Almost every day there is an article in the paper or a segment on the news referencing to new studies about what is healthy and what’s not. You almost need a medical dictionary to be able to understand all the different terms. After all you have saturated, monosaturated and polyunsaturated fats. Whew!
The information on fats can sometimes be confusing and overwhelming. It is probably all the health reports we’ve read or heard about that have a lot of us cooking and baking healthier.
Baking healthier offers many benefits. The most obvious are better health and reduced weight gain. With better health and weight loss, you will probably have more energy and feel better overall physically. And who can complain about that?
Most of the ingredients used to bake contain fat. Eggs, butter/margarine and oil are among the leading fat ingredients. These are all important for flavor and texture. Too much fat from these sources are not good. For instance, did you know that your body easily converts dietary fat calories into body fat? A hundred fat calories can be stored by using only about 2.5 calories while your body has to spend twenty-five calories to convert a hundred dietary calories (protein or carbohydrates) into body fat. But don’t let this frighten you too much! It is advised by nutritional professionals that a good mix of the types of fat may be more important than limiting all fat. After all, fat is needed in the diet to supply essential fatty acids, substances essential for growth, which the body doesn’t produce.
Substitutions
Be forewarned! These substitutions may not work the same in all recipes!
Substituting fat-free/cholesterol-free egg products is one way to reduce the fat level in your recipes. You can also substitute one whole egg with two egg whites in a recipe.
For moist foods like quick breads and muffins, you can try substituting the butter in the recipe with fruit purees such as applesauce. For other recipes, you may want to reduce the butter by half and substitute the other half with fruit puree. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you can substitute applesauce for the fat in most recipes! It may take trial and error to determine what works best and achieves the taste you desire.
Plain low-fat yogurt is a good substitute for sour cream. Or you could just use fat-free sour cream. Also, buttermilk, evaporate or 2 % milk can be substituted for whole milk.
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