Trying To Make Your Baking And Cooking Healthier: Tips For You

When you pride yourself on your ability to create delicious meals and desserts, it can often be easy to forget about being healthy and conscious of any dietary restrictions that you or your guests should be following. However, this does not have to be the case. There are many ways that you can continue to make flavorful and delectable dishes without doing damage to your health. Get to know some of the easiest ways that you can make your baking and cooking healthier so that you can delight your family and guests while also keeping them fit and healthy at the same time.

Flavor Your Food With Herbs Instead Of Salt

Some of the health issues that many people face in modern times have to do with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and other cardiovascular health issues. An excess consumption of sodium (salt) can contribute to these problems.

While this is the bad news, the good news is that reducing your sodium intake can also lower your risk of developing such heart issues and can help your system to return to normal. Salt can be replaced in many recipes by adding flavor from other sources. Herbs are a wonderful and healthy way to add flavor to a dish without making it unhealthy.

Fresh herbs add the most flavor. If you can purchase a few of your favorite herbs as plants or seeds to grow on your own. Basil is a wonderfully aromatic herb that can add a great deal of flavor to a chicken or pasta dish. Cilantro is another delicious herb that is perfect for meats and other ethnic foods like Mexican and Indian cuisine. Experiment with your herbs and you will find that you can create delicious flavor combinations without adding any salt.

Buy Sugar Alternatives For Desserts

Refined sugar is another one of those ingredients that tastes delicious and adds powerful flavor to dishes but can also cause a great many health issues. Refined sugar can contribute to obesity, heart problems, depression and other mood disorders, as well as a wide variety of gastrointestinal issues.

Sugar alternatives are available to make your desserts more nutritious without affecting flavor. Coconut sugar is one such option. It is far lower on the glycemic index (the scale that ranks how much a certain food or ingredient will affect your blood sugar) than standard refined sugar.

Another option is using actual fruit as a sweetener in your baking. This is especially good in cakes or breads, but you need to be careful of the consistency of your baked goods as the juice can make it runny. Stevia, honey, and even molasses can also be used as sugar alternatives to help lower the glycemic index and make your desserts healthier. In addition, you can check out new products like Sugar 2.0.

Now that you know a few of the ways that you can make your cooking and baking recipes healthier, you can get started changing up your recipes and experimenting to find the best healthy flavors you can for your meals.