes. There are literally thousands of cookbooks on the market. So what to get? Well…the absolute bestseller at the moment is Hungry Girl: “200 Recipes Under 200 Calories”. It has recipes for dishes like Hot Buffalo Wings, Cheesecake Brownies and Ice Cream Pie. This book shows you it is possible to cook your “normal” high calorie food in a lite way. Another hot cookbook is “Cook Yourself Thin”, from a new Lifetime reality show. And of course Betty Crocker’s cookbooks, but there numerous good cooking lite cookbooks out there.

to be continued…

~If you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen.

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