It can be hard to make wholesale changes in your diet to eat healthier and lose weight, but switching a few key ingredients in your recipes can make it easy.

The August issue of Mayo Clinic Women's HealthSource provides some tips on how to make some healthy recipe alterations:

• Use low-fat or fat-free yogurt, milk or cheese instead of the full-fat versions.
• When you bake, replace all or part of the butter or oil with applesauce or prune puree.
• Use cooking spray for frying and in place of oil or butter when you grease baking pans.
• Instead of oil, use low-fat or fat-free broth when you saute vegetables. If you prefer oil, use half the amount of what's called for in the recipe.
• Grill or broil meats and poultry so that most of the fat drops off.
• Buy lean cuts of meat and cut away all visible fat before you cook it.
• Reduce sugar in recipes by a third or half. You can substitute prune puree, mashed bananas or unsweetened applesauce for some or all of the sugar in a recipe.
• Use cinnamon, nutmeg and other sweet spices to flavor foods.

More information on Nutrition

Reference Source 101
August 6, 2004

For more information on how to prevent other diseases, use
PreventDisease.com's "Quick Prevention Resources".