18 Food Replacement Hacks that Make Healthy Eating Easy
Food Replacement Hacks for Better Health
Eating healthfully at every single meal can be a challenge, but simply replacing some of your usual pantry staples with healthier options can significantly impact your well-being!
When we’re hungry, we tend to reach for what’s on hand. By keeping healthy food swaps around, we set ourselves up for nutritional success.
This doesn't mean you need to sacrifice flavor. Some of these healthy swaps are even more delicious and flavorful than what they’ve replaced!
It also doesn’t mean you need to eliminate certain foods from your diet altogether. The point is to balance your diet and reach for nutritious options more often, building better habits that lead to a healthier you along the way.
Here are 18 food replacement hacks that make healthy eating easy.
1. Replace White Rice with Quinoa
White rice isn’t necessarily bad for you, but it is higher in calories and carbs than quinoa, plus quinoa provides an extra boost of fiber, protein, and minerals like iron and zinc.1
Despite its grain-like qualities, quinoa is actually a seed from a plant known as goosefoot, which is in the same family as spinach and beets.1
Quinoa is a truly delicious and nutritious superfood substitute for rice and works well in many recipes. Quinoa offers 8 g of protein per cooked 8 oz cup. It’s high in fiber, with 5 g of fiber per cup, and it’s a source of iron, magnesium, phosphorus, manganese, and zinc.1
Give it a try in this delicious recipe for Quinoa Meatballs, or Slow Cooker Vegetarian Quinoa Soup.
2. Replace Vegetable Oil or Butter with Coconut Oil
Coconut oil contains medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs) which metabolize quickly for fast energy.2 It’s great for sautéing veggies and cooking at high temperatures.
You can also spread it on toast instead of butter, use it to pop popcorn, add it to smoothies, and try it in keto coffee recipes.
As with any fat or oil, keep an eye on your total calorie intake, but if you’re simply replacing your usual cooking oil with coconut oil, you shouldn’t notice a big difference in calorie content. Most oils and fats have between 100-140 calories per tablespoon.3
Discover more great uses for coconut oil in the post 50 Ways to Use Coconut Oil to Better Your Life, and try it in our 100% Organic Extra Virgin Coconut Oil.
3. Replace Sour Cream with Greek Yogurt
We aren’t kidding! Surprisingly, you probably won't be able to tell that you just put Greek yogurt on your taco instead of sour cream.
Just make sure you get the plain kind instead of flavored. You can even jazz it up with some lemon and hot sauce.
What’s the benefit? Greek yogurt is high in protein and even contains probiotics, which support healthy digestion and immune health.4
4. Replace Potato Chips with Popcorn
A 28 g serving of classic potato chips contains 160 calories, 10 g of fat, and 15 g of carbohydrates.12 And that's just for a standard 1 oz bag size. How many people actually count their chips out of a larger bag?
You could eat 4.5 cups of air-popped popcorn and still consume fewer calories than in a single serving of chips.
Air-popped popcorn contains only 31 calories per cup! Plus, you get more fiber and protein from popcorn, and you can customize the flavor with your own seasoning.
5. Replace Croutons with Almonds
Who doesn’t love a little crunch in their salad? Croutons definitely give us that, but not much else.
Almonds, however, pack in the nutrition with 13 vitamins and minerals including potassium, magnesium, calcium, and vitamin E, plus fiber and protein!
So, the next time you want to add a little crunch to your salad, make it count! Add an ounce of delicious almonds instead of stale bread.
You can flavor your almonds by tossing them in your favorite seasonings before adding them to your salad.
6. Replace Flour with Coconut Flour
Even if you aren’t going gluten-free, wheat flour alternatives have a lot to offer, and coconut flour is one of our favorite flour alternatives. It’s made from dried and finely ground coconut meat.
Coconut flour has fewer carbs than other nut flours and 11 times as much fiber as wheat flour, plus more protein.13 Its light, airy texture makes it great for baking and especially good for pastries.
7. Replace Sugar with Stevia
Stevia isn’t just another artificial sweetener. It’s a plant!
Stevia has been used to make beverages sweeter since the 16th century and its leaves were even made into a tea.5
Stevia is 200 to 300 times sweeter than regular sugar, so a little goes a long way, and it’s practically calorie-free.5
Use it to sweeten your coffee, tea, oatmeal, or anything else you’d normally sweeten with granulated sugar. Just be careful with how much you add until you get used to the sweetness level. It doesn’t take much!
The perfect herbal alternative to sugar, you can even find it in liquid form!
8. Replace Table Salt with Himalayan Salt
Pink Himalayan salt is rock salt mined near the Himalayas from an ancient seabed.6
Like table salt, pink Himalayan salt primarily consists of sodium chloride, but it also contains small amounts of 84 additional trace elements and minerals.
Himalayan salt has larger crystals and contains less sodium per teaspoon than table salt, and it has a saltier taste, so you'll probably need less of it than regular salt.6
Himalayan salt also doesn’t undergo the heavy processing that most standard table salts endure.6
Give Himalayan crystal salt a try and see for yourself. You’ll probably never want to go back to regular salt again!
9. Replace Breadcrumbs with Chia Seeds
Chia seeds make an excellent swap for breadcrumbs in recipes like meatballs or meatloaf that need a little help sticking together. These superfood seeds can absorb up to 27 times their weight in water!7
You can also use them as breading, either whole or ground, with or without mixing them with other ingredients.
We love mixing chia seeds with shredded coconut or chopped nuts to use as a breading for oven-baked chicken or fish.
Chia seeds are packed with omega-3 fatty acids, antioxidants, fiber, iron, and calcium, and they even contain protein.7
And breading isn’t the only way to use them: chia seeds make a great mix-in for smoothies too!
Chia seeds are available in both black and white variations, but there are no nutritional differences between the two. Feel free to mix them together to add a little flair to your recipes.
10. Replace Chocolate Chips with Cocoa Nibs
Replace your processed, sugary chocolate chips with cocoa nibs (chocolate in its purest form) for a healthier alternative. The deep flavor of cocoa nibs adds complexity and irresistible chocolate flavor to your baked goods, trail mixes, smoothies, and more. You can also snack on them straight out of the bag!
Cocoa nibs aren’t just a delicious treat; they’re nutritional powerhouses too! They’re a source of antioxidants, fiber, iron, and magnesium, and they may even boost your mood and enhance cognitive performance!8
11. Replace Iceberg with Romaine
Leafy salad greens are all low in calories, but some of them have more to offer when it comes to nutrition. Romaine beats out iceberg in the nutritional battle every time.
Romaine lettuce is rich in carotenoid vitamin A, packing in 11 times more than iceberg.9 Romaine is also a better source of vitamin K, and contains more than five times the amount of vision-supporting antioxidants lutein and zeaxanthin than iceberg.9
12. Replace Ranch Dressing with Olive Oil + Vinegar
Have you read the ingredients list on the back of a bottle of ranch dressing? Most types of ranch dressing contain more than 20 ingredients and preservatives, many of which most of us can’t even pronounce.
It gets even more complicated with low fat and fat-free options that contain artificial sweeteners.
Why not keep it simple, healthier, and flavorful with olive oil and balsamic vinegar salad dressing instead? You can also add fresh herbs like garlic and parsley for a flavor boost.
13. Replace Mayo with Mustard
This food replacement hack doesn’t work in every recipe, but mayo is notoriously high in fat and calories. When you can make another condiment choice, it’s a good idea to do so.
Mustard is super low in calories and offers tons of flavor, and there are plenty of delicious options to try, from organic dijon mustard to honey & dill flavored mustard and more!
14. Swap Processed Peanut Butter with Unprocessed Almond Butter
Although they are similar in calorie count, processed peanut butter contains hydrogenated vegetable oils and added sugars.
Even when you consider all natural, unprocessed peanut butter, almond butter still wins on the nutritional front.
Swap out this old pantry staple for almond butter and get more vitamins and minerals, less saturated fat, more fiber, and less sugar per serving.
15. Replace Milk with Almond Milk
Plant-based milks are trending, and there’s no shortage of options, from oat milk to rice milk, cashew milk and beyond.
But the deliciously mild, nutty flavor and creamy texture of almond milk
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