Tips for Reducing Fat

Your food can be both nutritious and delicious if you reduce the fat content in your food. This is not difficult, nor will it make your food taste bland, as is commonly perceived. Grilling, roasting, smoking, steaming, poaching, baking, and microwave cooking are excellent ways of cooking if one wants to reduce one's fat intake. Thus by slightly altering your cooking style, you will discover new and easy ways of reducing the fat content in your diet.

To moderate the amount of fat used in the kitchen, you have to realize the purpose it serves in a particular dish. It could be used to impart flavor to a dish, or to give it a rich sheen, or to prevent food from burning or to act as an emulsifying agent or preservative. Whatever the purpose, fat can be easily minimized from your diet.

The first step to reducing your fat intake is by trimming and discarding surface fat from meat. The skin of most poultry can be left in place for grilling, roasting, or sauteeing, but it is best removed just before serving because a lot of the saturated fat is concentrated in the skin. Another way to cut down on the usage of fat is while cooking. Let us see how one can cook food with

a lesser amount of fats and retain the taste:

• Use as little butter and oil as possible
• Always use a non-stick pan for sauteeing
• Spoon off all the fat after tossing meats in the pan.
• Trim off all visible fat and skin before serving
• Supplement meats with grains, vegetables, and pulses.
• Keep salad dressings to a minimum and switch to yogurt-based dressings or low-fat dressings.
• Opt for skimmed milk instead of whole milk.
• Snack on fresh fruits, vegetables, and popcorn rather than on chips, peanuts, french fries, pakoras, and samosas
• De-fat your cheese. If you are using Cheddar or mozzarella cheese in a recipe, put it in the microwave for two minutes. Then drain off the fat that forms on top. You get the cheese flavor but cut the fat content dramatically.
• Maximize on other flavors if you are reducing your overall fat intake, or you will get bored and return to bad habits.
• Minimize your saturated fat intake and keep your total fat intake down to reasonable levels
• Do not become obsessive about monitoring fat intake. You need it - it's just that you don't need too much of it.
• Use low-fat milk instead of full-cream milk to prepare yogurt
• Marinate your fish and chicken well so that you use less fat while cooking them

Use these tips to create a healthy balanced meal for you and your family.