Create healthier ways to prepare our traditional dishes.
Our traditional dishes like oil-down, rice and peas, pelau; soups like green peas, pumpkin and callaloo, are deeply rooted in our culture. Then there are other foods that we have come to love and prepare often like macaroni pie. The 7th guideline encourages us to hold on to our tradition but make small changes to how we prepare some foods. A healthier way of cooking will reduce fat, salt, sugar and calories, while increasing fibre, vitamins and minerals.
Finding healthier ways to prepare traditional dishes means you will consume fewer preservatives, sodium, fat and sugar and you’ll eat more local produce while flavouring foods with local seasonings and spices. To put this guideline into practice:
- Add more vegetables to oil-down, soups and stews
- When making macaroni pie, try adding less butter, use a skimmed milk to reduce the fat and add some veggies like spinach, broccoli bell peppers or grated carrots
- Trim off all visible fat from meat before cooking
- When making oil-down: a) use turmeric (locally called saffron) instead of curry, b) Add less coconut milk to reduce the fat content, c) soak salt meat in water the day before cooking, boil and throw away the water to remove most of the salt
- Cut the sugar in stewed peas and replace with a naturally sweet vegetable like pumpkin.
- Use healthier cooking methods like baking, boiling, grilling, roasting or stir-fry instead of cooking foods in fat
Grenada Food and Nutrition Council
