Comfort Foods

Comfort food has always been associated with being not so healthy. But with a few easy tweaks, just about any food can be transformed into good stuff that satisfies your nutritional needs, your taste buds, and even your nostalgic cravings.
When thinking of comfort foods, they usually have an appealing texture, rich creamy quality and full feeling in your stomach. Just one bite makes us think of home. 

So is it possible to take those comfort foods and make them with healthier ingredients?  It is certainly possible.
Many of the comfort food we think of today can be made with lower fat ingredients and higher fiber content to produce leaner healthier choices and still have all the great flavor.

Set yourself up for comfort food success. Whenever possible, prepare your comfort foods with recipes that have been given a nutritional tuneup and are lower in calories, fat, sodium and sugar.  Restricting certain foods can trigger strong cravings so don't restrict. Making a lighter version of it will satisfy you.
 Drink water not diet sodas- too much artificial sweeteners make you crave sugar.

Consider theses tip when lightening up your recipes:
1.Reduce the amount of high-fat, high sugar ingredients.
2.Reduce portion size.
3.Replace the high-fat, high sugar, high sodium ingredients with reduced fat, reduced sugar and reduced salt.
4. Remove some high-fat, high sugar ingredients that aren't really necessary to carry out the recipe.
5. Start with lean grass fed meats. Remove any fat and skin.
6. Reduce the meat in the recipe and increase the vegetables.
7.Reduce the amount of oil when sauteing.
8.Replace cream with fat-free half and half.
9.Use reduce fat cheeses.
10.When a recipes calls for sugar- cut the amount by half. 

Over time, the calorie and fat saving can really add up. These are all good practices to follow whether you are interested in reducing risks of health related diseases later in life..

We all love to enjoy a home cooked meals but we shouldn't have to pay the price with our health.