How to cook for a healthy diet
How you cook is as important as what you cook when it comes to keeping your food healthy.
Here are 10 tips on how to keep your cooking healthy:
- Steam, bake, grill and boil instead of frying, deep frying or roasting.
- If frying, use non-stick cookware and don’t add any oil or fat.
- Use only very small amounts of healthier fats such as olive oil or rapeseed oil instead of butter or coconut oil.
- Trim all the fat from meat before cooking. Remove the skin from poultry.
- Don’t add salt. Use herbs and spices for flavour.
- To reduce nutrient losses, steam or microwave vegetables. If boiling use a small amount of water and don’t over boil. Cooked vegetables should still be firm.
- Cut vegetables into large chunks instead of smaller pieces before cooking. This helps reduce nutrient loss.
- Scrub instead of peeling potatoes. The skin contains lots of nutrients.
- Use low-fat milk instead of cream when making sauces.
- Use low-fat yoghurt instead of sour cream or mayonnaise in dips and dressings.
