You’re in the right place if you’re trying to emulate a healthier lifestyle in this new season. Getting healthier swaps for your normally greasy food, often filled with refined sugar, can help you feel a lot better, boost your energy and support your mental health.
You may also be looking for healthy food swaps after discovering you have certain allergies and intolerances, which we all understand. Food allergies and intolerances can ensure that some food varieties are no longer in your diet.
Swapping those foods for healthier varieties is the best way to maintain their nutritional value while staying symptom-free. However, making a healthy lifestyle change can be difficult because you’re breaking out of a routine you’ve been following for far too long.
What is a health swap?
A healthy food swap means swapping foods with lots of salt, fat, calories, and sugar for healthier people. Often, this means replacing the unhealthy stuff with more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.
Doing a health swap can not only help you in your weight loss journey, but it can also prevent you from being at risk of developing chronic illnesses like cardiovascular diseases, some cancers, or type 2 diabetes.
A health swap is quite simple because you don’t have to stop eating what you’ve been eating but swap it for something healthy. Because you’ll be swapping instead of removing it from the diet without replacing it, it gets easier.
These little healthy food swaps may seem small initially; however, they’ll eventually add up, making your entire lifestyle healthier and your body.
What are some healthy, cheap food swaps?
You can choose different food swaps depending on what you’d like to achieve or the health goal you have in mind.
Healthy food swaps for diabetes
- Whole grains: These are rich in nutrients and fibre. Due to the high levels of fibre, it slows down how quickly your meal is digested, which is good for blood sugar as your blood sugar levels remain stable after eating. If you find it hard to see where whole grains fit in your meals, try swapping white flour in whole grain or whole wheat flour recipes.
For side dishes, use wild or brown rice. In your casseroles or fruit puddings, top them up with oats. Instead of using white grain rolls, use whole grain varieties. You can’t miss whole grains as they contain the name “whole grains” in the packaging. The most common whole grains include oats, millet, popcorn, buckwheat, brown and white rice, and barley.
- Healthy fats: Fats add flavour to food and texture and help absorb certain vitamins into the bloodstream. Because we need fats in our meals, it is best to choose healthy fat sources. These include olives, avocados, nuts, fish, seeds, canola, peanut, and olive oil.
- More protein, especially plant-based protein: Upon consuming proteins, it slows down digestion like fibre does, preventing blood sugar spikes. Protein also fills you up longer because the slow digestion prevents you from snacking frequently. You can even have nuts, seeds, and yoghurt for snacks instead of other snacks loaded with carbohydrates and sugar.
Even though animal-based protein is good for you, it’s important to note that it doesn’t contain any fibre, whereas plant proteins are loaded with fibre. You can add more plant protein to your salads and casseroles with nuts and seeds. Make lentils or beans stew instead of meat stew.
- Vegetables and fruits: These are full of minerals and vitamins. The fibre in fruits and vegetables is also advisable for those with type 2 diabetes to choose less starchy vegetables. These include cauliflower, broccoli, green leafy vegetables, green beans, and peppers. Even though fruit can raise blood sugar, considering it contains carbohydrates, the fibre ensures that it won’t tamper with it.
You can choose fruits with more fibre than sugar, like berries. Different ways to consume more vegetables and fruits include laying out a veggie and fruit tray as appetizers, adding greens to your stews and soups, or adding cauliflower to your steamed potatoes.
- Use less salt: Salt adds immense flavour to foods, and eating more can risk your heart health. If you want to reduce your salt consumption, swap another shake of salt with lemon juice or zest, dry herbs and spices, minced garlic, finely chopped onions, and salt-free spice blends. You should also opt for fresh vegetables rather than canned ones containing sodium. If using canned, rinse the vegetables.
Healthy food swaps for low cholesterol
- Fish: For lower cholesterol, you need to swap red meat for fish, especially fatty fish. Fish has lots of omega-3 fatty acids and keeps you from a high risk of stroke or heart disease.
- Salad toppings: Even though the greens in our salads are good for the body, we end up topping them off with croutons which aren’t so good for the body’s cholesterol. However, if you top off your salads with nuts and seeds, you boost your body’s health by introducing healthy fats. Tree nuts are also known to lower blood cholesterol {1}.
- Swap milk chocolate for dark chocolate: If you love chocolate and it’s a staple snack, check on the type of chocolate you’ve been consuming. Milk chocolate contains saturated fats, which can raise cholesterol levels. Dark chocolate, on the other hand, contains lots of flavonoids that protect your heart.
- Use hummus for dips: Even if you’ve already started skipping potato crisps for vegetables as snacks, you must be careful about your dip. Even when you have carrots and celery for snacks, dipping them in something filled with saturated fats isn’t good for your health. However, hummus made with olive oil and chickpeas can do wonders for you by making your healthy snacks healthier.
Chickpeas also contain sitosterol, which can help lower blood sugar by interfering with your body’s ability to absorb cholesterol. You can buy hummus or make your own at home. Avoid brands with many additives, sodium, or saturated fats when purchasing hummus.
- Roast instead of frying: Check all your deep frying recipes, and alternate them for roasting. Deep-fried food is doused in lots of saturated fats. But you can make your french fries healthier by baking them with olive oil and spices; you may even like this version better than the deep-fried ones.
Our Allergy & Intolerance Test
Healthy food swaps for food allergy and intolerance
If you have food allergies or intolerances, avoiding the culprit food causing your symptoms is best. You can do so by taking an Allergy and Intolerance Test, which helps you know which foods not to feed your body, and then you can take control of your diet and health. Here are common food allergies and intolerances with their healthy swaps.
- Eggs: If you need eggs in your baking recipes, you can create a healthy substitute using ground flax seed and water. Due to flax seeds, you’ll also be dousing yourself with more nutrients.
If you need scrambled eggs or an omelette, choose egg substitutes from plant-based options like mung beans. Not only are these good for you, but they are also healthier because they’re plant-based and contain proteins and some fibre.
- Wheat: If you have a problem with gluten or wheat itself, you can substitute wheat flour for anything labelled “gluten-free.” If it’s “gluten-free,” then it doesn’t contain wheat. Since soy sauce contains wheat, you can use coconut aminos or tamari sauce as an alternative.
- Milk: A plant-based milk option will always come in handy whether you have lactose intolerance or milk allergy. For protein-rich milk, take soy or pea milk. Whichever plant milk you consume, ensure it’s fortified with vitamin D and calcium supporting bone health, like cow’s milk.
- Seed and nut butter: If you’re avoiding butter made from seeds, you can go for chickpea or peas butter in grocery stores. These options are even healthier for you since they’re made from grains.
- Fish and shellfish: These days, you can easily find plant-based seafood in grocery stores which contain pea and soy proteins. These will be good for you and not inflict any allergy or intolerance symptoms if you’re avoiding seafood.
Final thoughts
Living a healthier lifestyle can be hard, especially if you remove many foods from your diet. However, if you find healthier options, swap what you already regularly consume for something healthier.
These healthy swaps will help you manage healthier lifestyles and even allergies and intolerances if you suffer from any. Taking an Allergy and Intolerance Test is the best way to know your food allergies and intolerances.
References
- Altamimi, M., Zidan, S., & Badrasawi, M. (2020). Effect of tree nuts consumption on serum lipid profile in hyperlipidemic individuals: a systematic review. Nutrition and metabolic insights, 13, 1178638820926521.
