Cooking May Be Your Best Diet Strategy
Prepare Your Own Food to Ensure a Healthy Diet
The art of cooking has been squeezed out of the average American's daily agenda. Over the years, work and other activities have made it nearly impossible for us to spend the time in the kitchen that our parents' and grand-parents' generations did.
Our Society Runs on Convenience Foods
All too often, we grab a frozen pizza at the grocery store that we can throw into the oven for dinner. We drop by a fast food restaurant for some burgers, fries, and sodas on our way home from work. We select some prepared muffins or coffee cake for breakfast with friends. Why? We are simply too busy and too tired to spend our little free time in the kitchen.
Convenience Foods are Teaming with Unhealthy Ingredients
Because we rely heavily on pre-packaged foods for our meals, we consume alarming amounts of sodium, preservatives, and other unutterable substances. Certainly, we have been warned about heavy consumption of these substances in the past. Recently, the American Heart Association added a warning about consuming excess sugar into the mix. The Wall Street Journal reported that the AHA recommends women limit sugar consumption to 6 teaspoons a day. Men should consume a maximum of 8 teaspoons a day.
Take a look at any of your favorite convenience foods and you may well be shocked at how quickly you can use up a day's allotment of sugar. A 12 ounce can of soda contains 8 teaspoons of sugar. A 6 ounce container of yogurt may contain up to 6 teaspoons of sugar. Your favorite morning cereal can pack in as many as 4 teaspoons of sugar in one serving.
Cooking Dramatically Improves Diet
The recent focus on sugar exemplifies the virtues of a diet that minimizes the use of processed foods. In his New York Times article, "Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch" writer Michael Pollan states that cooking trumps social class in predicting a healthy diet. Citing a 1992 study by the American Dietetic Association, he writes that poor women who cook meals regularly are more likely to have healthy diets than wealthy women who do not. The reason is simple. People who cook consume more fresh food, and fresh food is more nutritious than convenience food.
Create a Healthy Diet Without Creating a Time Sink
Unfortunately, we buy convenience food because we need to. Truth be told, we are busier than we have ever been. We are stretched thin. We need to figure out how to make fresh food convenient.
Start with vegetables and fruits. Both make quick, easy snacks. Put fresh berries and grapes in a bowl and place it in your kitchen or at your desk. Reach for it, as opposed to a candy bar or pretzels, when you get hungry. Slice apples, nectarines, celery, and carrots. Store them in the refrigerator for easy access.
Make your meals simple. Don't fret over recipes. Food is often at its best when you don't tinker with it too much. Buy some Herbes de Provence and sprinkle it on your fish and chicken. Add a little sea salt, bake and you are done. Steam vegetables. Enjoy their flavor, au naturel.
Take baby steps if you need to. Start with snacks, and once you are in the habit of reaching for fresh foods, move on to reforming your meals. Find a solution that works for you and you will soon be healthier for it.
You may also be interested in 6 Simple, No-Recipe Healthy Salads, Healthy Dessert Ideas, and Grass-Fed Beef.
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