Over the past year, I have been trying to eat healthier. Not only to lose some weight, but also to get healthy. I cook at home 6 days a week always anyway, and have for most of my adult life. It hasn’t always been healthy though. I collect cookbooks and love cooking. I’ve learned over the years what makes food taste really good and what puts a smile on people’s faces when they eat food. In return, often food that is really good, many times is not healthy.

So in 2023, I changed the way I cook and bake, making the food a little more healthy, and less full of fats and sugars. There has been many flops, one of them being just the other day when I made sugar free celebratory cookies. Yeah real flop. Many other sugar free recipes have been awesome and I feel so much better when I eat them.

I love using recipes from my cookbooks. Before this health journey, I always felt like I had to follow the recipe to a T and couldn’t stray. If the recipe didn’t call for it, I didn’t add it. My husband would say, “Boy, this or this would be good in this dish.” He would go onto say, “Oh yeah, the recipe didn’t call for it”. LOL. It was kind of a running joke in my house. Now, I change every recipe I make. I change the ingredients and the steps. It has become so much fun for me to substitute or add items to make a recipe a little healthier.

I’m still learning everyday, but I have this theory in my mind everyday when I cook: “I can make any recipe a little bit healthier”. No, it probably won’t taste like the original recipe, but indulging in this recipe will be less regretful and I will feel a little healthier.

So, I thought I would share the tips I have developed and learned that I apply with every recipe I make. Hopefully these tips will help you as well so you too can cook and bake a little bit healthier.

Recipe Ingredients Substitutes Tips

Replace sugars with sweetners. If you don’t want to completely replace sugar, start with use 1/2 real sugar and 1/2 sweetener(unless you are a diabetic and then it is all sweetener for you). You probably won’t even be able to tell the difference. The sweetners I use the most are brown sugar Splenda sweetener Stevia white sweetener, and Sweet n Low liquid sweetener.
Use pink Himalayan salt or sea salt in place of table salt. You can also use a salt substitute if you like, but our bodies do require us to have a certain amount of sodium per day to live. Just too much sodium is bad for your arteries and heart. When I started my health journey, I quit using table salt completely, and use sea salt to cook and bake with most of the time, but have started incorporating more of the pink Himalayan salt into my food. It’s even better for you than sea salt.
Extra virgin olive oil should be your new oil choice. We have almost completely switched everything we cook over to extra virgin olive oil. “EVOO” as Rachael Ray would say. I still use canola oil to bake with. But I never use regular vegetable oil. I have also tried avocado oil, and that is pretty good too, but olive oil is the best choice. I also use coconut oil sometimes but don’t use too much coconut oil, because it is high in fat.
Replace heavy whipping cream with regular 2% milk and some cornstarch. One reason everything I cooked was so delicious because a little cream makes everything better. For sure! But it’s not better on your cholesterol or arteries. I have only bought and used 1 pint of heavy whipping cream in the past year.
Drinking 2% milk is just as good for you as whole milk. We switched to 2% milk in November and haven’t looked back. I don’t drink milk, but I cook with it a lot. 2% is just better fat wise.
Wheat flour in place of white flour is so much better for you. I make whole wheat pizzas now, whole wheat bread, and even whole cookies that aren’t half bad.
Drink more water. Water flushes your system, and helps your digestive system, and keeps you hydrated.
If you are like me and love sodas, switch to diet sodas. I gave up regular sodas, and now drink Diet Pepsi or Mt. Dew Zero now. Every once in a while when we are eating out, I will treat myself to a regular soda.
Go from extra sweet tea to unsweet and sweeten with sweetener. I could drink a whole gallon of sweet tea in 2 days. Now I use liquid sweet n low to sweeten a glass of tea. Sometimes, like I do with sodas, if we are eating out, I might get a sweet tea to treat myself.
Learn to love the natural taste of items more, and not drowning them in condiments and loads of seasoned salts. If a recipe says to use a whole bottle of teriyaki sauce, I only use 1/2 or sometimes even a 1/4 depending on the sodium and cholesterol amounts on the teriyaki sauce label. We are so used to things being overly rich, and many times, it would be even better with less. And you will feel better about yourself when you are eating it.

The main thing to remember when choosing to make better food choices, is that you can control what you are eating, meaning you can control what your health is a lot of the time. Try different things, and experiment with different foods, and flavors. You will find that you will get accustomed to the taste of the food over time, and you can be proud of yourself. Not only are you helping yourself, you are helping those you are cooking for as well.

What are some of your tips or ideas for making recipes a little healthier? Share in the comments some of your tips. Happy cooking!