In today’s hectic life, we all tend to eat fast food. It’s a fast and easy way to have a meal when on the go.
But fast food is generally not healthy food and even something as simple as a chicken salad bought from the corner café could contain as much as six teaspoons of sugar, which is more than 20% of your daily saturated fat. And saturated fat can build up bad cholesterol in our blood vessels, which can contribute to coronary disease.
Even when we think we are going for the healthier option of a salad, we are not always getting a healthy meal.
The most important meal of the day
As with any lifestyle change, making small changes in eating habits rather than trying to change everything at once is best. A good place to start is by eating a wholesome breakfast. It will fuel up your energy, kick start your metabolism and keep you going until lunchtime. Eggs are undeniably the “superfood” for a healthy breakfast. Eggs will make you feel fuller for longer and a single boiled egg contains:
• Vitamin A: 6% of the RDA
• Folate: 5% of the RDA
• Vitamin B5: 7% of the RDA
• Vitamin B12: 9% of the RDA
• Vitamin B2: 15% of the RDA
• Phosphorus: 9% of the RDA
• Selenium: 22% of the RDA
Start Including Greens for Lunch
If your brain feels fried by lunchtime, the perfect way to re-energise it is with leafy greens. Leafy greens are not the only brain protector, but they do have something special. Leafy greens have an excellent amount of Vitamin E, which reduces inflammation in the brain and helps prevent the build-up of plaque on brain cells, something which is associated with Alzheimer’s.
Greens are a great source of Folate, which aids a healthy vascular system and has antioxidants and Vitamin K to help prevent cellular degeneration. A healthy wholesome lunch can be put together without effort. Some fresh baby spinach, lettuce, feta, tomato, and cucumber together with some left-over chicken from last night’s dinner is a far better option for lunch than that takeaway lunch from the corner café. If a salad is not your thing, a simple sandwich made with seed bread and topped with lettuce, tomato and avocado is sure to fill you up while being healthy and nutritious. Adding fruit as a mid-morning snack or with your lunch is also a great option because they are packed with nutrients, fibre and antioxidants.
The Right Dinner
Healthy dinners don’t have to be uninteresting or time-consuming. Eating a variety of vegetables with your evening meal means you can fill up the healthy way. Vegetables contain 85 to 95% water which helps hydrate the skin and reduce the signs of ageing. All vegetables contain phytonutrients which help to prevent cell damage from stress, the sun and other environmental toxins. Brightly coloured vegetables have an added boost of beta-carotene that helps protect the skin from sun damage and tomatoes contain lycopene that acts as a natural sunscreen.
During stressful times, magnesium and Vitamin C are quickly depleted but lucky for us many vegetables contain these very nutrients as a well as tension reducing omega-3 fatty acids and Vitamin B to help us fight anxiety and depression.
Including some meat with those vegetables completes your healthy dinner. While white meat, such as chicken is, of course, the better choice, many of us prefer red meat. If you choose lean cuts, you can still keep your meal healthy. Choose cuts that are graded “Choice” or “Select” instead of “Prime,” as “Prime” cuts generally usually have more fat. You can do this by:
• Choosing cuts with the least amount of visible fat.
• When selecting ground beef, go for the lowest percentage of fat.
• Limiting consumption of organs, such as liver, to about 3 ounces (85 grams) a month.
Eating fish several times a week is also a healthy choice. Fish are a lean source of protein, and oily fish deliver the omega-3 fats that we need in our diet.
