Skip the Butter and Oil

We were recently looking for some inspiration for a meal that we were looking to make, and as part of that we went in search of healthy meals online. After visiting several of the big and popular websites, we decided to change what we were searching for. If you do a search for something like “Healthy meals” or “Easy healthy recipes” then you are going to get back a list of recipes that are generally not healthy, and a lot of times not easy to make.

The recipes that you will find have awesome pictures, and they look really good. There is no doubt that they probably are delicious as well. Many of the recipes included sugar, butter, and oil in fairly large amounts. While having a limited amount of these items is sometimes necessary, they should be extremely limited for the recipe to be healthy. Perhaps if compared to a store bought alternative or something at a restaurant, then they are healthy, but otherwise they are far from truly being healthy.

One of the easiest ways to undercalculate how many calories is in something is by using a bunch of butter and oil. Usually foods that taste the best are loaded with these high calorie items. Butter and oil aren’t necessarily bad, they’re just bad when you use too much and when you’re trying to decrease the number of calories that you eat. 

1 tablespoon of butter is 100 calories. Most recipes are looking for 2 to 8 tablespoons of butter. That is a lot of extra calories that are simply hidden in the food (they taste great though). It’s going to be extremely hard to eat the number of calories you should be in a day when you’re eating a few hundred calories of that in butter and oil. Add on to the fact that butter and oil make things taste better, so you’re going to want to eat even more of it than you should. It’s a never-ending spiral from there.

If you’re looking for a healthy recipe, look for recipes that skip the butter and oil. Spraying your pan with cooking spray is totally fine. Melting 4 tablespoons of butter in the bottom of the pan, not so much. There are plenty of other alternatives to making food taste good without loading it up with butter and oil. It may take you some time to get used to eating it without those items, but you’ll also be able to know that you’re not eating a bunch of hidden calories in your food.

Add more spices to your food, especially your meat. Spices can help to bring out the real taste of a food and not hide it under a butter or oil flavor. Adding spices to meat a couple of hours before cooking it will often help to bring a really delicious flavor to it that you couldn’t get otherwise. Spices are by far the simplest way to make your foods taste good without adding a bunch of other calories.

Going on a search for other butter alternatives is going to lead you to not a lot of options. There simply aren’t a lot out there. Most of those items will also be high in calories as well. Having some fat in your diet is certainly a good thing (which butter has), but butter is simply too hidden in food for it to be worth those calories generally. You’re better off eating avocado or nuts if you need fat in your diet - those will at least fill you up a little bit more than butter in another dish.

As mentioned above, use cooking spray when you need. You don’t have to burn everything to your pan when cooking. Don’t go overboard though, and simply use enough so you don’t have a huge mess to clean up. Use basic spices and other flavorings to keep foods interesting and exciting without all of the extra calories.

Eating healthy should lead to eating simple and basic foods. Cut the butter and oil as much as possible to help you meet your caloric goals.