by Caroline St Clare

Created on: February 16, 2009   Last Updated: November 08, 2010

If healthy food tasted great we’d all be whippet thin and the word diet wouldn’t exist! Unfortunately, in the real world the healthiest foods seem to have the nastiest taste. In our attempts at disguising the worst offenders we smother them with sauces, fats and syrups. But all we’re doing is turning a healthy food into an unhealthy one. However, it is possible with a few simple ingredients, to turn healthy foods into gourmet delights while still retaining their ‘healthy’ status.

Many of the foods we love to hate often provide us with the greatest benefits and avoiding them could mean you're missing out on vital nutrients. Childhood food associations can have a lasting effect on our adult diets. If you were forced to finish food you disliked or perhaps given soggy, unappetizing vegetables, it's understandable not wanting anything more to do with such poor fare. Likewise, it's common to resist a food if it once made you ill after eating it. Fortunately, breaking these negative associations can be achieved by cooking food in a different way whereby the taste and smell of many foods can be altered, improved or even disguised completely.  

For instance, stir frying is a fantastic means of including a wide variety of healthy vegetables. The high cooking heat helps preserve essential vitamins as food is cooked very quickly. Start with basic ingredients such as chopped garlic, ginger and spring onions and add a range of evenly-sized chopped vegetables, including broccoli, carrots and cabbage. Experiment with adding different sauces like soy, oyster and chili, drizzle over a little sesame oil and you'll make even the most unappetizing food taste wonderful. And you may even be pleasantly surprised. So don't let your unhappy perception or experiences of a particular food put you off forever.

Blending healthy vegetables into a pasta sauce is a wonderful way of disguising them. They’ll be so well hidden, no one will have any idea they’re eating something they normally dislike. This also works well with fruit and soups and is particularly useful if you have children who won’t eat individual fruits. Just pop a selection of bananas, strawberries and blueberries into a blender and add some natural yogurt. It’ll go down a treat.

Instead of smothering a salad with mayonnaise or drowning vegetables in butter, switch to fat free dressings and low fat butter options. Have dressings on the side and learn to use them sparingly.

A delicious method of altering the taste of vegetables is roasting. Roasted vegetables develop a lovely sweet taste so you may find you prefer them this way. Try chopping a variety of vegetables into a similar size, say, red onion, chopped garlic, eggplant, zucchini, sweet potato, pumpkin, broccoli and cauliflower and placing them into a roasting tin. Rather than drowning them in oil, simply drizzle over a little olive oil and roast in a hot oven for 30 minutes.

Keeping a collection of herbs and spices in your store cupboard can enhance and add depth of flavor to boring or tasteless foods. Sweet chili sauce can liven up a salad and makes a great dip for vegetables. Garlic and ginger can transform a bland fish dish. Soy sauce and honey mixed with chili and garlic make a delicious marinade for meat and fish so there’s no need to add any unhealthy sauces.

Making healthy foods more palatable is easy, but making them palatable and healthy takes a little thought and practice. Sometimes it just means getting rid of old habits and learning new ones. Don’t be afraid to experiment or try something you haven't eaten for a long while. It’s well worth it if it means you can actually enjoy eating healthy food.

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