Making Comfort Foods Healthier

As a Personal Chef and nutrition consultant, I spend a lot of time developing recipes for clients. When it's cold outside, my clients ask for comfort foods. Old favorites like meatloaf with mashed potatoes and gravy, fried chicken, and chili seem to take the cold away for at least a little while. Unfortunately, many comfort foods are high in fat, simple carbohydrates, sodium, and cholesterol. The good news is that with a few simple changes, you can still have your favorite comfort foods without the guilt. These simple tips can turn your comfort foods into healthy meals, so you can have the best of both worlds.

Use 93/7 ground beef. Using leaner beef cuts fat, calories, and cholesterol. If you use grass-fed, pastured lean ground beef, you get the additional benefits of more Omega fatty acids, and CLAs that help fight cancer. Using leaner ground beef dramatically cuts calories in your favorite comfort foods, like meatloaf and stroganoff.

Use ground chicken or turkey instead of ground beef. Ground poultry is a great substitute for ground beef, and usually has far fewer calories, less fat, and less cholesterol. Use it just as you would ground beef to satisfy your comfort food cravings while staying healthy and lean.

Use black beans or lentils in place of half your ground meat. Whenever you use ground meat, consider replacing about half of it with cooked legumes, such black beans or lentils. For better consistency in dishes like tacos, mash up the legumes with a fork or dice by simply running a knife through them a few times. Legumes are a great source of lean protein that will pick up the flavors in a dish, and can mimic and compliment the texture of ground meats. They save you calories and fat, while adding fiber to fill you up. Legumes are cheaper that meat, too, so you get an added bonus of costs savings!

Add yogurt instead of cream. Many of our most-craved comfort foods, like stroganoff, call for cream. Instead, add low fat, plain yogurt. It will add the consistency and flavor of cream with about half the calories and fat. It's a great addition to mashed potatoes, too!

Toss in vegetables. Vegetables can be used in a lot of comfort food to add texture and flavor, and keep down fat and calories. Add chipped fresh spinach, red onions, and grated carrots into your meatloaf mixture gives you layers of extra flavors. It also adds vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants while cutting the calories per slice. Finely diced red bell peppers and broccoli make tacos even better. Adding vegetables stretches your meals further, too, saving money as well as calories.

Try some whole grains instead of pasta. Quinoa is simple to cook, and has much more protein and fiber than pasta or couscous. Try it in place of rice, risotto, or couscous. Cook brown rice with fat-free, low-sodium broth for a great side dish, or a base for your next stir fry. It has more fiber than white rice. Whole grain pastas will fill you up faster and keep you full longer, too, so next time you're having spaghetti, have it over whole grain noodles. Fiber helps break the hunger cycle, while simple carbohydrates such as white flour can cause you to become hungry sooner and more often.

Bake instead of fry. Coat your chicken with whole wheat flour and corn meal mixed with your favorite spices, and bake it off on a rack instead of frying it. You will satisfy that savory craving for fried chicken with a fraction of the calories, fat, and cholesterol. Want fries? Slice and par-boil potatoes, then coat them with a hint of olive oil and your favorite spices and bake until crispy.

Kick the white potato habit with new side dishes. White potatoes are high in simple carbs and low in nutrition. Satisfy your craving by substituting those spuds with whipped sweet potatoes or cauliflower. Both are wonderful replacements for traditional mashed potatoes, and are higher in fiber and nutrition. Just boil until tender, then whip. You can whip sweet potatoes without any additions, or add low-fat, low sodium broth, low-fat plain yogurt, or spices like cinnamon. Use your stick blender on the warm cauliflower with a pinch of baking soda and some salt. You can even add a bit of low fat grated cheese for an extra kick.

Sprinkle some unprocessed wheat bran into everything! Unprocessed wheat bran is flavorless and has almost no calories, but is full of fiber to help keep you fuller, longer. Add it to almost anything for an extra fiber boost to keep your cravings for comfort food at bay.

Use spices instead of salt. Most of us get more than enough salt in our diets from foods we eat daily, without adding extra. Instead of adding salt to your dishes to give them more zing, add some spices. Garlic, onion, curry, tumeric, hot peppers, basil, oregano, and even lemon can bring up the flavor in your cooking without adding more salt. If you are going to add salt, add it at the table. You'll use far less.

Comfort foods can be healthy and satisfying with a few simple revisions. My clients often request these revisions to their traditional favorites again and again, saying they enjoy the healthier versions even more. So, go ahead and enjoy your favorite comfort foods with these tips.

Resources:

Can Cheeseburgers Fight Cancer?USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Oct, 1996. Findaraticles.com.