Healthy Food Choices

Healthy food choices give your body and brain the energy they need to carry on with daily activities, the building blocks: the building blocks for skin, muscle, brain, and hair, protection against common colds, and more serious diseases.

It’s not just about eating, it’s about eating foods from a healthy and balanced diet every day.

A healthy diet of healthy food choices is a balanced combination of dietary fiber, good fats, complex carbohydrates, protein, vitamins, and minerals, with as little salt, simple sugar, saturated fat, and trans fat as possible:

fiber:

Dietary fiber can be soluble or insoluble, and both have incredible health benefits. Fiber moves quickly into your system with sufficient fluid intake and keeps you regular.

Fiber has no calories and you need to eat at least 25-30 grams every day of whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and legumes. Check the fiber content of foods you buy from supermarkets, anything above 4-5% is great.

Fat:

Eat foods that are low in unhealthy saturated and trans fats, prefer mono and polyunsaturated fats. Buy lean meats: pork, beef, chicken, turkey, trim visible fats from meat before cooking, remove skin from turkey and chicken. Try not to eat duck and goose, but you can eat fatty or lean fish, as it is high in healthy omega 3 fatty acids.

There is no need to add oil to meat when cooking; broiling or baking is your best option, frying is the worst. Extra virgin olive oil, canola oil, walnuts, and ground flaxseeds are healthy sources of fat. Butter and margarine are high in saturated and trans fatty acids.

Sugar:

Avoid added sugars to avoid extra calories that will make you gain weight easily. Added sugar goes by many hidden names, so check the ingredient list for fructose, glucose, maltose, dextrose, corn syrup, honey, and simple sugar.

Sugar has no nutritional value, it does not include vitamins or minerals, it is just empty and addictive calories. Yes, sugar and its substitutes act a bit like addictive drugs in your body.

Salt:

Too much sodium can cause high blood pressure, heart complications, and even heart attacks and strokes. Beware of hidden salt in processed foods. The table salt you use in cooking or on your food is just one way to increase your sodium intake.

Use spices, herbs, vinegar, wine, lemon or lime juice, garlic, ginger, and chili peppers in your cooking instead of salt. Choose low or reduced sodium soups, cereals, frozen foods, and baked goods. Use very little high-salt soy sauce, olives, pickles, chicken salt, or garlic salt.

protein:

As the building blocks of your body’s bones, skin, hair, and muscles, protein is very important to your well-being. Foods high in protein also tend to be high in fat, so be careful when buying dairy and meat.

Choose low-fat or fat-free versions of milk: yogurt and lean meat; nuts and vegetables are also excellent sources of protein. Cottage cheese and ricotta cheese are excellent sources of low-fat protein, as are egg whites, skinless chicken and turkey, fish, nuts, seeds, quorn, and soy products.