subject: Picking the Right Recipes [print this page] Picking the Right Recipes Picking the Right Recipes
If you are going to go on a diet, and you are planning to control your food consumption by making most of your own dishes "from scratch", you will need to select the proper healthy diet recipes for your needs and goals. This might mean avoiding recipes that you could easily eat too many servings of in a single sitting, or it could mean finding recipes meant for two people only.
For example, if you are going to cook for yourself alone you might find it impossible to locate a recipe that serves only one or two portions. This means that you will have to either do the calculations to reduce the recipe for your needs, or be prepared to store and freeze the remaining portions.
This is often one of the trickiest parts of healthy eating controlling portion sizes. When selecting recipes you might want to be sure that they include the nutrition information that lets you know such things as the sodium content, calories, and fat, as well as the number of portions the recipe makes. It is very easy to consume more than a single portion when you don't know in advance just how many servings are supposed to come from a dish. If you find that you really love a certain recipe, you can always make the full quantity and divide this into individual serving containers, and then store them in the freezer for a fast and healthy weeknight supper.
What if you find a recipe that you want to use for your healthy cooking plan, but it does have a bit too much sugar, fat, or salt? It is actually relatively easy to find valid substitutions for the worst ingredients. Consider that some people will replace eggs or oil in a baking recipe with applesauce, and some use lemon juice and herbs in place of salt. Taking some time to see if you can easily replace some of the ingredients is usually worth the effort. This might prove difficult if you are also making adjustments to the number of servings, and should be something kept in mind.
In addition to standard diet recipes, there are also quick diet recipes meant to deliver maximum nutrition with minimal effort. These too must be assessed for portion size and nutritional content. Just because they are quick and easy to prepare doesn't always mean that they won't freeze or store nicely, and this is a good way to select recipes when only one or two portions might be needed for a meal.
