The best way to make sure you’re eating healthy food is to cook it yourself from ingredients that are recognisable! One of the reasons metabolic conditions such as obesity and type ll diabetes are prevalent is because we’ve become reliant on ultra processed foods in the form of ready meals and takeaways instead of cooking at home.
Convenience foods are high in starches and sugars, emulsifiers and poor quality oils which can have a huge impact on our weight, general health – including our mental health – and digestive system.
It can be a daunting prospect to starting cooking from scratch but you needn’t be aiming for a Masterchef type meal! If you are a meat eater, then simple grilled or baked meats, poultry or fish with some stir fried vegetables or salad and perhaps brown rice is a great way to start.
For example, one of the easiest meals to make is a tray of mixed roasted vegetables (you can really go to town on your ‘rainbow’ colours here and use olive oil for roasting) which can then be used as a base for several meals. A delicious accompaniment to meats or halloumi; delicious cold and chopped into a salad or whizzed up with some stock into a soup …. Cook once and eat 3 times!
Eggs can be turned into a delicious frittata or omelette and if you avoid animal foods then you can use staples such as tempeh and miso to make delicious stir fries, soups and stews.
Challenge yourself to try new vegetables and salads – next time you go shopping pick up a different veg and research different ways of preparing it. There are lots of flavours out there waiting to be discovered!
If you have children, get them involved too – you will be doing them a huge favour for when they live independently and have to feed themselves.
There are a wealth of cookery books available and I would suggest you spend some time in a bookshop looking through cookbooks and finding one that has ‘doable’ recipes for you. Of course there a numerous online resources too which are often rated as to how simple they are to prepare.
image: August-de-Richelieu – pexels.com
