If you’re looking to improve your health, eating healthy meals is one of the best ways to start. Exercise and dieting are great ways to improve your health, but it all boils down to what you eat and how healthy it is.
Eating healthy can make you feel more energetic, reduce intestinal distress, improve your skin, and much more. However, getting started on eating healthy can be a challenge.
This is especially true if you don’t know where to start or you struggle to pick healthy options. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to start eating healthier today.
In this article, we’ll go over 5 healthy cooking tips to help you eat cleaner and start being more healthy.
1. Homemade Ingredients are Always Better
When we cook, we often use prepackaged or pre-made items in our recipes. This includes things like mayonnaise or bread, which can have very unhealthy processed ingredients or additives to make them taste better or last longer.
To make sure you aren’t ingesting extra things that are unhealthy, start making these types of ingredients at home. Many of the things we use daily are very easy to make and require little effort. For example, instead of getting highly processed white bread that is full of sugar, make your own! You can use healthier alternatives such as finding gruyere cheese substitute if you’re planning to make homemade lasagna.
This is will cut down on extra calories and help you cut out artificial ingredients in your food.
2. Make Vegan Meals
One of the best ways to make healthy meals is to try to make them vegan. By not using any animal products like milk, eggs, or meat, you can cut down on the calories and fats you are ingesting.
The good news is that there are plenty of ways to make your favorite dishes vegan. For example, you can replace the meat and cheese in lasagna with lentils and a nut-based cheese.
3. Avoid Sugar
You might think it’s easy to avoid sugar during your daily meals, but many daily ingredients contain sugar. In fact, over 68% of the items in a grocery store have added sugar.
Things like tomato sauce, bread, and even meat sauces have added sugar that can harm your health. Many desserts also contain high levels of sugar, which makes it hard to lose weight and stay healthy.
Luckily, there are many ways to avoid sugar. Start by always reading the label on any product you buy at the grocery store to check for added sugar. If there is added sugar, you can either make the product at home or buy a brand that has no added sugar.
4. Eat Plenty of Greens
Although many of us see greens and vegetables as being bland or gross, they are an important part of your diet. Greens like spinach, broccoli, or kale are high in vitamins and fiber, which is great for your immune system and digestive health.
Hungry Squirrel recommends making your greens more palatable by eating them with a healthy dipping sauce or dressing, making kale chips, adding them to smoothies, or adding lots of seasoning.
5. Don’t Fry Everything
Although sauteing vegetables and searing meat make them delicious, it also involves the use of oil which is bad for your heart and cholesterol. To stay healthy, you should use different methods of cooking.
For example, braising, where meat is slow-cooked in a liquid medium like broth or sauce, is a great way to eat meat. You can also steam vegetables or roast them, which gives vegetables great flavor.
Get More Healthy Cooking Tips
Now that you know more about healthy cooking tips, you can start cooking more healthy meals and learn more about healthy cooking. Make sure to do more research and find a meal plan that best fits your needs.
If you have any more questions about healthy eating or cooking, please visit our blog.
