What foods should I eat?

When I first wanted to eat healthy foods, I found that it was hard to think of foods to eat that are healthy. I could think of things that were really unhealthy, like fried foods, but I could only think of fruits and vegetables for healthy foods. Day after day I would eat fruit as a snack, but I got tired of that easily and resorted to unhealthy foods just because I didn’t know what else to eat. For people that want to be a vegetarian or a vegan, it is hard to start because you really don’t know many recipes that don’t contain meat. This compares to eating healthy. To solve this problem, I made a list of certain foods that I always have in my house or that I should keep in my house that are healthy, so when I am hungry I can quickly find something healthy to eat. I also wrote a list of foods that I would eat often that were not healthy at all and that I should only eat once in a while.

Here is my list that I started when I first started being healthy: 

EAT THIS

Kombucha

Green Tea

The honest tea

Shake station

DRINK LOTS OF WATER…it fills you up

Tea (without sugar/ milk)

Eat fruit for a snack         

Chicken

Fish

Lara bars/ Kind Bars

Brown rice (don’t eat too much, but it is a lot better than white rice!)

Healthy Smoothies (do not use much sugar)

Need fruit with skin (eat skin because it is filling)
Light Balsamic Vinaigrette (Margetti)

Herbal Tea

Sweet Potatoes-->no butter

Wheat Germ (goes great with 1 minute eggs!)

Lentil Soup

Oatmeal

Veggies-->Broccoli has lots of Vitamin C (more than oranges)

Beans

Yogurt

Hummus

Whole wheat pita bread…not multi grain (unless made with whole grains, multi grain bread has the same nutritional value as white bread. Without the whole grains, there is not as much bran and germ, therefore there isn't a lot of fiber and nutrients.)

Dark Chocolate (only if you are really craving chocolate)

Walnuts

Almonds

Boiled Eggs

Apples + Peanut Butter

Mustard instead of mayonnaise

Saladà spinach mixed in

Miso Soup

Greek Yogurt or light Activia

Spicy food fills you up

Pickles

Peanut butter (in moderation because it has a lot of fat, it is just very filling)

Canned tuna- no mayo- sub balsamic vinaigrette

Kidney Beans (beans have a lot of fiber)

Tomatoes

Fiber 1 cereal

Wheat Chex

DON’T EAT THIS

Chips

Don’t drink anything over 10g of sugar per serving

Beef/Pork/Hamburg (can have in moderation)

French Fries

Dairy (can have in moderation)

High fructose corn syrup

Corn (very sugary and starchy grain)

Mac and Cheese

Goldfish, Cheez-its, Cheese Nips

Chocolate animal crackers

Cookies

Candy

Caesar dressing-->anything white and creamy

Cheddar cheese

Muffins

Bagels

Jelly

White bread

White chocolate

Ketchup (get the natural one)

Cream cheese

Buttery Popcorn (if you need to have butter on it try lightly buttered)

* Remember that you don’t need to cut out these foods completely, just eat them once in a while and eat them in moderation. Also, this is an exclusive list- there are many other foods that are healthy and many that are unhealthy. If you want, write a comment about foods you know are unhealthy or healthy and I will consider adding them to my list.

Sometimes people eat without realizing how much they eat or how bad the foods are that they are eating. I advise everyone to read labels before eating so you know the nutrition facts. Make sure you don’t skip over the part that says “serving size” because something might seem healthy because there aren’t that many calories, but the serving size might be so small that you eat multiple servings and consume more calories than you thought. For example, say your favorite cereal says 100 calories, that seems healthy, but if the serving size is ¼ a cup and you are eating a cup or more, then that is at least 400 calories that you would be consuming without even realizing it. A good strategy to making sure this doesn’t happen is measuring out how much you eat before you eat it. This stops you from over eating and consuming multiple servings without realizing it. Some people even find it helpful to keep a food diary. This is great because it allows you to see how much food you ate, what you ate and where you went wrong. When you have this written in front of you, then you might realize that you had too many snacks throughout the day or you ate too much of one thing. If you know that information, then you can fix what you did wrong the next day. 

Attack on Fast Food French Fries

(Shortened Version Below)

Longer Version Below

(Part 1)

       

               After reading Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, I learned a lot of information on how McDonald’s French fries are made and how most people don’t actually know the ingredients in the food the foods they eat. First, the process by which these French fries are made is unbelievable. Machines turn thousands of potatoes into French fries each day. Here is the process: First conveyor belts blast the potatoes with steam then they boil water underneath the skins causing the skins to explode off. Then the potatoes are pumped into a preheat tank and are shot through a gun knife that uses a high pressure hose to shoot potatoes at a speed of 117 feet per second through a grid of sharpened steel blades. They are fried in boiling oil (SO BAD FOR YOU!) and frozen by air compressed ammonia gas. Robots package and stack the fries then put them into freezers. The crazy part is that after this entire process, the fries don’t have much flavor. They get their flavor from the oil that they are reheated in. McDonald's used to fry the French fries in 7 percent cottonseed oil and 93 percent beef tallow, but switched to vegetable oil when people found out that there was more beef fat in the fries than there was per ounce in a McDonald’s burger. Since the vegetable oil doesn’t give the fries the beef flavor, McDonald's relies on a company called International Flavors and Fragrances to give the fries their flavor. 

They use natural flavors in the oil that they cook the fries in. (The difference between natural flavors and artificial flavors is that natural flavors are just derived from a natural source and artificial flavors aren't-->natural flavors are NOT healthier) These flavors are made from many different chemicals and what’s weird is that you can smell the exact flavors of typical foods you eat without even having any substance in front of you! McDonald's will not say their exact flavor that they put into the fries, but they did say that it derives from some flavor of animal product. Before reading this book, I would have thought that the McDonald's French fries that I was eating were just skinned and cut up potatoes that were deep fried, but this book just proves how much I didn’t know about what I was eating. This entire process is so unhealthy and made me want to never eat McDonald’s fries again.

Now whenever I crave French fries, I will cut up potatoes, skin them, and make the fries myself in a frying pan with a little bit of vegetable oil or olive oil and then I will bake them in the oven for a couple of minutes and add a little bit of salt. This is the much healthier option and by making fries yourself, you actually know what the French fries are made of. One last thing: don't use too much ketchup with the fries because ketchup contains a lot of sugar!

Here is a healthy French fry recipe from Women's Health Magazine

olive oil spray
2 pounds baking potatoes
1/4 tsp salt, plus more to taste, if desired
1 1/2 tsp extra virgin olive oil

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Lightly mist a medium nonstick baking sheet with olive oil spray.
3. Use a crinkle cutter to peel potatoes by cutting close to the edges on each side and end. Discard peels. Then use crinkle cutter to cut peeled potatoes into 1/3-inch thick sticks (they will vary in length).
4. Toss potato sticks with salt and extra virgin olive oil. Spread them in a single layer on the prepared baking sheet.
5. Bake for 15 minutes, then flip and bake for another 16 to 18 minutes or until just crisp on the outside and tender inside. Season with additional salt to taste and serve.

Makes 4 portions. Per portion: 105 calories, 2 g fat (trace saturated fat), 20 g carbs, 2 g protein, 2 g fiber, 152 mg sodium, 0 mg cholesterol

**If you ate this instead of traditional fries with these healthy french fries, you'd save 201 calories, 24 g fat, and 5 g saturated fat.