Healthy Recipes
Preparing your own food is one of the best ways to stay healthy. It also helps you avoid processed foods, which can be high in calories and low in nutrients.
Cooking need not be complicated or fancy – often simple recipes that let a few quality shine are the best!
Looking for some healthy recipes that are easy to prepare?
⇒You’ll find plenty of recipes and ideas here.
Some General Tips on Healthy Eating
If you try to include the following in your day, you probably don’t need to worry about counting calories of obtaining enough nutrients:
- plenty of vegetables
- fruits (fruit juice doesn’t count and should be avoided)
- beans/legumes
- whole grains (intact unprocessed grains are best)
- healthy fats (try to obtain from whole foods like nuts, seeds, avocados, fish)
Great foods to include in your diet. . .
What you eat can have a tremendous impact on your health. Vegetables, fruits, legumes, and whole grains contain minerals, vitamins, fiber, and other protective substances that can help protect from disease.
Below a list of great-tasting foods with plenty of health benefits. Sources include Healing Foods to Savor, and others are from my favourite authors and web resources. I will be updating this list, so be sure to check back! Also, this is an excellent resource, if you want to look up the health benefits of specific foods.
Some “superfoods” lists encourage people to eat great quantities of one food; let this list inspire you to include some of these foods in your diet, but remember, it is your whole “dietary pattern” and not one food that will promote good health.
- Apples
- Avocados
- Arugula
- Blueberries
- Broccoli
- Butternut Squash
- Cherries
- Chickpeas (garbanzo beans)
- Coffee
- Cruciferous vegetables (arugula, bok choy, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, greens (collar, mustard, turnip), kohlrabi, kale, radishes, rutabaga)
- Dark leafy green vegetables
- Dates
- Edamame
- Flax
- Grapefruit
- Greek Yogurt
- Legumes
- Nuts
- Oats – Inexpensive, versatile, delicious, with many potential health benefits.
- Peanut Butter
- Rhubarb
- Seeds
- Spinach
- Squash (Winter)
- Watermelon
- Whole Grains
Good Reading about Healthy Eating
Here are highlights of articles I’ve come across that do a nice job clarifying concepts in nutrition.
- Blood Pressure – Foods that lower blood pressure
- Cancer – excess body weight contributes to many cancers
- Cancer – Reduce your cancer risk: excellent advice about (1) controlling your weight (2) moving more, and (3) what you should eat
- Cancer – More good news for coffee drinkers – study suggests coffee might halve risk of mouth & throat cancer
- Carbohydrates – What are the best carbs to eat for health? (Rosie Schwartz, RD)
- Processed Meat – Good idea to avoid processed meat for health. What is processed meat? (American Institute for Cancer Research)
Myths and Misconceptions About Healthy Eating
Good science is the best tool that we have to figure out how something is influencing our health. Finding out “what works” isn’t usually the result of a single study, but often years of research from various disciplines. To evaluate diet and health claims you should consult sources who use the best scientific evidence available while considering cumulative scientific knowledge in that area. Read More
_________
Reviewed and updated August 15, 2015
Share This:
