Cooking healthy!! 

Food, food, food. It is one of my obsessions for sure. If I weren’t careful, I could certainly consume a scary amount of calories in one day. At Rollins, sophomores are required to live on campus so I live in an on campus apartment with two of my friends. We have our own kitchen and I have found that I really enjoy cooking!!! 

Below I am going to list a few tips to modify recipes so they are lower in calories and just healthier overall!!

1.     Try to avoid oil and butter as much as possible. If a recipe calls for 1 cup of oil, you can certainly cut it down to ½ a cup or even less, if you would like. If the recipe calls for butter, try a butter substitution. Some butter substitutions are margarine or “I Can’t Believe It’s not Butter.” These substitutions contain at least half the calories of normal butter. Also, make “Pam” your best friend!!!

2.     Cut down on salt in recipes!! Many recipes call for an unhealthy amount of salt. Cutting down the salt will not reduce calories, but most Americans consume more salt than they really need on a daily basis!! Cutting down salt will reduce bloating, and after a while your taste buds will adjust!

3.     Sugar!!!! A lot of recipes call for sugar overload. If a recipe calls for ½ cup of sugar, try using a ¼ cup of sugar or less and adding Stevia or Truvia. Stevia and Truvia are natural sweeteners that contain 0 calories! I wouldn’t recommend completely replacing sugar with Stevia or Truvia because the taste of your dish may become too altered.  

4.     Invest in nonstick pans! This way, you can avoid using oil to grease your pan before cooking or baking. Using oil to cook can quickly add a lot of unwanted fat and calories to your food!!

Happy baking! Remember, you can mess around with all these tips and see how it turns out!!!