Healthy tips for healthier eating

May 09. 2011, under Blogr with One Comment

I’m not a health guru, but I do make conscious decisions about what I eat. I read the product labels on what I buy and check for poison (aspartame, high fructose syrup, partially hydrogenated oils (trans fat), MSG, TBHQ, saturated fat, sodium, and sugar amount, etc). When I buy groceries I take longer than most people because I read the ingredients and compare products especially on canned food, I like to pick the ones with the least sodium content. I enjoy junk food and sweets as much as anybody else that enjoys eating unhealthy food but I like to keep a balance. I try to eat well during the week and sometimes on the weekends I give in to temptation and eat crap (potato chips, cookies, chocolate sweets, fried food, etc). The key is keeping a balance and know what’s good for you. You are what you eat, if you eat crap, your body is filled with crap. There’s a saying in Spanish that says “Lo que mata, no engorda.” which means “What kills you, doesn’t make you fat.”. I really hate this saying because it perpetuates the idea of eating whatever the fuck you want because it’s your life and you decide how to live it, ok I get it but if you can choose a better quality of life, why settle for less? So here are a few tips that I live by:

Special K cereal (original flavor) is marketed as a great cereal for losing weight, well guess what? Corn Flakes and any puffed rice cereal (like Rice Crispies) contain less calories and sugar, making them much better alternatives. If you want to sweeten it, use Stevia, I find it much better tasting than using Splenda and Stevia is a natural sweetener unlike Splenda which is artificial.

Drink tea! Tea is so good for you between meals. Teas like oolong, white, green, and black are best mixed with citrus (lime, lemons, oranges, etc) to enhance the antioxidant properties, never use cow milk or cream with these types of teas because they muddle the wonderful properties that are in the leaves, for example, chai is best served with soy milk. If you like your tea pretty sweet, use pure honey, maple syrup, or brown sugar and try weening the amount until you accustom your palate to drinking it unsweetened. Stevia doesn’t taste well with all kinds of teas, you’ll have to experiment on your own, Splenda tastes ok with every tea I’ve had.

Excess sugar is extremely bad for your health, thats why its best to cut down on sodas and juice cocktails and replace them with water, tea, and 100% fruit juice. It may be hard at first but it’s all about substitution, if you’re a big soda drinker try weening yourself slowly by drinking flavored sparkling water or natural sodas like Ginseng Up. You should obviously cut down on sweets and keep them to a minimum. That means no donuts, cookies, muffins, etc for breakfast, that’s a no-no.

White flour is bad for you, it goes through a bleaching process that strips it of all the nutrients and then they artificially add a few of them back. White bread, pasta, and anything made with all purpose flours is essentially bad for you. The nutrients it lacks may cause ulcers and colon cancer because the lack of fiber can cause the digested particles to stick to your internal organs like the stomach and intestines. That’s why it’s so important to eat whole grains to clean your digestive system and keep it in check. Whole wheat bread is much more flavorful than white bread, try buying whole wheat sliced bread for your sandwiches, I’m a big fan of honey wheat and multi-grain.

If you feel like a snack munch on some fruit or nuts. Apples are great for dessert or before a meal. Baby carrots or yogurt make a wonderful snack. Be careful when buying yogurt though, most are filled with filler ingredients and preservatives. If it has modified starch and/or gelatin in the ingredients, don’t buy it. I like buying vanilla yogurt or just plain to I mix with fruit preserves.

When buying ground beef, pick the leanest one (less fat content), for chicken try to buy organic or read the labels to see if it says anything about them not having antibiotics or if they’re grass fed, free roaming, etc. For quick cooking, I buy ready made chicken nuggets and patties but I always make sure they’re made of natural ingredients with no fillers, they have to be 100% natural chicken.

Frozen vegetables are better than canned vegetables. Corn, carrots, peas, and green beans are better if they’re frozen. You can cook them on the stove or microwave with a little butter and presto! I love buying frozen stir fry vegetable blends, I cook them with a little bit of vinegar or soy sauce and some butter.

Butter vs margarine. They tell you how much fat butter has compared to margarine, what they don’t tell you is that butter fat is natural and margarine fat is artificial. What does this mean? Man made products are evil! Maybe not but seriously, most margarines at the supermarket are made with fatty vegetable oils that are partially hydrogenated, in other words, contain trans fat, which is a toxin. I buy unsalted butter, and I mean real butter, the kind that comes in a stick and it’s made from milk cream, I use it strictly for cooking. For all other uses like buttering toast which is when you typically want a nice and buttery spread, I buy margarines made of yogurt or soy AND I read the damn ingredients to make sure they’re as natural as possible i.e. it should NOT contain partially hydrogenated oils, hydrogenated oils are ok, the problem is the partially part. If there are way too many complicated names in the ingredients, forget it, I don’t buy that shit. Butter shouldn’t be complicated. In conclusion, real butter is actually better for you than imitation butter, in fact imitation anything is usually bad for you. Like imitation vinegar, what’s up with that? Don’t buy that shit either.

Eating healthier is using your common sense. Fresh will always be better than canned or boxed, and when buying canned or boxed food, watch out for the poisons I mentioned at the beginning: aspartame, high fructose syrup, partially hydrogenated oils (trans fat), MSG, TBHQ, saturated fat, sodium, and sugar amount, etc. Do not buy anything that contains aspartame, this includes most chewing gums and anything with Equal or Nutrasweet in it, they have a warning label that says Contains Phenylalanine, in high doses there can serious side effects that can affect your health. Common sense should tell you that too much of anything is bad for you, even water, you should only drink up to 2 liters a day. So there you go, these are a few of my tips that I live by. Enjoy and eat healthy and happy.