Whether they’re from a Mexican restaurant, a fast-food joint or made at home, tacos can be loaded with fat and calories.
Greasy cuts of meat and many of the classic fixings, like cheese, sour cream and guacamole, are high in fat. But there are ways to make your tacos healthy and tasty also, and below are some ideas on how to do that:
1. Replace meat with tuna
Switch it up with an eye to making a healthy taco, starting with the protein. Instead of using the standard ground beef, try fish. Tuna is a really good choice. Fresh tuna is great grilled, baked or steamed. But canned tuna contains different mercury levels. High mercury in tuna can have damaging effects on our health. Choose tuna with the lowest percentage of mercury. You can simply drain the fish and flake it up to use in your taco.
2. Mix in different vegetables
Meat is wonderful, as we all know, and you do need a certain amount of protein in any healthy diet, but people actually eat way more meat than they really need. But you only need a serving of meat that is about the size of your fist. The rest of the foods you should eat are vegetables. So, reduce the amount of ground beef and add more veggies. Set out bowls of fresh vegetables like shredded lettuce, chopped tomatoes, onions, and jalapeños. They will add flavor and nutrition to your tacos.
3. Make healthier taco shell
Make healthy, easy and crispy shells that contain no fat, sodium, preservatives and they are much cheaper than the ones that you buy them in stores. The ingredients are really simple: an oven, corn tortillas, and maybe aluminum foil. Heat oven to 350 F. If you have widespread bars in your oven, lay a tortilla over the bars.
If you don’t, you can create a ‘bar’ of aluminum foil and place it on a cookie sheet. Drape the tortillas over the bar and place in the oven until shells are crisp on the outside (about 5-10 minutes). Once you have made your healthy crispy taco shells, fill them with tasty and healthy ingredients.
4. Avoid sour cream
Just like mayonnaise, sour cream can be tasty and nutritious, or a toxic white glop, depending on what goes into it. Because almost 100 % of sour creams that you can buy are toxic, the best is to not consume it. So avoid the sour cream and replace it with beans, which are filled with fiber and good protein. Stick with plain beans and avoid refried beans that have added fat.
5. Choose the right cheese
What is a taco without cheese? For fewer calories, instead of watching the amount you use, think about changing the type of cheese you use. For example, mozzarella tastes really good on tacos and has only half the calories as hard cheeses such as cheddar or Monterey Jack.
6. Use the right sauce
Without a good taco sauce, tacos would be bland and boring. Taco sauce is so delicious, but like many foods from the store, it is most often loaded with sugar, fat, and other unhealthy ingredients. You should choose hot sauces without a lot of calories and no fat. Make sure that you read all the ingredients and make sure nothing sugary or processed was added. You can use your own combination of spices and hot sauces to make delicious tacos and you won’t even notice some of the less healthy ingredients you left out.