On a regular basis, usually while scrolling through social media sites, I come across posted articles offering up tips and information about eating healthy, and more often than not when I get part way through the article, I am cringing at the “facts” and information being shared with readers, as the information is often misguided, misunderstood, and sometimes even flat out wrong.
This happens beyond internet articles though. One of the most obnoxious tv commercials I’ve seen lately is for either vegetable or canola oil (can’t remember), where a woman is pushing her grocery cart down a store aisle and pauses to grab the olive oil, but then looks over at the vegetable (or canola) oil, puts the olive oil back, and grabs the other oil instead. The commercial ends with some “facts” about why this hydrogenated oil is a better choice than olive oil. All I can say is…you have to be kidding me. It makes me laugh every time.
So I’m here to clear up some information for you and hopefully provide you with what I truly believe to be good & accurate information. And I admit, a lot of the information out there is contradicting and it’s sometimes hard to decide what’s right. Honestly though, some of it is just common sense, and I like to take a logical approach to eating and living a healthy lifestyle.
With that said, here is the bottom line rule to immediately improve the quality of the food you eat, resulting in a healthier and more enjoyable food and eating experience: cut out processed foods and added sugar.
You may have heard this before, but it’s a big project to take on, and you may be thinking it’s easier said than done. Well being someone who has actually done this, and gotten to a point where these things are very limited in my daily diet, I have some specific tips to share with you on how to get started and get to a point where you aren’t regularly eating processed foods and added sugar. It’s hard to break old habits, but after some continuous effort and conscious decision making, it’ll quickly become part of your routine and be much easier than you think. So here we go…
1. Start reading the ingredients on the back of items you purchase. The reason I didn’t mention counting calories or cutting out fat as rules to eating healthy, is because they aren’t nearly as important as the ingredients that are actually in your food. I barely use the nutritional table on the back of items, but rather I read the list of ingredients. Now, there are so many ingredients that you can read but have no idea what they are. My suggestion is to do some research and inform yourself of what they are, or use my simple rule which is, if I was making this myself, would I use these ingredients to make this food? If the answer is no, I don’t buy the item. For example, I came across jarred roasted peppers, where the ingredients listed included sugar. Why would you add sugar to roasted peppers? It’s quite unnecessary. After some looking, I found another option, where the ingredients listed were simply peppers, olive oil, garlic, sea salt. That’s the one I bought. Once you start reading labels, you will quickly realize how much unnecessary sugar is added to so many things that wouldn’t normally call for sugar.
2. Learn to cook and make food from scratch. I think a lot of people buy packaged food that they could make at home because they are intimidated by cooking or they feel like they don’t have time to cook. Cooking your own food, and making food from scratch, will always be healthier than any pre-made option in a store. Hands down. Cooking is actually quite easy (and fun!), and just takes some practice. Once you learn the basics, you can easily throw something together on any given day using the ingredients you have in your fridge. I also share a lot of fun recipes on this blog- check them out! As for making time- we are all busy, but in my opinion, my health is worth my time. Find the time and use it.
3. Limit your intake of white flour based carbs and simple carbs. White flour and simple carbs turn into sugar once eaten, and are overly processed- not a good combo. There are so many delicious alternatives for carbs out there! Try complex carbs such as quinoa, farro, barley, or harvest grains (Trader Joe’s) as alternatives for pasta and white rice. Replace sliced white bread and potato bread with sprouted whole grain bread. Now, being Italian, I don’t expect anyone to cut out pasta all together ;), but limit it, and when you can, at least buy whole wheat, whole grain, or organic pasta.
4. Completely cut out sugary drinks. Soda, energy drinks, most juices, sweetened teas, etc.- just say no! These have ridiculous amounts of added sugar, and a lack of nutrition. Stick to water, sparkling water, coffee, tea, and vegetable juices. If you want fruit juice, buy or blend up a fruit drink that only includes fruit, vegetables, and either water, soy milk, or almond milk. Of course these will still have sugar, because there’s natural sugar in fruit, but at least there’s no added sugar. Want to make your water more interesting? Throw slices of lemon, lime, or cucumber into your water…delicious and fresh!
5. Limit your intake of hydrogenated and omega-6 oils. Oils like vegetable, canola, and corn are common hydrogenated oils and are high in omega-6’s. Our bodies actually need a lot more omega-3’s than omega-6’s, which are healthy fats, and the following oils will give you just that: olive oil, avocado oil, and coconut oil. There are tons of other oils, but these are my favorite. I use olive oil for almost everything. There’s a reason the mediterranean diet is found to be one of the healthiest in the world (olive oil!). Not only do you want to avoid buying bottles of hydrogenated or oils high in omega-6’s for cooking, but also limit the amount of packaged foods you buy that list hydrogenated oils in their ingredients. Note: you’ll notice some packaged foods are trying to be “healthier” and list “non-hydrogentated” oils in their ingredients, which is good because they are less processed, but they still aren’t oils high in omega-3’s and good fats, which is why I would still avoid those oils (canola, vegetable, corn) as much as possible. Plus, olive oil just has so such complex flavor and is delicious with so many things!
6. Make your own snacks and limit pre-packaged snacks. Realistically, you won’t cut out pre-packaged snacks all together, but by following rule #1 (reading ingredients on packages) and making your own snacks whenever possible, you can make snacking a lot healthier. Here are some examples of super quick snacks you can make. 1. Chop up cherry tomatoes and cucumbers, then cover in a drizzle of olive oil, sea salt, and pepper. 2. Cut an avocado in half, drizzle with olive oil, chopped garlic, sea salt, and pepper. These are just a couple ideas and take only five minutes to make. It’s worth that five minutes! They taste 100x better than a bag of chips from a vending machine. Look out for my next post which will be a list of amazing yet healthy snacks and how to make them!
7. Pack your lunch for work instead of eating out. Eating out is convenient, but you don’t have 100% control of what’s in your food, either because options are limited or because ingredients in restaurants or fast food places aren’t listed or easily available. And plus, who’s going to stand there and ask someone for a list of ingredients in their food? Very unlikely. The better choice is to pack a lunch. It sounds time consuming at first, but it’s just about creating a routine, and once that routine is begun, it’s pretty easy. I pack a lunch every single day for work, and once you get good at it, you can do so in 30 minutes. And I’m not talking PB&J sandwiches…I’m talking healthy, delicious, nutritious food!
I hope these tips are ones that you can incorporate into your eating habits, and find helpful. Healthy eating isn’t a chore, it’s simply about eating high quality, fresh, and delicious food that isn’t overly processed or that has various unnecessary and questionable ingredients added to it. Eating in the Italian culture (and many cultures) is an important and treasured part of life, and is supposed to be an experience…so make it an amazing one!
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Italian word of the day:
Olio d’oliva (n) = Olive oil