Eating healthy should not mean using fancy ingredients we have never heard of before, or buying products that are labeled as “diet,” etc. But often eating healthier can be done with simple steps while preparing our meals! Sometimes just selecting some of the healthier options among traditional foods can make a big difference.
Iftar can be packed with calories, fats or sugars. The worst offenders can be appetizers, soups & desserts; here are some small steps that can make a big difference.
Appetizers:
1. It is common practice to break the fast with dates, this, in fact, is among the healthiest habits of Ramadan. Dates are rich in vitamins, minerals, fibers and natural sugars. Unfortunately, it is also traditional to indulge in fried items, such as cheese rolls, sambas and french fries – I am sure you can name many others. Let’s have a look at how we can still enjoy appetizers without the heavy burden of guilt!
2. Use more vegetables in your appetizers: stuffed grape leaves, hindbeh, baba ghannouj, green beans. If you don’t have much time just grab some frozen veggies, pop them in a pan, and then add a sprinkle of olive oil and an abundance of lemon juice
3. Include more salads in your appetizers such as fattoush, tabbouleh and why not experimenting more with exotic salads.
4. Use beans such as hummus tahini, fatteh, lentil kebbeh and dahl. beans are not only excellent plant sources of proteins and fibers, but they are also packed with vitamins & minerals
5. Bake cheese rolls and sambusa instead of frying them
6. Try preparing your own dough for pastries by mixing equal parts whole wheat flour and all-purpose white flour. That’s an excellent way to add fiber to you meal.
7. Use low fat cheeses in pastries such as mini pizzas or cheese rolls.
Soups:
8. Soups are also excellent dishes for a healthy iftar; in fact, soups help replenish many of the fluids we need on top of being good sources of nutrient. But there is a culprit among soups: Who of you cannot guess that soups are often full of creams and therefore may add lots of fat to our meals. Here some easy steps to keep them creamy and make them lighter.
9. Use nonfat or low fat milk instead of cream and thicken it with some corn starch, or replace the cream with low fat cream cheese and nonfat milk.
10. Add a small potato to your soup to thicken its texture
11. Mash vegetables as a puree and use them as the base of your soups
12. Why not make your soups richer in nutrients by adding some lentils, beans or oats.
Desserts
Desserts are definitely the guiltiest in this category. Most of them are, in fact, high in fats and sugars, but that does not mean we should stop indulging. Consuming smaller portions is definitely the key here, but small changes won’t hurt either.
13. Fruits can be excellent desserts: Whether fresh, frozen or dried, fruits are delicious. A traditional fruit salad is definitely a refreshing addition to iftar.
14. Choose desserts that are generally lighter such as milk puddings ( muhallabieh or rice pudding) and replace the full fat milk with low fat or skimmed milk
15. Cut down on the amount of sugar in recipes, most will just work with less sugar
16. Use plain low fat yogurt and flavor them with fruit puree to replace cream
17. Use low fat cheese in traditional recipes that opt for cheeses
18. Try baking traditional desserts instead of frying them
19. Try adding half the amount of syrup to your Arabic desserts