Tweaking recipes to make them healthier

So Flora Pro.activ rang me last week and asked if I’d like to join in their Christmas recipe challenge. I think the word “challenge” was only added to spur on those who might not otherwise take part by prodding their competitive nature. It’s not really a challenge at all. They sent me the ingredients and a recipe and I cooked it.

The purpose I think was to show that you can tweak a traditional recipe to improve its nutritional content: in this case by reducing the saturated fat content and increasing it’s poly- and mono-unsaturates to give a healthier fat profile. I am all for this, especially with the ever growing evidence showing that the type of fat you eat rather than the amount of fat is more important to heart health.

In the past, a low-fat diet was often recommended for people at risk of heart disease but more and more studies are now showing that unsaturated fats are cardio protective, and cutting fat out of the diet and replacing those calories with carbohydrates can actually be detrimental to health. Of course, part of the reason behind this advice was the fact that fats have a lot of calories so if you need to lose weight (as many people at risk of heart disease do) cutting out high calorie foods is a good place start. But on the whole, the inclusion of “good” fats is a positive thing.

Margarine typically contains hydrogenated vegetable oil which is what makes an oil into a spread. This is a problem because it creates trans fats in the process, and trans fats are as bad as saturated fats. However Flora say their spread does not contain trans fats, as does Bertolli olive oil spread and Benecol, so switching from butter to any of these (not just Flora) will improve your dietary fat profile.

So in this instance they have taken a baked apple recipe, traditionally laden with butter (saturated fat) and switched it to Flora pro.activ (unsaturated fat). And it tasted lovely. Flora also asked me to include a link to their recipe challenge so if you’d like to have a go, follow this link http://www.flora.com/proactive/Healthy-recipes/ (remember that you can use any of the brands I’ve mentioned, it doesn’t have to be Flora).