You can make healthy diet substitutions with little effort, but they can have a great impact on your health. When making healthy substitutions, main goals include decreasing saturated fat, trans fat and cholesterol; increasing heart-healthy fats like monounsaturated and polyunsaturated; increasing fiber; and decreasing sodium. Too much saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol and sodium can increase risk for heart disease. Monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fat and fiber help decrease your risk for heart disease. Use healthy substitutions to decrease your overall heart disease risk and improve your health.
Breads and Grains
Contrary to popular belief, grains and breads are not unhealthy, but the type of grains you choose is important. When choosing grains, whole is best. Whole grains contain three parts, refined grains, like white bread and white rice, have only one part. The two extra parts in the whole grain contain fiber, healthy fats and essential vitamins and minerals. For a healthy substitution, replace refined grains with whole grains. Remove white bread, white rice, white crackers, white pasta and sugary cereals. Replace them with grains such as whole-wheat bread, brown rice, whole-grain crackers, whole-wheat pasta, whole-grain cereals, quinoa and couscous.
Fresh Vegetables
Vegetables are important for a healthy diet. But not all vegetables are created equal. Grocery stores offer fresh, frozen and canned vegetables. Fresh is the best. Fresh vegetables are the least processed and are unlikely to contain additives. Most frozen vegetables are frozen at their ripest point, with no added ingredients. When buying frozen vegetables, choose those with no added flavors, sauces or salt. Canned vegetables are packaged in preservatives and salt. The salt in the packing liquid is counterproductive to the benefits of the vegetable itself. For a healthy substitution, choose fresh vegetables first, frozen is the next best and avoid canned vegetables with additives and salt.
Yogurt
Yogurt is a high-protein dairy product. It contains calcium and probiotics and you can buy nonfat versions to reduce your saturated fat intake. Greek yogurt is typically thicker and creamier than regular yogurt and resembles sour cream. Make a healthy switch by replacing sour cream with nonfat plain Greek yogurt. This will help eliminate the high saturated fat and cholesterol content of sour cream while adding high-quality protein. Use it in recipes, as a topping or in salad dressing mixes.
Olive Oil
Olive oil is rich in monounsaturated fatty acids. This type of fat helps lower "bad," low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and increase "good." high-density lipoprotein cholesterol. Replace butter and margarine with olive oil when possible. Butter is mainly saturated fat and margarines tend to have trans fats. Mix olive oil with dry herbs for a flavored bread dip. It also works well during cooking. Remember, replacing olive oil for butter in baking recipes may change the texture of the baked good; in this case, use butter.
Low-Fat Dairy
Because dairy products come from animals, they naturally have high levels of saturated fat. The saturated fat also makes the dairy higher in calories. Whole milk and 2 percent reduced-fat milk contain 60 and 30 more calories respectively per serving than skim milk. If consuming three servings of dairy daily, switching to skim products can reduce daily calories from fat by 90 to 180.
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