Winter breakfast

Put cacao nibs on your porridge instead of honey
Oats are a fantastic source of soluble fibre, which increases the feeling of fullness. A bowl of porridge made with half a cup of oats (4g fibre) and semi-skimmed milk contains about 115 calories. Pouring on a tablespoon of honey, however, will add 64 calories and 17g sugar, 35 per cent of NHS guidelines for daily added sugar.

“Honey is less processed than refined sugar but still spikes our blood sugar in the same way,” says the nutritionist Laura Southern, founder of London Food Therapy. The Honey Authenticity Network UK recently found that you might not even be using pure honey — only six out of thirty honey samples tested, five of which were from independent beekeepers, were unadulterated. The rest had ingredients such as cheap sugar syrups added. Cacao nibs — dried cocoa beans — have a similar calorie content but no sugar, 4g fibre per tablespoon and minerals including calcium, iron and potassium. “You’re mitigating the carbohydrate hit from the oats and getting a comforting chocolatey feel as well as the health benefits,” Southern says.

Comfort food meals

Cook cheesy bean and lentil bake instead of macaroni cheese
Although cheese is a good source of protein, macaroni cheese offers little else of nutritional value, especially when made with refined white pasta, which can spike blood-sugar levels. Its high fat content can contribute to a higher risk of heart disease: for example, Marks and Spencer’s Meal for One contains 680 calories and 16.4g of saturated fat, more than half the NHS’s 30g daily limit guideline for men.

Get a more sustained carbohydrate fix with a quick-to-make cheesy lentil and bean bake instead. To serve three to four people, Southern says, “throw two ready-to-eat pouches of precooked lentils, such as Merchant Gourmet (250g, £2, morrisons.com), and a tin of cannellini beans into a dish with chopped garlic and onions and finely chopped vegetables such as carrots. Add a tin of chopped tomatoes and 200ml vegetable stock, grate cheese over the top and bake for 40 minutes”.

Pulses and beans are brilliant sources of protein and fibre that are great for digestive and heart health. Provided you don’t go mad with the cheese, a serving is likely to contain less than 500 calories and about 10g fibre, a third of the government’s 30g recommended daily intake.

• Six delicious lentil recipes

Buy butternut squash soup instead of creamed chicken soup
If you’re grabbing a warming soup in the supermarket bear in mind that half a carton of Covent Garden chicken soup contains 4 per cent single cream, 143 calories and 6.4g fat, while Covent Garden’s spiced butternut soup contains 86 calories, 3.98g fat and nearly seven times as much fibre at 2.6g.

Butternut squash offers more nutritional benefits than chicken soup too. “Orange vegetables such as butternut squash contain the compound beta-carotene that the body converts into vitamin A, essential for healthy eyes, skin and immune system — so particularly important at this time of year,” Southern says.

A review of 13 studies in the journal Scientific Reports found that a “high intake of beta-carotene was related to a significant reduced risk of all-cause mortality’’. Granted, there is 2.3g less protein than in the chicken soup, “but sprinkling in a tablespoon of pumpkin seeds will add around 3g protein,” Southern says.

• Six healthy winter soup recipes

Make oven chips, not mashed potato (yes, really)
Mashed potato often feels like a healthier option than fries but a 150g serving made with cream contains more than 10g fat and even mash made with butter and milk has about 8g fat. Plus peeling the skin off a potato halves its fibre content.

Scrubbing the skin clean, cutting the potato up and roasting to make homemade chips “can be better for you”, Southern says, with a small portion typically containing around 1g fat. She advises against spritzing with low-calorie oil sprays, however: “They’re very processed with a high level of emulsifiers. A controlled drizzle of extra virgin or cold-pressed rapeseed oil adds polyunsaturated fatty acids, which can help lower cholesterol, unlike the saturated fat in cream used in mash. Adding balsamic vinegar before you roast is a good way of making them taste more flavoursome.”

Order in chicken tikka in place of chicken tikka masala
A chicken tikka masala contains more than 400 calories and 26g fat. A 100g serving of chicken tikka offers the same flavour but, with none of the creamy sauce, only 15g fat and 211 calories. “Spices count towards the 30 plant-based foods gut experts advise we eat a week, and a dry rub of spices is hugely supportive to health, without the fat and sugar-filled creamy sauces so typical in takeaways,” Southern says. She cites ginger and cloves’ antimicrobial properties, which help boost the immune system. “Plus they taste good, which is key to maintaining healthy food swaps.”

Winter drinks

Go for ginger tea over hot chocolate
A large Starbucks hot chocolate with cream contains 385 calories and 14.5g fat, while a low- calorie version such as Cadbury Highlights “contains sweeteners that can disrupt our gut microbiome and blood-sugar balance, sending signals to our brain that we are about to get something sweet. That leads to the production of insulin and, over time, insulin resistance and conditions such as diabetes,” Southern says.

Try warming homemade ginger tea instead — grate one teaspoon of ginger into a saucepan, add a cup of water and boil for five minutes before straining. Ginger’s active components 6-gingerol and 6-shogaol have been found to reduce the oxidative stress that contributes to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Or buy a shop-bought version such as Pukka’s ginger-based Winter Warmer Tea (£3.50, 20 sachets, waitrose.com).

Drink red wine, not whisky
All alcohol is carcinogenic but you may be better swapping whisky (117 calories per 25ml) for red wine (133 calories per 175ml) because its red grapes contain the plant compound resveratrol, which research has found might lower blood pressure and cholesterol. In addition, a new study funded by Cancer Research UK will explore whether patients with polyps — small growths that can develop into bowel cancer — who take a resveratrol supplement for a year remain free of the growths.

Much of the research into resveratrol’s benefits has been done on mice, and you’d have to drink a hundred to a thousand glasses of red wine a day to get an amount equivalent to the doses that improved their health. Nonetheless, Southern says, “a glass of red wine with dinner will enter your bloodstream slower and have less impact on your sleep, liver and blood-sugar levels than a late-night whisky’’.

• The 50 best red wines for winter

Wintry puddings

Make a berry compote instead of a crumble
Berries have great health benefits — they are low in sugar, high in fibre and high in the plant compounds polyphenols, which are linked to increased blood flow to the brain, better heart health and reduced inflammation, Southern says.

However, the wintry crumble version is high in calories and fat. Tesco Real Food Berry Crumble, to cite one ready-made version, contains 365 calories per serving and 19g fat. When making your own “you can add nuts, oats and seeds to make it healthier”, Southern says, but if you end up serving it with a pot of Waitrose Madagascan Vanilla Custard, for example, you’ll add 201 calories and 8.9g of saturated fat.

Instead, opt for a warm berry compote, at about 100 calories. Melt a knob of butter (26 calories) in a pan, stir in half a tablespoon of sugar (24 calories) until melted, toss in 100g mixed berries (about 50 calories; frozen also work) and cook for a couple of minutes until soft.

• Three comforting winter pudding recipes by Charlie Hibbert

Stewed apple and cinnamon is more healthy than apple pie
A slice of apple pie typically contains about 10g saturated fat and, Southern says, “shop-bought pastry is a major UPF” often containing ingredients such as palm oil and emulsifiers, which are linked to a disrupted gut microbiome and diabetes. She says that it’s better to eat cooked apple (38 calories per 100g serving, 0.1g fat and 2g fibre), citing it as “one of the best foods to reduce gut inflammation leading to digestive disorders on its own”. Add cinnamon, an antioxidant that has been found to lower blood-sugar levels and potentially inhibit the build-up of a protein in the brain linked to Alzheimer’s, for interest.

Treat yourself with dark chocolate dipped dates, not sticky toffee pudding
A small 100g serving of Marks and Spencer’s sticky toffee pudding contains 377 calories, 11.1g saturated fat — more than half the NHS 20g daily limit for women — and 35g sugar, more than a third of the adult 90g daily allowance.

“Shop-bought versions are ultra-processed with ingredients such as emulsifiers linked to poor gut health,” Southern says. A few dates coated in dark chocolate offer a toffee-flavoured treat that has a fraction of the calories — melt dark chocolate in a bowl over a saucepan of boiling water, then dip the dates and freeze to set.

Dark chocolate is rich in antioxidant polyphenols, while dates contain calcium and selenium for healthier skin and cognitive function, and 2g fibre per three dates — research in the British Journal of Nutrition found that those who ate dates daily saw “significant” improvement to bowel function. “Studies show dates don’t raise blood sugar in the same way as refined sugar, and the chocolate’s antioxidants can help reduce inflammation,” Southern adds.