Healthy eating! The diet that most of us always want to have in our lives; healthy and balanced diet. Some of us have a hard time making healthy eating a lifestyle. Have you ever thought about why it is so difficult for most of us to adopt a healthy diet? Here is the answer: Habit change! "Yes, we already know, but we have difficulty because we cannot change habits." I seem to hear you say, but the point I really want to emphasize is that when we say healthy nutrition, the first thing that comes to our mind is always food. When we decide to eat healthy, we focus so much on what we should and shouldn't eat that we ignore the issue of habit change without realizing it. However, healthy eating is not just about food!
Where to Start?
1. Step: Habit Change
We decided to eat healthy. We also want to make this a lifestyle and change our habits. So where to start? Grocery Shopping! We bought our shopping cart, we are wandering around the market for weekly shopping. Generally, at this stage of our life habits, we always forget the diets we started on Monday, the healthy eating decisions we made for a healthier life, and our clean slates while grocery shopping. In fact, habit change should come into play at this point, and we can start the process of adopting healthy eating as a lifestyle by changing our grocery habits. For a healthy diet, paying attention to points such as not having some junk food snacks at home, making healthy choices while shopping, reading labels and adding basic healthy foods and functional foods to the basket can be our first step in making healthy eating our lifestyle and incorporating healthy eating habits into our lives. Our changing market basket images will turn into our normal life day by day! Here is the first step of change. ☺
Snacks, Snacks, Soft Drinks?!
2. Step: Kitchen Detox!
Yes, kitchen detox! If you ask what this kitchen detox is, we can say that it is freeing our kitchen from packaged foods full of additives, junk foods and snacks, and sugary soft drinks. As our preferences in our shopping cart change, after a while you won't believe the change taking place in your kitchen! A refrigerator containing healthy foods will make great contributions to the health of not only you but also your family. What we will keep in our refrigerator for our kitchen detox; We can give examples such as washed and ready-to-consume seasonal fruits, washed greens and vegetables suitable for making salads, fermented dairy products such as yoghurt-kefir-quark, mineral water, cold teas with high antioxidant content such as cold green tea or fermented kombucha tea, seasonal fish or frozen fish. . When we choose the foods in our kitchen in accordance with a healthy diet and do not keep harmful choices in our home, it will be much easier to make healthy choices when it is meal time or when we are hungry and want to snack.
Food Additives?
3. Step: Reading the Label
We dietitians always say that we should stay away from packaged foods. So why? And of all? Actually no. It would not be a correct approach to generalize that all packaged foods are harmful. There are many factors that affect whether a packaged food is healthy or unhealthy. At this point, the habit of reading labels becomes very important.
For healthy label reading and healthy choices, we can choose the products we will buy by considering the following four main questions.
1. Does it contain additives? (Choosing the product that does not contain additives or contains fewer additives among two similar products)
2. What is the quality of the nutrients it contains? (For example, if you are going to buy a light snack cereal bar, choose the product sweetened with fruit or honey or the product containing beet sugar, rather than the product containing glucose syrup, and prefer the products containing purer and natural nutrients in similar products)
3. What are the amounts of nutrients in one serving? (Compare carbohydrate, sugar, protein, fat and fiber contents) you know.)
4. What are the storage conditions and how long does it last? (We should make choices considering the frequency of consumption of the foods we will buy. For example, if we are not going to consume them within 2-3 days, it would be a more logical and healthy choice to buy flash-frozen fish without additives rather than buying fresh fish or canned fish with oil-salt additives.)
What should we focus on?
4. Step: It's a matter of choices!
We have talked a lot about the importance of the choices we make during our grocery shopping in terms of healthy nutrition. So what should we buy and what should we focus on? At this stage, it is possible to examine foods in 6 main groups. These are; grains, meat and meat products, milk and dairy products, fruits, vegetables and oils. It is of course possible for us to choose healthier products in these 6 food groups. To give an example of healthy choices; Prefer bulgur instead of rice, whole grain bread instead of white bread, and whole wheat flour instead of white flour in grain group foods; In meat and meat products, instead of offal with additives such as salami, sausage, sausage, prefer low-fat, additive-free meat with quality protein pattern; giving priority to fermented dairy products such as yoghurt and kefir in milk and dairy products; Many more examples can be given, such as choosing vegetable oils such as olive oil and seasonal fruits and vegetables instead of solid oils.
Functional Foods
< p5. Step: Purpose-Oriented Personal Preferences!Although healthy nutrition is generally a diet with certain principles, our personal needs can often differ. For example, if you are in a period where you do intense sports, your needs will be different, if you are in a period period, your needs will be different. Therefore, adding functional foods tailored to your personal needs to your grocery shopping will help you achieve your goals in life. You can make your life more enjoyable by adding functional foods to your shopping cart that will support your lifestyle and goals with their specific properties, such as foods high in Omega-3, antioxidant foods with high ORAC value, fermented foods, and high fiber foods. Remember...
Healthy eating starts with healthy grocery shopping!
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