More Healthy Foodie Principles
Making a commitment to eating right doesn't have to be difficult. Here are more Healthy Foodie ideas to jump-start your development of a more healthy relationship with food.
Eat fresh produce in season, supplemented by frozen fruits and veggies year-round. Not only does seasonal produce taste better, but it also is less expensive than foods that are shipped thousands of miles to your local supermarket. And seasonal produce is more likely to be grown by local farmers, so you're helping to sustain agriculture close to home. Load up on apples, hard squashes, and Brussels sprouts in the fall. Citrus fruits hit their peak in the winter, when we can enjoy everything from pink grapefruit to Clementine tangerines and navel oranges. Springtime brings strawberries, asparagus, onions, peas and all varieties of lettuce. Best of all is summer's cornucopia, bursting with tomatoes, corn, summer squash, eggplant, blueberries, peaches and melons.
Love vegetables. Go beyond the boring chore of trying to eat 3-5 servings a day. Instead, make veggies your passion - learn to crave them, become expert in them, insist upon including something green, red or orange in lunch and dinner every day, and consider yourself deprived if you don't. When you go to a potluck dinner, bring a vegetable dish (but no fair loading it with cheese and butter) so you become known among your friends and family as the veggie person. Be a veggie innovator by trying a new one every week and learning to prepare them in a variety of ways.
For instance, fennel bulb - also called anise - is delicious raw or cooked. If raw, just cut off the stalks and remove the core, then thinly slice the bulb and add to salads. Or cut into larger chunks and eat them as a snack with other raw vegetables. A simple and delicious way to cook fennel is to grill it. Cut off the stalks, remove the core, and cut the bulb into four large chunks. Brush liberally with olive oil, add a sprinkle of salt, and cook over a medium-hot grill for a mere 5-6 minutes, turning once during cooking.
Frozen blueberries, corn, spinach, broccoli and many others can be used for convenience sake in season or out.
Be careful about what you drink. A lot of empty calories go into our bodies in liquid form. Worst of all are sugary sodas, but you probably knew that. Diet sodas, while non-caloric, may not be the best choice either. Whether or not caffeine is detrimental to good health-the medical community tends to think that it is not - even caffeine-free diet sodas contain sodium and other chemicals such as phosphates that don't do anything positive for you. Fruit juices don't deliver the nutritional benefits of fruit itself and should be consumed in moderation, if at all. Coffee drinks such as lattes or mochas can pack more fat and calories than a Big Mac with fries. Alcoholic beverages, also in moderation, can be part of a healthful diet for most people, but watch out for potential empty calories here, too.
Set an example-your family will catch on. Give them at least some of their favorite less healthful foods - if they insist - but include some of your innovative veggies. Eat twice as much of the vegetable dishes and half as much of the other stuff as they do. Repeat night after night. Eventually, they will develop a taste for the healthful foods you've introduced.