How To Health-ify ANY Recipe

Since beginning this heart-healthy journey a few years ago, I’ve learned lots of tips and tricks for modifying recipes and making them heart healthy. Cooking heart healthy food basically comes down to 3 main principles:

• Limiting fat, especially saturated fats (fats that are solid at room temperature) & trans-fats
• Limiting sodium
• Limiting sugar
  

Heart disease is the leading killer of both men and women these days, and diet is one of the biggest culprits. Even if you can’t change your genetics, family history or age, you can always improve the foods you’re eating. You literally are what you eat, and the foods you eat have a tremendous impact on how your body functions.

Table of Contents

• Make recipes heart healthy by including more fiber
  • Eat more fruits and vegetables
  • Eat more whole grains
• Include heart healthy fats in your recipes
• Make recipes heart healthy by limiting saturated and trans fats
  • Make recipes healthier by choosing leaner sources of protein
  • Replace high-fat dairy with lower-fat alternatives
• Limit the sugar in your diet
• Make recipes heart healthy by limiting sodium
• Practice portion control
• Don’t overcomplicate it

Make recipes heart healthy by including more fiber

Fiber fills you up so you’re less hungry, and it also keeps your body functioning properly. If you’ve got high blood pressure or heart problems, getting yourself down to an appropriate weight is one of the most important things you can do to protect your heart. Fiber helps with this by making you feel full with fewer calories.

Eat more fruits and vegetables

Pack those fruits, veggies into recipes whenever, wherever you can. Fruits and vegetables are low in calories yet super-filling, so they’re a great way to transition away from fattier foods. When you add vegetables to your plate, you’ll be able to eat heartier portions without adding too many calories.

Fruits make awesome desserts, and they’re great for people with a sweet tooth (me!!) I’ve noticed that apples and oranges satisfy sugar cravings better than candy does. I always believe that candy will satisfy my epic sweet tooth, but it leaves me hungry for more (and, therefore, consuming too many calories.) On the other hand, eating an orange actually really does satisfy that craving.

Whether fresh, frozen or canned, fruits and vegetables are also fantastic sources of vitamins and minerals. And they add so much flavor to any meal you’re cooking! Vegetables add moisture to hamburgers, and they add tremendous depth of flavor to a pasta sauce.

Add lots and lots of vegetables to whichever recipe you’re cooking to heart health-ify it:

• Mash or grind any vegetable with tomatoes to make a pasta sauce.
• Cook the water out of any veggies you want, and put them inside a lasagna or calzone.
• Add berries, apples, or shredded carrots to muffins.
• Substitute unsweetened applesauce, mashed bananas or canned pumpkin for oil & butter in baked goods.
• Mash any vegetable with some taco meat, and eat it in a taco format.
• Purée carrots or zucchini and stir them into hamburgers and meatballs.
• Make pizza and throw a bunch of vegetables on top of it.
• A stir fry is an excellent way to use up lots of random vegetables.
• Make an omelet full of vegetables
• Vary your choices by color. Eat the rainbow! Try to make the foods you cook colorful and pretty, as this ensures you’ll get the widest variety of vitamins and minerals.
• Fruit is an awesome dessert topping.
• Purée fresh fruits and freeze them as popsicles.

Eat more whole grains

Like fruit and veggies, whole grains pack tons of fiber and other nutrients that make you feel full and satisfied after a meal. Increase the amount of whole grains you’re eating by making simple substitutions. Swap white rice for brown rice or wild rice. Swap regular white flour for whole-wheat flour. There are lots of products on the market, like whole grain pastas that make these swaps super-easy.

To start, try 50/50 refined white flour and whole grain. Bake bread using 50% whole wheat flour and 50% white flour. Mix whole wheat spaghetti with white spaghetti.

Be adventurous and play around with less-common grains like farro, quinoa or barley (FYI, Ocean State Job Lot sells a wide selection of discounted Bob’s Red Mill grain products, if you want to try lesser-known grains like amaranth, sorghum, freekeh, buckwheat, rye, etc. etc. )

• Swap flour tortillas for corn tortillas.
• Popcorn is a whole grain and a great snack.
• Look for high-fiber cereals with at least 5g fiber per serving
• Swap white flour for whole wheat flour
• White whole wheat flour is a good compromise. It’s a whole-grain wheat flour made from a different type of wheat.
• Spelt flour is also a great replacement for white wheat flour in baking. Spelt has a lot of sugar in it, yes, and it’s the most naturally delicious whole-grain flour out there (probably for this reason)
• Replace part of your white flour with wheat germ or bran
• Oatmeal is amazing; have you seen all the baked oatmeals I’ve made?

Carbs and grains are not the devil, but foods made with refined white flour (doughnuts, cakes, cookies, biscuits, etc) will really do a number on your health. My husband and I still eat refined white flour, but all things in moderation.

Include heart healthy fats in your recipes

Nuts, nut butters, avocadoes all contain unsaturated fats. Polyunsaturated fats and omega-3 fatty acids can help reduce triglycerides (the fat in your blood), help maintain HDL “good” cholesterol, decrease the risk of sudden heart attacks, strokes and blood clots.

• Fatty fish like salmon and herring are the best sources of omega-3 fatty acids.
• Flax seeds and walnuts are great plant-based sources of omega-3 fatty acids.
• Grind up seeds and nuts and incorporate them into your baked goods. Dump a couple tablespoons of ground flaxseed into whatever you’re baking for an extra dose of heart-healthy oils.
• Avocadoes! Make guacamole! Instead of using mayonnaise on your sandwich, use mashed avocado.
• Other fatty fruits like olives are full of heart-healthy oils too.
• Replace the butter in a recipe with a liquid oil of your choice and see if you like the result.

Make recipes heart healthy by limiting saturated and trans fats

Limiting saturated fats and trans-fats is an important step towards protecting your heart. A high level of triglycerides or cholesterol in your blood leads to the buildup of plaques in your arteries. These plaques cause your arteries to narrow and harden, which leaves you vulnerable to heart attack and stroke.

Of course, cutting all fat out of your diet isn’t very healthy either. Lots of vitamins are only fat-soluble; doctors recommend that at least 25% of your daily calories should come from fat.

Here are the current American Heart Association guidelines on how much fat you should include in a heart-healthy diet.

• No more than 5% to 6% of your total daily calories should come from saturated fat.
• Avoid all trans-fat
• Aim to get about 25%-30% of your day’s calories from fat (mostly unsaturated fats)

Here are some ways to reduce the amount of unhealthy fats when cooking:

• Trim the visible fat from your meat before cooking.
• Remove the skin from your poultry before eating it.
• Use olive oil, canola oil, safflower oil or some other unsaturated plant-based oil when a recipe calls for butter, ghee, coconut oil or another saturated fat. You want to use fats that are liquid at room temperature.
• Use less cooking oil. Replace the oil with broth or stock if the food needs to be “moist.”
• Try poaching, braising, broiling or grilling instead of frying or sauteéing.
• Bake it instead of frying it. A light spritz of olive oil or nonstick spray will help it brown up in the oven.
• Air fryers are also a lot of fun, a good way to make food crispy and crunchy without adding oil. This is a great way to cut the fat in any recipe that calls for “deep frying” your food.
• Just cut the amount of oil. So many recipes call for so much oil that isn’t even necessary anyway. Remember, oil can always be replaced with stock and broth, or even just water.
• Generally avoid fats that come from animals, unless it’s liquid-at-room-temperature fat from an oily fish like sardines, salmon or trout.
• “Hydrogenated” is a code word for trans fats.

Also, be very careful of tropical plant oils. Coconut oil is often touted as a miraculous health-conscious health food these days (I will grant you, it’s delicious), but it’s still artery-clogging saturated fat. Coconut oil tastes amazing but, just like butter, coconut oil should be used in moderation. The same is true for palm oil and cocoa butter. Heart-healthy fats tend to be liquid at room-temperature.

Make recipes healthier by choosing leaner sources of protein

Even red meat can be part of a heart-healthy diet when eaten in moderation. Generally go easy on meat; it shouldn’t be the focal point of your diet, but lean meats are a source of essential protein, which helps you feel fuller and more satisfied. Eating enough protein is key to getting down to a heart-healthy weight.

• If a recipe calls for pork shoulder, use pork loin instead. Pork tenderloin is also pretty lean.
• If a recipe calls for chicken thighs, use chicken breast instead.
• If a recipe calls for ribeye or New York strip steak, use round steak or sirloin instead.
• Use white meat instead of dark meat, wherever possible.
• Fish is an awesome low-fat source of protein.
• Use ground turkey or 96% lean beef instead of fattier ground beef.
• Generally eat less red meat. Eat more poultry and fish.
• Plant-based proteins are awesome too! Tofu is a completely fat-free source of protein that can stand in for chicken in a lot of Asian recipes. Beans and lentils are packed with fiber as well as protein.
• I like to see if I can remove 50% of the meat in a recipe and replace it with something plant-based like beans or tofu.

Replace high-fat dairy with lower-fat alternatives

Dairy tends to contain artery-clogging saturated fat, and a heart-healthy diet needs to limit fats — particularly saturated fats — as much as possible.

When my husband and I first started our heart-healthy food journey, this was the hardest and most depressing part of it. We used to think low fat dairy products were nasty, but we’ve learned that it’s all just a matter of whatever your taste buds are accustomed to.

I think it’s very important to start slowly, to take baby steps, and give your taste buds time to adjust. Your taste buds will change over time.

To start, try filling your glass with 50% skim milk and 50% whole milk. You might try gradually transitioning to 2% milk, then to 1% milk, and finally to fat-free skim milk. Nowadays, skim milk tastes normal and whole-milk tastes excessively creamy to me.

When we first started eating this way, we were depressed because fat-free yogurts and fat-free cottage cheese were so incredibly disgusting. We did a taste test; I bought small containers of every type of nonfat yogurt in the supermarket and we decided that Fage 0% Greek Yogurt was far-and-away the best, so that’s what we always buy now. You might need to sample a bunch of nonfat dairy products to figure out which ones you enjoy the most.

• Greek Yogurt can replace oil and butter in baked goods, and it can also be used in any recipe that calls for sour cream or crème fraiche (hot tip: Stir some powdered buttermilk into Greek Yogurt for excellent nonfat crème fraiche. )
• Swap whole milk for skim milk in any recipe.
• Fat-free half & half works well as a substitute in any recipe that calls for heavy cream. Fat-free half & half won’t actually whip up into whipped cream, but it contains thickeners that approximate heavy cream.
• I can’t with fat-free cottage cheese, so I just don’t. 1% cottage cheese is amazing.
• 1% cottage cheese is amazing in a lasagna or any type of baked pasta.
• Part-skim mozzarella is a solid all-purpose cheese for snacking and cooking.
• Replace full-fat cheeses with their reduced-fat counterparts.
• Nothing can replace ice cream in my mind, but low fat frozen yogurt is a fantastic substitute if you’re wanting to eat ice cream as an “every day” dessert. My kids love this strawberry froyo.
• Be very careful to avoid overdoing it with butter. There are lots of heart-healthier substitutes like Smart Balance or Olivio that don’t contain as much saturated fat. Soft margarines work as a great butter substitute in baking.

Limit the sugar in your diet

This is my personal stumbling block. Gosh, I’m addicted to sugar.

One of the most important things you can do to protect your heart is to get down to a healthy weight and stay there. Limiting sugar will help tremendously towards this end.

There are naturally-occurring sugars in many foods like fruits and milk, and there are also added sugars in foods like candy or ice cream. Added sugars contribute zero nutrients and many, many additional calories, which makes maintaining a heart-healthy weight a lot harder (I know all too well!)

Avoid pre-packaged heavily processed foods as much as possible, because these products tend to contain a lot of added sugars even if they haven’t got a “sweet” taste. Always read the nutrition labels. Look for the grams of sugar in each serving. Read the ingredients list. Words like syrup, cane juice, molasses, honey, high-fructose, corn sweetener, or fruit juice concentrate all indicate added sugar.

Cutting sugar when you’re baking is complicated (I’ll write a future entry on that). It’s much easier to cut the sugar if you’re cooking. Just cut the amount of sugar in half and see what happens. Eliminate the sugar entirely, and see if you still like the way it tastes. If you’re only using sugar to sweeten the dish, try replacing it with some stevia or erythritol and see what happens. This will take some experimentation; if you like the flavor, keep it up!

• DIY your own pasta sauces, salad dressings, barbecue sauce, etc etc. The majority of commercially bottled sauces contain such a huge amount of unnecessary added sugars.
• Flavors like vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, orange, will trick your brain into believing the food you’re eating is sweeter than it actually is. Double the amount of vanilla extract the recipe calls for, and it’ll magically taste sweeter.
• Substitute up to ¼ of the sugar in a baking recipe with powdered milk. If a recipe calls for 1 cup of sugar, try using ¾ cup sugar and ¼ cup powdered milk.
• If a recipe calls for jam or jelly, substitute a no-sugar-added version, or try a fruit spread like Polaner All-Fruit.
• You can easily make your own jam by simmering fruit with a few tablespoons of water and a little bit of sugar (the amount of sugar you’ll need varies based on the sweetness of the fruit and your personal taste.)
• Fruit, fruit, fruit! Fruit contains naturally-occurring sugar, but the amount of sugar is comparatively small — you get tons of fiber and nutrition too! Replace sugar in a recipe with raisins, dried fruits, dates, mashed bananas, applesauce.
• Peak-season fruits like peaches and strawberries are sweet enough that they don’t need any additional sugar. Get them while you’re able to, and freeze them! (Hot tip: Commercially frozen fruit is often frozen at the peak of ripeness and sweetness.)

Your body ultimately doesn’t care or notice whether you’re eating “organic local honey” or high-fructose-super-sugar-candy. All of the sugar you eat ends up being converted into glucose inside your body anyway, no matter if it’s organic maple syrup or M&Ms.

Go easy on sugar, no matter which label is on it, no matter what type of package it’s in. Overdoing it on all-natural organic cane sugar is just as unhealthy as overdoing it with the Skittles and Twizzlers.

Make recipes heart healthy by limiting sodium

I’ve written an entry on making food taste good without adding salt, and you may enjoy reading it, as I’ve delved into much further detail there.

Cooking food at home allows you to have greater control over the sodium in your foods. When grocery shopping, compare the Nutrition Facts labels and choose the lowest-sodium commercially packaged foods you can find.

Again, be careful cutting salt when baking — salt can play an important role in moisture; remove salt from baked goods with great care.

• Experiment and test like a scientist. Cut 25% of the salt in a recipe and see if you still like the result. If you like the result, try cutting 50% of the salt next time. Cut the salt as far as you can manage to while still enjoying the results.
• Replace half the salt in a recipe with Mrs. Dash or a similar salt-free seasoning.
• Replace salt with hot sauce or other hot spices to add more flavor.
• Replace salt with herbs and spices.
• Replace salt with citrus.
• If a recipe calls for adding salt to the cooking water (especially with pasta, potatoes, rice) skip the salt.
• If you’re adding a salty ingredient like cheese or olives to a recipe, you can probably skip adding extra salt.
• Look for low-sodium or no-salt-added canned vegetables, canned beans, canned tomatoes, canned stocks and broths, condiments, etc.
• If you can’t find low-sodium canned vegetables, rinse the veggies to wash away some of the extra salt.
• Use dried beans or lentils instead of canned beans/lentils.
• Make your own pizza or spaghetti sauce with low-sodium canned tomato sauce, a few tablespoons of water to thin it out, garlic powder, dried basil and oregano.
• If a recipe calls for soy sauce, ketchup, BBQ sauce, mayonnaise, etc, use less sauce. Cut the amount of sauce by 25% and see how it tastes to you. Be a scientist and experiment to find out what works best.
• Make your own no-salt-added chicken stock or veggie stock by boiling a bunch of veggie scraps in water (also a great way to cut food waste!), or by boiling the leftover carcass next time you cook a whole chicken.
• Use unsalted margarine or butter

Practice portion control

Portion control is an important part of any healthy eating plan. It’s important to know what to eat, and it’s also important to know how much to eat. Recognizing appropriate portion sizes is key to maintaining a weight that’s healthy for your heart. By keeping healthy portion sizes in mind, you can eat a lot of everything.

Don’t overcomplicate it

I feel like our culture turns this question of “what should I eat?” into this incredibly confusing and complicated thing, and then people feel all overwhelmed and demoralized about it.

I like Michael Pollan’s common-sense eating plan the best:
“Eat real food. Not too much. Mostly plants.“
– Michael Pollan

That’s a heart healthy diet, in a nutshell. It doesn’t need to be complicated. Keeping this in mind, it’s possible to “heart health-ify” just about any recipe.