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Comforting … and Healthy, too! Try these simple methods to modify your favorite guilty pleasures to make them both calming and delicious 
It’s no wonder we crave classic comfort foods like meatloaf, mashed potatoes and fudge brownies. They stick to our ribs and remind of us of grandma’s cooking. Research shows that fatty and sugary foods can even trigger a release of “feel good” chemicals in the brain, producing a temporary sense of wellbeing. But routinely turning to such foods for comfort results in the opposite — our waistbands pinch our bellies, and we feel guilty for overindulging. Fortunately, there are ways of modifying your favorite recipes so they’re just as comforting but contain fewer calories. “In place of whole milk or cream, use canned evaporated nonfat milk,” says Jo Ann Carson, a registered dietician and professor of clinical nutrition, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas. “This works when making a cream sauce, gravy, macaroni and cheese, and mashed potatoes.” Other popular substitutes for milk and butter in mashed potatoes are roasted garlic for flavor and chicken stock for moisture, she adds. “Processed American cheese like Velveeta can be found in a version made with 2 percent milk. Melted with a little evaporated nonfat milk, you get a great lower-fat cheese sauce for macaroni and cheese,” Carson says. However, Los Angeles chef Devin Alexander, author of “The Biggest Loser Cookbook” (Rodale Books, 2006), says people tend to blow their healthy eating plans because simple substitutes rarely result in recipes as tasty as the originals. “You can’t take your grandmother’s meatloaf recipe that’s been in the family for 50 years and replace the beef with ground turkey and expect it to taste as good,” she says. “The texture will be off because there’s a huge moisture difference between beef and turkey.” Likewise, low-fat recipes for baked goods often call for applesauce in place of oil, but in brownies, for example, the taste of applesauce overwhelms, so add-ins such as cocoa powder (see recipe) are called for to restore the rich, chocolate flavor people crave. |
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