March is National Nutrition Month and it’s a smart time to explore ways that seniors can eat healthier and improve their nutrition. Seniors that are overweight may find it difficult to lose weight, especially if they have medical conditions that make exercise difficult. But with some minor substitutions to their diet, many seniors can improve the quality of the nutrition that they are getting and cut calories at the same time. One essential part of good nutrition for seniors is eating healthy, which means cooking meals from scratch using healthy ingredients. An elder care provider can help seniors who struggle with cooking because of medical issues make healthy meals.
Together an elder care provider and your senior loved one can make healthy meals making these easy substitutions:
Cauliflower For Potatoes
Potatoes by themselves are fairly nutritious. The trouble is that a plain baked potato isn’t all that tempting to eat. That’s why people make French fries or hash browns or load baked potatoes with all sorts of toppings. But substituting cauliflower for potatoes can make any dish much healthier without sacrificing the taste. Cauliflower can be mashed, or made crisp by baking or putting it in an air fryer. Cauliflower has very few calories and a lower glycemic index than potatoes. It also has fewer carbs. Chances are most seniors won’t even notice the slight taste difference but they will notice the healthy impact of this substitution.
Brown Rice Instead Of White Rice
White rice, like white bread, has had a lot of the nutrients removed from it. Brown rice has fiber and other essential nutrients that seniors really need so using brown rice for meals instead of white rice is an easy but healthy substitution. Brown rice is available in both instant and regular so your senior loved one can make instant brown rice easily on the stove or cook medium grain brown rice in a slow cooker or rice cooker.
Ground Turkey Instead Of Ground Beef
Seniors should always try to stick with lean meats as a rule and only have meats like beef or pork as a special treat once and awhile. But there are a lot of easy one pot meals that are made with ground beef. Well, seniors can substitute ground turkey for ground beef so that they can enjoy a delicious and easy to cook one pot meal in a healthy way. Ground turkey has fewer calories and significantly less fat than ground beef. And ground turkey is much better for heart health than ground beef.
Replace Mayo With Hummus
Mayonnaise is a rich and delicious condiment for sandwiches and burgers and it’s also in dips. But mayonnaise is extremely high in calories and fat. Seniors can use hummus, which is a spread made from ground chickpeas, instead of mayo on their sandwiches or as a dip. Hummus has a fraction of the calories that mayonnaise has and hummus is a good source of protein and fiber.