special diet different from family- how to make it work?

[Anonymous]

I am faced with having to adopt a very low fat diet (for high cholesterol) and possible low salt as well (blood pressure) and possibly low-carb for impaired glucose tolerance. I already work out 3 hours per week and am not medically overweight so while I can get some benefit from additional exercise, it won't be enough.

I have cooked this way for a visiting parent with heart problems and the food is unpalatable. While I am sure I can force it down I can't serve it to my family! I am also not excited about cooking good food that I can't eat. So what do you do? Do you eat separately? Serve them frozen food? Cook two different meals but eat together? Outsource the special meals to a personal chef who might be able to make them taste okay?

[Anonymous]

If you go to the bookstore or search online there are hundreds of recipes that are yummy for everyone that will fit your needs. t might make more sense to just cook one meal. Good luck and hope your new diet helps!

[Anonymous]

I have been on low fat and very low fat diets many times. I have to agree with the previous poster; there are many recipes that are incredibly delicious and wonderful to eat. If you can't go cold turkey, ease your way into it. Ditto the salt.

[Anonymous]

spices are wonderful, especially fresh ones, basil, garlic, oregano can make dishes taste awesome that are used with no salt and lean meats. Good luck. You can do it and make the food taste great too.

[Anonymous]

There is no need for the food to be unpalatable. I say this as a vegetarian for many years (who ate a low-saturated fat and low-salt diet) and a person who does almost all the cooking for our household where my husband is on a similar diet for his cholesterol. We follow the TLC guidelines from the American Heart Association and do fine. I strongly recommend getting their free booklet and looking at the guidelines; my husband eats no cheese, butter, beef, pork, or shellfish, and we eat poultry or salmon in small portions on other nights. For lunch he eats peanut butter sandwiches (plain peanut butter, nothing added -- try Arrowhead Mills brand for this) and pretzels plus sliced veggies and/or fruit. For breakfast, cereal with skim milk.

The key is not trying to make versions of meaty cheesy starchy dishes you used to love. Instead, use whole grains, fresh vegetables and legumes to make new meals. Whole wheat flour is great for making muffins (the Moosewood recipe that's in Moosewood Cooks At Home is excellent, and still delicious with egg beaters and whole wheat flour; rely on canola oil in your baking and olive oil in your cooking, and you'll be doing great), and whole wheat pasta is good as long as you cook it properly and have a hearty flavorful sauce. The cookbook Pasta y Verdura is all pasta and vegetable dishes, Madhur Jaffrey's cookbook has lots of delicious Asian recipes, and the cookbook Simply In Season has 300+ healthy vegetable-based (mostly) recipes. Those are just a few of my favorites that I rely on a lot.

[Anonymous]

PP here: I also wanted to say that it's probably best to try to all eat the same thing. This may mean finding ways to combine things, like potatoes or vegetables that they have with butter and you have with olive oil, or grilled meat with a sauce on the side that you don't have.

Really, though, you are going to need to develop a love of vegetables to make this work (speaking from experience: if my husband hadn't had 14 years with me to warm up to basically vegetarian eating before going on this plan, it would have been a much harder adjustment).