Healthy Cooking and Eating Tips to Maintain a Balanced Diet

Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash        Edited by ConSCIENCE

Today, in this busy world, healthy living should be the main motto of our lives. Healthy living includes healthy eating and healthy cooking too. Daily hustle and bustle of life keep us forgetting our traditional healthy cooking system and perpetually packaged food or "ready to eat" food has taken all the space.

In this time, it is very necessary to discus on some healthy cooking and eating tips, as it promisingly will help you to maintain a balanced diet all year long.

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Tips to healthy cooking

It is necessary to tell about some tips regarding healthy cooking, because, nowadays, our health gets compromised in a lot of time. 

Knowingly or unknowingly we use such steps to cook our foods that turns out to an unhealthy options.

So, it is better to know some healthy options by which you can cook or make your dish healthier. Here are some points regarding healthy cooking you may follow:

1. Don’t go for packaged or preserved or ready to eat food. On the sake of your health try cook a fresh meal in your home. Those preservatives in the packaged foods have carcinogenic effect too along with other such health drawback.

2. Make your own meal; don’t always crave for outside food. You know your taste better; no one can make it for you. So, try to make your meal as such taste you crave for.

3. You have to choose healthy foods, not to give up your favorites. Apply some tricks as per your choice to make your foods healthier.

4. Add more vegetables and fruits to your meal rather than fried food or junk food which have no nutritional value. Apply more vegetables to your sandwiches or any other dishes to make it tastier. 

5. Try to avoid deep frying your favorites; it increases some unhealthful fats to your dishes.

6. If frying is absolute necessary then, using a blotting paper blots your fried foods before consumption. By this process you will get rid of some extra oil.

7. Always use whole wheat flour (atta) instead of refined flour (maida). I know refined flour foods are more tasty, but if you want a healthier version then must go for whole wheat flour in case of baking a cake, making luchi/puri, roti, parathas.

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8. If available, use microwave to cook your veggies or steam it. Cooking on high flame for long duration can breaks down all the nutrients. Slightly cook or just stir fry the veggies as much as you can.

9. Non-stick cookware is ‘in’ nowadays, so, use it cleverly. It needs very low amount of oil to cook. So, choose your utensils wisely.

10. If you have to use oil specially, then apply it with a sprayer or brush. Don’t just pour and pour oil to your pan.

11. To avoid oil, you can cook your dishes in others liquids like vegetable stock, water, fruit juice, lemon juice or vinegar etc.

12. During making gravy or curry, don’t use high calorie cream to thicken it, just use low-fat yogurt, low-fat soymilk, evaporated skim milk or cornstarch. It will be healthier.

13. When buying the bread go for a wholegrain one instead of just white or brown bread. Here I advised not to eat white bread if you want to lose weight or you have some underlying diseases like high blood pressure, sugar, cholesterol or PCOs.  

14. Don’t throw away the vegetables boiling water, use it as stock in another preparation, because it contains many vitamins and nutrients.

15. Cut away the chicken’s skin or remove the excess white fat from the red meat before cooking.

Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash

Tips to healthy eating

Along with healthy cooking, you should learn healthy eating too. Unhealthy eating patterns can invite many diseases too early.

Therefore, to keep your body fit and fine, and if you want to maintain the balanced diet, that was presented in my previous article, you should be aware of some tips about healthy eating.

Followings are some tips to healthy eating to maintain sound health:  

1. The first rule you should learn about healthy eating is not to skip any meal, especially breakfast.

Skipping breakfast can generate many serious diseases including heart disease and stroke. It can increase the risk of disease up to 87%.   

Skipping meals can develop diabetes in near future. So, eat normal meal which includes 3 major meals and 2 snacks in between them.

2. Keep your food preparation simple. Don’t complicate your cooking with heavy load; it can distract your focus from healthy eating.

3. Include more raw foods in your diet like salads, fruits and vegetables. If you are a calorie freak person, then it can save you a much more. Keep a variety of food in your diet, only then you will get all the nutrients.

4. Keep some healthy snacks in your hand. In between meals you can crave for it. On the other hand, snacking can help you to avoid the ravenous hunger. At this stage you can’t choice proper food, this leads to take excess calories.

Some healthy snacks which you can opt:

• Almonds, dates, other dry fruits
• Mixed fruits
• Dark chocolate
• Roasted chickpeas
• Sweet potato chips
• Oats laddu
• Hardboiled egg
• Roasted pumpkin seed
• Apple chips
• Broccoli soup etc.

5. Add skim milk to your tea, rather than a normal milk or a full-fat one. It will help you to get fewer calories. Try using low-fat yogurt. You can use it in place of mayonnaise also.

6. Don’t add sugar to your yogurt or any other food items, add fresh fruits to it and sweetener like honey or jaggery. Yes, jaggery rocks. You can use it in everything in the place of refined sugar.   

7. Avoid using sugar to your tea also, you can use honey as a sweetener only after cooling the tea a bit.  

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 8. Replace the high fat butter or other saturated fats with low-fat bread spreads or nut spreads or low-fat cheese spreads.

9. Fats are good, only in the form of fish, nuts and seeds. Choose skim dairy products and lean meats.

10. Try to eat four servings of fruits and vegetables per day.

11. Drink lots of water, at least 3-4 liters, as per your requirements. Always carry a personal water bottle with you.

12. An important learning to healthy eating is to stop eating when you feel full. Don’t ingest larger portion just because you love it, additional food can help to increase your weight.

13. Limit your outside eating per week. Eat homemade food as much as you can. Outer food may tasty but they are not prepared with such healthy items that you eat in your home, and they are not careful regarding the preparation of food as you are.  

14. Limit or avoid your intake of caffeine and alcohol: More in limit, more you are fit (ConSCIENCE).

15. And the last thing, don’t push yourself to eat everything that's good for you. If you don’t like it or you have some problem with or you don’t like the taste of then, avoid eating that item. Always eat with your heart. Never fell sorrow to consume any food item.

Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash

ConScience

Knowledge regarding healthy cooking and eating can save you from many unwanted diseases, you can maintain your weight, and you can invest more energy to your daily lifestyle.

In 21^st century, there are much more impurities to the ingredients of our food than our previous generations. So, it is better to be aware of this and use it in limit.

Everyone should maintain the balanced diet, or at least you should try to maintain it in your daily schedule.

So, in a nutshell, limit fats, salts and sugars, include more fruits and vegetables, grains, proteins and low-fat dairy products in your daily eating. Always choose naturally sweet and salty food. Maintain your health, have a happy life...