Healthy Cooking Secrets

A healthy eating plan doesn't mean you have to sacrifice your favorite foods or give up flavor. All that's needed is a little adjustment, an open mind, and an experimental spirit. Try some of these tips when preparing your favorite home-cooked meals to make them lower in fat and more healthful.

Adjust your recipes ~

Use applesauce or other fruit purees in place of butter or oil in baked goods. (Pureed prunes work well in chocolate baked goods.)

Substitute 2 egg whites for one whole egg or three whites for two whole eggs.

In place of sour cream, try using non-fat sour cream, yogurt or pureed lowfat cottage cheese.

Use skim milk in place of whole milk.

Replace heavy cream with evaporated skim milk or lowfat yogurt.

Add various kinds of fruit or vegetable to baked breads to make them interesting and more flavorful.

Add fiber such as oatmeal, wheat germ, Raisin Bran, Bran Flakes or All-Bran to muffins and breakfast breads.

Use whole grain for part of your ingredients instead of highly refined products such as whole wheat flour, whole cornmeal, and oatmeal.

Use fruit and vegetable salsas to spice up or add zip to meats and vegetables.

Experiment with a variety of spices and herbs in your dishes to make them interesting.

Decrease sodium by using low sodium or unsalted ingredients.

Reduce sugar by 1/4 to 1/3 in baked goods and desserts. Substitute flour for the omitted sugar. (Don't decrease sugar in yeast breads because sugar feeds the yeast.)

Use spices in baked goods. For example reducing sugar and adding cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg or vanilla to your recipes will enhance the impression of sweetness.

Add a variety of vegetables to meat dishes to reduce the amount of meat you eat and increase your vegetable intake.

Use sharp cheeses in your cooking; you can use less and still retain flavor or experiment with using low-fat or fat-free cheeses.

Make marinades with juices and broth instead of oil.

Try these cooking methods ~

Trim all visible fat from meats before cooking.

Refrigerate all stocks, stews, and soups and remove the congealed fat before reheating.

Use non-stick pans and cooking spray to reduce the need for oil and butter.

Grill or roast meat on a rack so the fat drips away.

Microwaving meals requires little or no fat to cook.

Poach foods by simmering them in hot liquid such as broth, water, wine, or juices; no fat required.

Steam your vegetables in a basket over boiling water or in a food steamer.

Sauté food in a non-stick pan using water, broth, juice, wine, or cooking spray.

Stir fry meat and vegetables in a non-stick pan or wok using broth or a dab of olive or canola oil.

Brown meat pieces and crumbled hamburger, drain off fat, and rinse in strainer with hot water before adding to a recipe.

Bake foods using non-fat marinades to retain moisture.

Source:

http://www.primusweb.com/fitnesspartner/library/nutrition/nutritn.htm

Is Your Bread Slowly Killing You?

Are there "hidden dangers" in every slice of bread you eat? Are you slowly being poisoned by your daily bread? You could be. Find out now if you are, and what you can do about it.

If you eat white (or any kind of store bought) bread, then here are a few things you need to know before you put that next slice in your mouth.

For example...did you know that the inclusion of hydrogenated oils, artificial preservatives, emulsifiers, additives and other chemicals in bread became standard practice in the mid 1950’s?

At this same time whole wheat flour was replaced by bleached, enriched white flour. In this process, grain is bleached and sterilized with chemicals to make it white and soft.

It is then artificially "enriched" by adding vitamins, minerals and other materials destroyed in the chemical process.

Despite what you may have been told, trying to "enrich" something with the very vitamins and minerals that were removed from it in the first place, does not make it even half as healthy as the natural unrefined version.

When you think about this, it doesn’t even make much sense.

Your White Flour Isn’t Just White Flour

It is also a growing practice in many bread producing factories to replace white flour with substances like alum, ground rice, and whiting.

Alum is the most commonly used of all these substances, because it gives the bread a whiter color and causes the flour to absorb and retain a larger amount of water than it would otherwise hold.

This enables the factories to produce bread which imitates bread made from a higher quality flour.

This tainting of your bread with harmful, cancer causing chemicals such as potassium bromate, emulsifiers (both commonly used in bread production), and alum jeopardizes your health.

Do you know why your store bought bread has such a long shelf life?

The mysteriously prolonged shelf life is because of a particular emulsifier used in making the bread. This emulsifier is mainly used as a softening agent and tends to deceive buyers as to the real age of their bread.

This emulsifier can hide the signs that your bread is rotting (it certainly doesn’t stop the rotting) for a few extra weeks, but the harm it does to your body (and the harm in eating the half rotten bread) makes the cost for this "convenience" very high.

Is it any wonder then, that every year a growing number of people just like you and I, are being hospitalized with illnesses and incurable diseases?

How Can You Survive?

Is it possible for you to protect yourself and your loved ones against unhealthy and harmful bread?

Well, buying bread from a store is certainly not the right choice to make. Even if you buy commercially produced whole wheat bread you’re not getting healthy food.

A lot of times what is sold as whole wheat bread in stores is actually white bread colored with caramel.

If the first ingredient in a loaf of whole wheat bread is unbleached enriched flour, then you’re not truly buying whole wheat bread at all, just white bread (loaded with chemicals) that is disguised as whole wheat bread.

There is only one true solution to ensure that you avoid poisonous, toxic bread. And that is to bake your own healthy whole wheat bread.

This is no where near as difficult as it sounds. In fact it’s dead set simple.

All you need is a good proven recipe, and an expert guide to teach you just once what to do. I’d be glad to provide you with both.

About the Author:
Beth Scott teaches you how to bake your own healthy whole wheat bread, with a step by step guide using detailed pictures. Visit her Healthy Bread Baking website for more information.

Panda Dog

A dog named 'Columbo', a cross-breed between a poodle and a Maltese and dyed to look like a panda, sits on a chair in Tokyo November 30, 2005. The owner dyed the originally white coloured dog, with a special hair dye to cover up stains around its eyes which was conspicuous when he was first found abandoned. As a result, the panda look-alike became the most popular dog in the neighbourhood and the owner said he hopes Columbo's popularity will help rescue other abandoned dogs like Columbo, where in Tokyo last year, 700 of them were put to sleep. (REUTERS/Toru Hanai)

Source : www.pandafix.com

Panda Dog Link:

http://www.nbc10.com/news/5418893/detail.html