Cooking 101: Healthy Recipe Substitutions

Probably the most common type of question I get in my email and comments involves asking for healthy recipe substitutions.

While I do enjoy eating healthy, I’ll be the first to admit that several of my recipes aren’t the healthiest they can be. What can I say? I like my butter and bacon.

That being said, healthy eating is a great idea in theory!. So, I figured it’d be helpful to share what I have found to be great, easy-to-find and consistently tasty ingredient substitutions.

Feel free to use this list if you’re looking to lower the calories in a particular recipe or even if you just might not have something in your pantry.

This list is by no means all-inclusive, but it shares some of my most common healthy recipe substitutions.

And, of course, please feel free to contact me if you have a specific question or ingredient not found on this list.

I’m always happy to help!

Ingredient Called For In Recipe:	Healthy Recipe Substitution(s):
Bread	Whole-grain bread
Butter, margarine, shortening or oil (in baked goods like breads and muffins)	Applesauce or mashed bananas for half of the called-for butter, shortening or oil; olive oil
Cream	Fat-free half-and-half, whole to low-fat milk
Eggs	2 egg whites
Flour, all-purpose	Whole-wheat flour
Fruit canned in heavy syrup	Fruit canned in its own juices or in water, fresh fruit
Ground beef or chuck	Extra-lean or lean ground beef, chicken or turkey breast
Lettuce, iceberg	Arugula, spinach, romaine or mixed baby greens
Mayonnaise	Reduced-fat mayonnaise
Milk, whole	Reduced-fat or fat-free milk
Pasta	Whole-wheat pasta, zucchini noodles
Peanut Butter (Regular)	Natural Peanut Butter
Rice, white	Brown rice, wild rice, quinoa or pearl barley
Salad dressing	Balsamic vinaigrette
Seasoning salt (garlic salt)	Garlic powder, fresh herbs or fresh garlic with a small amount of kosher or sea salt
Sour cream	Fat-free or low-fat sour cream, plain fat-free or low-fat yogurt
Soy sauce	Low-sodium soy sauce
Sugar	Usually, you can reduce the amount of sugar by one half and intensify the sweetness by adding vanilla, ground nutmeg or ground cinnamon
Tortillas	Lettuce leaves

There you go! Feel free to add your favorite (healthy) food substitutions in the comments!