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| Volume II |
January 31, 2004
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Fiberful Ideas Desiri Wightman, RD
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I believe that you can quickly gauge the quality of someone's diet by the amount of fiber they consume daily. Since fiber comes from grains, fruits, and vegetables, a diet rich in these is usually lower in high-sugar, high-fat, and highly processed foods.
If you'd like to take one step to improving your health this year, choose one of the ideas below. Once it becomes old-hat, then choose another idea, and so on. Taking baby steps to good health will help you convert the bad habits you've acquired over the years into healthful habits that will promote wellness for a lifetime! One more thing, be sure to drink plenty of water as you begin to incorporate fiber into your diet.
| Try this: |
Instead of this: |
Whole-wheat bread |
White bread |
Brown rice |
White rice |
Baked potato in the skin |
Mashed potatoes |
Baked unpeeled potato wedges |
French fries |
Unpeeled apple (or applesauce,
pie, crisp, cobbler made with
unpeeled apples |
Peeled apples |
Orange segments |
Orange juice |
Whole-grain cereals (hot or
ready-to-eat) |
Sweetened cereals |
Popcorn (lightly seasoned
with margarine or salt |
Potato chips |
Bean dip |
Sour cream dip |
Kidney beans or garbanzo
beans on salad |
Bacon bits on salad |
Fruit juice |
Soda pop |
Salad bar |
French fries |
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Sprinkle wheat germ on mixed dishes, cereal, baked fruit desserts, or make a crunchy ice cream topping out of it.
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Air pop your popcorn. Then spray it very lightly with a fine mist of water from a spray bottle. Sprinkle with Molly McButter, Butter Buds, or butter-flavored salt. (The butter-flavored sprinkles will adhere to the popcorn rather than falling to the bottom of the bowl.) Delicious!
- Combine your flour to include ½ white and ½ whole wheat and then use in all your recipes. Or, replace each cup of white flour with up to ¾ cup whole-wheat flour in recipes.
- Try whole-wheat breadsticks, wheat crackers (graham, wheat thins, triscuits) puffed grain cakes.
- Make whole-wheat pizza crust instead of white when making homemade pizza.
- Serve fruits and veggies for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks (grapes, raisins, dried fruit, fresh fruit, canned fruit, carrot sticks, celery with crunchy peanut butter, cooked veggies, veggies in omelets, soups, casseroles).
- Add oat or wheat bran to meat loaf, casseroles, hot or cold cereal, muffins, pancakes, bread, and cookies.
- Replace ¼ c. of any flour with bran.
- Use bran or bran cereals as a substitute for croutons, bread crumbs, and coatings for meat, poultry or fish.
- Add cooked dried peas and beans to soups, vegetable, casseroles, pasta, rice, and salads.
- Mash dried peas and beans to make a sandwich spread.
- Use nuts (ground, whole, seeds). Add to ice cream, yogurt, pudding, bread, muffins, pancakes, pie crusts, cookies, meat loaf, hamburgers, veggie dishes, salads, sandwiches, noodles, sauces.
* DVO welcomes your kitchen hints and cooking or nutrition questions! Email us and we'll post your hints and Q/A's in upcoming newsletters! *
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