Healthy Food Choices: Desserts

Saving room for dessert is a must for adding any treat to the end of a healthy meal. Learn some tips for buying dessert foods in this healthy shopping video.

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Many healthy desserts
Mousse & sorbets
Angel food cake is light
Healthy cookies
Watch serving size & portions

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Michelle Cooper has been a registered dietician for more than 10 years. She currently works for the state of North Carolina for the New Hanover County School District in the Child Nutrition Department as the supervising registered dietician on staff. She specializes in child nutrition, child fitness and overall child health. She enjoys her job because it allows her to be a pivotal piece of child development.

MICHELLE COOPER: Next, we're going to talk about desserts. Yes, you can have your cake and eat it too. There are a lot of light or nutritional alternatives to a lot of the desserts that we commonly use or eat. First of all, angel fruit cake is light and fluffy, and if you top that with whip cream and fresh strawberries, it's a great summertime dessert to have at home. Another would be mousse. Another, low fat or sugar free puddings. More desserts: sorbet, sherberts, non-fat frozen yogurts. Anything that has air incorporated into it displaces the calories from fat. So when you have a whipped topping, it's been whipped with air, some of those calories have been displaced. Also, when you have mousse, which is whipped, some of those calories have been displaced. So, also you can get a lower-fat version of some of the cookies that are commonly on the market today. You can get not only low fat but you can get healthy as well. You can get low-fat oatmeal, low-fat peanut butter. Now that chocolate has been okayed, it's all right to have chocolate. You just want to watch the serving sizes and the amount of calories that's in a portion. So next time you have a craving for something sweet, go ahead and have some dessert. Just make sure, number one, try to choose something that's light or lower in calories like angel fruit cake or something that has had air incorporated into it to splice the calories like a mousse or the whipped topping. And lastly, look for versions of your favorite cookies that are low fat, reduced fat or sugar free.

Healthy Food Choices: Desserts Video

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