Ways to Cut Calories With Substitutions

Health and Wellness - Nutrition

By: ListMaker     17-Nov-2010

Introduction:

There are many tricks to cutting calories by using substitutions when cooking. Dieting is not always fun but, by cutting calories in your favorite dishes with these substitutions, you might just be pleasantly surprised that those skinny jeans fit again. The below are my favorite ways to cut calories but keep the best taste possible.

Cut Fat By Substituting Apple Sauce For Oil In Recipes

Although this trick doesn't work well for cookies, you can generally cut calories by substituting apple sauce for oil in cakes. For each cup of oil, use 1/2 cup and add in 1/2 cup of applesauce. You can also buy prepared baking purees which generally contain pectin so they might give a better texture. Your diet and skinny jeans will thank you for the effort.

Substitute Whole Milk For Cream

Obviously, this tip doesn't work if you need whipping cream but, in general, you won't notice a lot of difference by using whole milk instead of cream. If you don't want to go quite that light in your diet plan, use half and half instead of cream to cut calories and fat.

Skinny Up Mashed Potatoes For any Diet Plan

If you're a lover of all things mashed, try this: instead of adding gobs of butter, cream, and sour cream, add a few tablespoons of greek yogurt (yes, really) and some chicken broth until your mashed potatoes are to the desired consistency. They're delicious and there's not much of a learning curve to learn to love them. If you just can't abide by the idea of not adding sour cream, go ahead and get the low fat sour cream but, on pain of death, don't buy no fat sour cream - the stuff is horrible.

Try Turkey Bacon Instead of the Pig

Turkey bacon does have a bit of a learning curve to getting it to come out crispy and sorta bacony tasting but you can learn to love it as you go about creating skinny dishes. Particularly if you combine turkey sausage with other items, like putting it on a tasty english muffin with a fried egg, turkey bacon is almost passable for pork bacon.

And, My Personal Favorite Substitution Is Shirataki Tofu Noodles For Traditional Noodles

I found these things a few months ago and am totally amazed at how good they are. Now, these do also have a learning curve and smell HORRIBLE when they first come out of the package. The key is to rinse them WELL under cold water and then microwave them 4 minutes in a colandar to further 'de-smell' them. But, once you do all that, they're delightful in place of spaghetti noodles. And, for an 8 ounce package, they're only 20 calories! They might be hard to find at local stores so check oriental markets. They'll be in the tofu section.




Final Thoughts

There are many ways to cut calories with substitutions but, if you're going to hate the end result, don't cut the calories or fat back too far. The goal is to make a dish in which you've cut calories AND still can eat it.


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