Healthy Meals...

Fresh fruit and vegetables are definitely a good start. We have swapped to eating more pasta rather than potatoes, although a baked jacket potato is good. I try to steer clear of processed foods and canned goods if possible, going to lean meat like chicken rather than pork or lamb and although it may take longer to prepare and cook meals, using fresh vegetables is so much better. I also try to steam vegetables too, it seems to keep them crisp rather than soggy.

Going healthy isn't necessarily giving up the foods you love. In the case of potatoes, rice and pasta...it's not the item itself that isn't healthy...it's what is put on it. If you get away from butter and heavy sauces, you can enjoy healthier forms of the same foods. Use small amounts of olive or canola oils instead of butter or margarine. Use herbs and garlic for flavor instead of salt. Fresh vegetables and fruits are better than canned, but canned is more convenient in a pinch, or if time is an issue. Frozen is a reasonable bridge between the two if you buy the ones without added sauces and salt. In canned, look for ones without salt and sugar. You'd be surprised how often they add sugar to vegetables.

Everything fresh is better than anything canned! But frozen fruits and vegetables are healthy and convenient, too. If you read the ingredients label on a can, you will find that there is too much salt and all kinds of sweeteners added. Instead of just saying there is sugar in something, they break the sugars up with different names to make them go down further in the list. For example something may have "dextrose" and "sucrose" and "fructose" and "honey" and "brown sugar" and so on, each in some small amount, but when you add them up it would be the first ingredient. One thing to watch out for is beverages. Never buy any fruit "drink" because that is just sugar-water. "Natural" means nothing. The label has to say 100% juice and even then sometimes they add so much concentrated grape juice or whatever to make it too sweet that it is not healthy. Melons are good. Potatoes are good, too, but we have to watch what we put on the potatoes! White rice converts to sugar. I recommend that you use a healthy pasta such as Barilla PLUS which contains oat bran, flax seed, lentils, chick peas and other healthy stuff yet tastes very good. Use sea salt or Real Salt instead of commercial salt because the latter has sugar added (yes, to mask the taste of the aluminum they put in there, YUCK) See, that is what makes canned food so unhealthy. I add nuts and fruit to my salads and try to watch the dressings, because like potatoes, salads are healthy as long as we watch what we put on them. I eat a lot of smoothies and one of my favorite summer drinks is a peeled cooked sweet potato blended in ice with milk and a little honey. My yam shakes are rich and creamy and to me taste better than an ice cream shake. I applaud your resolve to make your meals healthier, and in time you be so glad you "evolved" -- lol!

I believe you can find all the information you want online. I know potatoes are starchy but i believe they are still haealthy. More healthy than pasta. Baking is better than boiling or frying. Boiling better than frying. Fresh is best. Frozen secondly. Canned last. In fact i rarely eat from cans at all. Its the liquid its packed in as well as the can itself. If i get anything canned i buy it in glass. Less package foods as possible. I believe potaotes are healthier than rice. Rice is starchy too. But i believe rice is better than pasta. If im wrong please let me know.

2/3rds Veggies, whole grain pasta or rice, stay away from white things, don't put them in your mouth. At least two servings of fruit, eaten raw, not canned or cooked. Drink green or white tea and some coffee. Yogurt is good, I add fruit to make it sweet. figure what weight you want to maintain and multiply by 100. Example 130 pounds eat 1300 calories per day. Very basic rules. Just remember the rule is calories in calories used, to maintain. Make pasta, rice servings the size of your hand, meat or fish the size of a pack of cards.

i've been on a diet for awhile and have lost 46 lbs...so my diet has worked and its basically a low fat vegan diet based on a book called eat to live...basically a lot of fresh veggies, a fruit smoothie, lots of beans, very few carbs (pastas and breads and candy are bad!) and lots of soy products

As we can get most every ting at the store fruits and veggies all year long we still eat about the same al year only grill out more in the summer time which is good to take the grease away on some meats!

we can get chicken fairly cheap from a wholesaler so we tend to eat a lot of chicken (it is such a versatile meat!) we eat it with pasta and with stir frys in the winter and with wraps (tortillas) and salads in the summer.

Usually in summer our diet changes too because more FRESH fruits and veggies are in season! Our summer diet mostly consists of fresh fish, home made ceasar salad, a veggie like fresh carrots, beans, or corn on the side, and fresh strawberries with a scoop or two of ice cream for dessert. As a treat once a week or so we will have a bbq'd steak or pork chops with a baked or mashed tators, but we mostly eat salads and lighter stuff as I HATE feeling full in summer with the heat.Also because we are in Canada during the spring, summer, and fall, we walk more then in winter. In winter it gets so cold we just stay home and darn near hybernate!

Eating healthier is on most everyone's minds lately with all the news about the general health of the nation. Good for you. White rice and pasta are not particularly healthy, although they are filling and many people who are on a more strict budget now days are using these inexpensive foods to cut cost. I like to use brown rice as most of the nutrients in rice are in the bran (outside hull). It takes a little longer to cook than white rice, but is much more nutritious and tasty. You can get whole wheat pasta which is a better choice as far as nutrients go, but I don't like the texture of it. It takes some getting used to. Potatoes are healthy. It's all the dressings we put on them that make them unhealthy. Choose sour cream over butter or margarine to add to your baked potato. Definitely try sweet potatoes. They are one of the most nutrient rich vegetables available. Fresh greens should be available now and are very high in nutrients. If you aren't already using herbs and spices in your foods, try adding some one at a time just to get used to the taste. Italian and Mexican spices are the most popular and are used in many fast foods, so your palate may already be used to them. They contain micro-nutrients that help your body assimilate the nutrients in other foods, aid in digestion, and provide those trace minerals that are missing in many other foods. Fresh and frozen vegetables are much healthier than canned veggies. Canning requires high heat for a long period of time which depletes all the nutrients. Avoid processed food. One food critic has called these a "food like substance". They contain a high percentage of artificial flavoring and chemical preservatives which our bodies tend to store because they are unidentifiable as nutrient or waste. Anything our bodies store either impact the liver or build up in fat cells and later cause many diseases and illness. Good luck in your new journey into healthier eating.

Hi Twoey, I have come to the conclusion if it tastes good , spit it out, lol. it's not good for u. I love good food but everything u read about affects something i have. I got a bad lab report back so i'm trying to watch what i eat,no fun at all. lol

I love cantaloupes and watermelon, too! That's one of the things I like about summer! I think rice is still healthy. I eat brown rice all the time when I do eat it because it's high in fiber and I have to be on a high fiber diet. I eat baked potatoes a lot, too. I think fresh vegetables are healthier than canned vegetables. However, I don't always have access to fresh vegetables so I eat canned vegetables just about all the time. As far as the fruits, I feel the same way about them. I eat a fresh apple everyday. I also love salads! I have one just about all the time as an appetizer. Kathy.

Watch your carb and calarie counts. Those are your real killers. Pasts an okay thing but its not for everyone so be a little bit careful with that. try whole grain pastas and breads those are full of slow-burning fuel that will leave you fuller longer. protien is good as well. and eat light and often and stactive.

I think all things are okay so long as it is in moderation. They say you should eat a rainbow,meaning as many colours of food as possible. There was a program about food and health on TV a few years ago where the presenter would pile a table with all the things that the culprit was eating in a week and nearly always it was a table covered in browns and whites; chips and crisps and greasy meats adn hardly any fruit or vegetables.

There are lots of salads besides the regular "greens" type salads. Try anything that has oil and vinegar dressing rather than creamy dressings. I like broccoli florets, sunflower seeds, raisins and red onion. Add a little grilled chicken and it is a whole meal. Use things with more color. Buy whole grain pastas, brown rice, cook your potato in its skin. I like frozen almost as well as fresh when it comes to fruits and vegetables.

I like the fresh veggies, the are good for you. I believe we should stay away from Pasta and breads. I also use frozen veggies, they are good too. A lot of fruits are good and nuts for snacks.

Wild greens and organic yogurt is my favorite meal in the summertime. Lamb's quarters have so many more vitamins and minerals than anything you buy in the store that it's amazing. I get high on that. Normally, I can't afford organic yogurt, but if I eat wild food, that I pick myself, for free, I can afford more expensive stuff. I know, I know, you live in the City, can't do wild greens. Read the cans. Most of the vitamins have been cooked out of canned stuff. Fresh or frozen usually have more vit and minerals, but that depends on how many days since picked. If they came from California, they're on a truck longer than Florida. Then they sit in the store. The healthiest is straight out of a garden. I know, you live in the city. I've seen some beautiful rooftop gardens from cities, including NYC. I've only seen them in magazines, so I don't know where they are, but they have grown some incredible oasis(es-is that a word?) on the ones I've seen. Healthy depends on the source. If it's grown in chemicals instead of non-contaminated dirt, it's not as healthy. I've been sampling some incredible wraps at our co-op this week. Lentil wrap one day and hummas wrap another. They had carrots, greens, all kinds of stuff, even beets sometimes.

One thing to be careful about when eating more salads is the dressing. A lot of them are chock-full of calories. As far as canned veggies/fruits go, the very best are the home-canned ones. Otherwise, you could read each label very carefully. A lot of them have so much sodium or sugar that, even if the vegetable/fruit itself is healthy, it becomes unhealthy. Remember, salt makes us retain water so avoid high-sodium foods. (Restaurants are infamous for adding tons of salt or sugar to their foods.) I subscribed to eDiets.com. They have thousands of very healthy recipes and often tell you what to substitute some foods with to avoid more calories. They also offer excercise tips. I love this site and it's free to join. There's a commercial on TV that tries to push high fructose corn syrup, making it sound like it's not bad for us when, in fact, it is bad. Sugar is not bad, as long as we burn as many calories as we consume but high fructose corn syrup is harder to utilize (or convert to energy) than cane sugar. So, not all sugars are created equally. Avoid high fructose corn syrup. Some canned fruits contain that which is really stupid since fruit has natural sugars and doesn't need more. I'd suggest that you read as much as you can about nutrition. That's how I've learned all that I have and I've managed to lose weight and keep it off, mainly by reading labels and eating more fruits and veggies in place of fattening snacks. This summer, hopefully, I'll have a huge array of different fruits/veggies to eat because I'm growing almost everything possible to grow in my zone and I'm trying to make ordinary things, like watermelon, more fun by growing all the different colors available now. Did you know that watermelon can be red, orange, yellow and white? I'm going to attempt to grow all four. I'm doing the same with carrots, potatoes, cauliflower, melons, etc. My husband says he won't touch the foods that aren't the "traditional" colors. That's his loss and more for me, then! Good luck and have fun trying new things!

I love cantaloupe. Nothing better than a nice and sweet cantaloupe. Baked potatoes are very good for a added item for meals. I think one way to eat very healthily is to eat five to six snacks a day instead of the tradition three meals aday. I help keep your metabolism high and is alot better for you. Dry cereals with fruit and lots of fruits made into salads. Yum! Best time of the year!

healthy meals good idea about this one, me too i want to know more of a healthy foods that we should eat any idea about this out there guys thanks..