Healthier Food Swaps Finder

How to Use the Healthier Food Swaps Finder

1. Search for the food you want to swap and pick it from the list, or tap one of the quick examples.
2. Choose what you want less of: sugar, salt, fat, saturates or calories.
3. Choose how much lower the swap should be: at least 25%, 50% or 75% lower than your food.
4. Read the swaps. Each one shows its value and how much lower it is, plus small tags for the other nutrients. Tap Compare side by side to see every nutrient.

What Counts as a Healthy Food Swap

A healthy food swap means replacing a food with a similar one that has less of something you want to cut down on, such as sugar, salt, fat, saturates or calories. This tool covers those five: sugar swaps, salt swaps, fat swaps, saturates swaps and calorie swaps. It works from the numbers in our database, so each swap is lower in the nutrient you pick by a stated amount.

Healthy Food Swap Ideas From Our Database

These examples come straight from the finder, so they are real foods with real values rather than a hand-written list. All numbers are per 100g. Brands and recipes vary, and some swaps trade one nutrient for another, which is why each row says what goes up as well as what goes down.

Not every food has a good swap. For some, our database has nothing that is clearly the same kind of food and lower by enough, and the tool says so instead of showing something unsuitable. Always check the label of the product you are buying.

Food Swaps to Lower Cholesterol

The NHS advice on lowering cholesterol is to cut down on fatty food, especially food high in saturated fat, and to eat less fatty meat, processed meat products, butter, cream and cheese. A saturates swap lets you keep a familiar food and move to a version with less saturated fat, such as a lighter cheddar in place of a regular one.

Choose Saturates swaps in the finder, then pick how much lower you want. See saturates swaps for cheddar. This is general information, not medical advice. If you have high cholesterol, follow the plan from your GP or dietitian.

Food Swaps for High Blood Pressure

The NHS says adults should have no more than 6g of salt a day, about one level teaspoon, and that eating too much salt can cause high blood pressure. Salt is often hidden in sauces, stock, bread and canned foods, so a lower-salt version of something you eat every day can add up.

Choose Salt swaps in the finder. See salt swaps for soy sauce. Salt is shown as grams of salt per 100g. If a label only gives sodium, multiply it by 2.5 to get salt.

Food Swaps for Diabetes

Sugar swaps help you find a version of a food with less sugar, for example ketchup, granola or a sauce. The NHS limit for free sugars is no more than 30g a day for adults.

If you have type 2 diabetes or prediabetes, keep in mind that total carbohydrate affects blood glucose, not only sugars. The finder compares sugars, not total carbohydrate, so a lower-sugar swap can still contain as many carbs. Use it as one input and follow the advice from your diabetes team or dietitian. See sugar swaps for ketchup.

Food Swaps for Weight Loss

Calorie swaps list similar foods with fewer calories per 100g. As a simple example, 30g of regular cheddar is about 124 kcal and 30g of the lighter cheddar above is about 70 kcal, a saving of roughly 54 kcal each time. Saving 100 kcal a day adds up to 700 kcal over a week.

Portion size, protein and how full a food keeps you matter as well, so check the tags on each swap and treat swaps as one part of your eating, not a plan by themselves. See calorie swaps for cheddar.

How the Swaps Are Chosen

A swap has to be a real food in our database in the same category as yours, with a recorded value for the nutrient you chose that is lower by at least the amount you picked. It also has to be recognisably the same kind of food, meaning its name shares the main words of your food, such as “tomato ketchup” or “cheddar cheese”, and a similar calorie level, so you do not get a stock cube offered as a swap for a sauce.

We also leave out foods whose own numbers do not add up, for example a food with 0g saturates but a high fat content, because those are usually gaps in the data, not real zeros. When nothing passes these checks, the tool says so instead of suggesting something unsuitable.

Reading the Trade-offs

Cutting one nutrient does not always make a food better overall. A lower-sugar version of a sauce can have more salt, and a lower-fat cheese can be higher in salt. The small tags under each swap show how it differs from your food on energy, fat, saturates, sugars and salt, and an amber tag with a note means a nutrient is noticeably higher. Use the comparison link to see everything side by side.