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Diet Cooking Tips – Cooking For Weight Loss

Posted on September 24th, 2008. Filed under: Health.
by Peter Hilford

Are you searching for good diet cooking tips, then you’re reading the right article. How we prepare our food is pretty much as significant as the food themselves. Cooking for a particular diet may be done in many diverse ways; however, some cooking methods are more suited to diets than others. Let’s take a quick look at the more accepted styles of cooking food, as well as their level of helpfulness for those who are trying to slim down. A score of 1-10 for each will be given.

Tip #1: Baking

Baking is probably the best way of diet cooking, as the method keeps a great deal of the original food’s nutrients without adding too many calorie-rich elements. There are numerous scrumptious chicken, turkey, fish and potato dishes that can be cooked by baking. When baking for a diet, ensure that you wrap up the food in tin foil, or place it in a sealed container, to keep moisture loss at a minimum. Baking has a tendency to dry the food through evaporation. Be careful and make certain the marinades and sauces or condiments aren’t laden with too much calories, Tran’s fats or sugar. These are empty calories that will only aggravate your weight problem. Diet cooking rating: 10/10

Tip #2: Broiling

In preparing certain meat and fish dishes, broiling is often better for diet cooking than baking – the results are often also tastier. But like baking, there’s a temptation to use fattening marinades and sauces – not good for diet cooking! So the same tip goes here: Use marinades that don’t contain any objectionable ingredients (examples include butter and oil), and use plain water as a base when making sauces. Diet cooking score: 9/10

Diet Cooking Tip #3: Microwaving

Microwaving, in spite of being unfairly belittled as a cooking technique, is in fact one of the healthier methods of cooking for diets. Unlike boiling, which drains food (especially vegetables) of some minerals, microwaving usually needs no oil or water as a cooking base. In this way it leaves all the nutrients in the food intact. There are a lot of useful tools out there for microwave cooking. You can find methods for poaching eggs and steaming vegetables, which are very helpful for diet cooking. You can also find air-popped microwavable popcorn that is good for snacking, too. Diet cooking score: 8/10

Tip #4: Grilling

Yes, grilling. Grilling is a great outdoor activity, and a luxury for dieters who can afford it. Grilling for a diet means you’ll need to look for marinades that aren’t fattening, as in broiling. If you’re okay with having your grilled food plain, then that’s even better – no extra empty calories to worry about. Just remember to wrap the food in tin foil while grilling to keep it juicy and moist. Diet cooking score: 7/10.

Cooking Tip #5: Boiling

Boiling is a superb method to cook vegetables, but as stated earlier, boiling can strip away some of the nutrients. To keep the nutrients locked in, try to find vegetables that are packaged in small ready to cook bags. When packaged like this the vegetables can be cooked without having to get into contact with the boiling water. Diet cooking score: 7/10

Tip #6: Frying

We saved this dead last, because it’s pretty much the climax of this article. Frying does very poorly as a diet cooking method, because it involves a lot of oil and seasonings. If you really have to prepare fried food, make sure you strain as much oil as you can – every drop equals a few calories. But remember, you don’t need to swear off fried foods completely – if you manage to balance your intake with healthier stuff, then indulging once in a while is okay. Diet cooking score: 3/10

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