Dinner Diva
Fat, Sugar, & Salt
By Leanne Ely, CNC
Fat, sugar and salt; the triple threat found in fast food, restaurant food, packaged food, frozen food, and even some foods we prepare ourselves. Our taste buds are so accustomed to the taste and feel of this combo, that we forget what real food is supposed to taste like. So with the New Year hovering just around the corner, how about some retraining of the old taste buds? Sounds good? Great! 
Here are a few key points to get you started.
PLAN – You know I love to start with a plan. Menu planning has been my life’s work for many years now and I cannot tell you how many emails, letters, and phone calls I get from people telling me what a difference menu planning has made in their lives. But remember, planning is only part of the key. I can plan menus all day long, but it is you who does the shopping and the cooking. You are the one feeding your family. When you plan your menus, you plan to cook and you have the opportunity to teach your children to eat real food. The act of cooking real food will benefit your children for years to come.
PORTION CONTROL – Practice serving actual true portion sizes of the foods that you make. Did you know dinner plates have grown by 25% since the 1970’s? Consequentially so have our our serving sizes and our stomachs. When we first get serious with portion control, we may have a problem adjusting (there’s not enough food!), but I’ll bet you’ll be surprise on how little it actually takes to satisfy your body when you eat nutrition-packed foods. In the meantime, try using smaller plates to trick the eye and the stomach into feeling satisfied with smaller serving amounts. If you’ve developed a super-sized view of a serving size, use a measuring cup to keep track for a while until you have retrained your eye.
ADD DON’T SUBTRACT – Instead of feeling like you are depriving yourself, add in healthy foods that you like and eat them before you eat the other foods. You’ll find that you eat less of the unhealthy foods and over time you will prefer eating only the healthy foods. A study was done awhile ago adding in only an apple per meal to participants’ diets. Not only did they eat less, they lost weight! So much so, a new diet was born! Who knew?
REPLACE – Another good thing to do is to replace unhealthy foods with their healthy counterparts. For instance you can stop buying unhealthy fats and use healthy fats such as olive oil and coconut oil in cooking. You can purchase sea salt instead of table salt. You can replace sugar or sugar substitutes with raw, natural, organic honey, Xylitol, or Stevia, a safe, all natural sweetener.
No one is perfect all the time, but by creating a plan and doing your best each day, you will find before long that you and your family are healthier, happier, and don’t miss the fat, sugar, or salt that used to sneak into your foods.
0 Responses
have grown by 25% since the 1970?s?; from what I’ve seen I’d say its more like 50%.
add in healthy foods that you like and eat them before you eat the other foods:
This is something I’ve always done and taken a lot of flack over too. I always start with salad, then the cooked veggies (not the starchy ones), a smaller portion of meat, and if, IF I’m still hungry, usually have an added serving of veggies and almost always I don’t eat desserts either.
I’ve been told in the past & present that I am wasting food etc. I am NOT a member of the “clean your plate club”, something which parents need to stop forcing on their children. Placing smaller portions on the plate in amounts you know you “can” or your children can eat works much better & doesn’t teach bad habits either.
Adding herbs and other seasonings to the foods will more than make up for taste when removing sugar, fats, and salt from home cooked foods too.
Yep those 3 are the main reason for modern day obesity + eating too many calories in one meal.