by Mark Szabo
One of the biggest gripes I hear from clients who haven’t yet become clients is, “I tried eating healthy, but health food is so boring!” So, why are you making it taste boring?
Ah, you’re not – you’re buying the pre-packed items from the “health food” section of the grocery store. There’s your first problem. Most of that is fine sitting right there on the shelf. Just because someone labeled it as “healthy,” doesn’t mean you need to eat it.
In fact, there are loads of products on the shelves that are using healthy sounding “buzz words” to try to convince you that this particular bag of corn chips is good for you. We call this the “Health Halo Effect.”
It’s like when the manufacturer puts “Gluten Free!” on a box of snacks that have never been made using any gluten-based ingredients. Or maybe “Fat Free!” on a bottle of salad dressing that’s had the sugar content cranked up to eleven to compensate for the loss in taste due to the removal of fat.
Sometimes you’ll see “Zero Trans Fats!” on the label. This means there are trans fats in the product, but they fall below the level required by law to list them on the ingredients panel.
Now I’m not saying that all food companies are trying to deceive you. But there are so many playing this game that you do need to take a look at the back of the package to make sure it’s what you want to be eating.
Or, you could steer away from those processed foods and start making your own meals from whole food ingredients.
If you’re now asking, “what are Whole Foods? Do you mean the supermarket chain Whole Foods?” No, I do not. I mean, foods that are whole.
To be a whole food is to recognize what that food item used to be. For example, say a chicken thigh, as opposed to a chicken nugget.
By looking at a chicken thigh, you can see the fibers in the muscle tissue. There may be a bone inside. There may still be skin attached.
When we look at a chicken nugget, on the other hand, it’s basically a homogonous blend of things, pressed into a nugget shape, breaded and deep fried. What’s inside of that blend isn’t so clear. It might be meat. It could also be ground skin and byproducts. Certainly, this nugget did not come to be by natural means.
Or maybe we could look at an orange, vs an orange creamsicle. The wrapper on the outside of the orange is its own natural skin. Peeling it open, we can see that this was a fruit that had grown on a tree. It looks quite natural.
Then there’s the orange creamsicle. The wrapper on the outside here is a waxy paper product. We can see the seam and we can tell where it was mechanically pressed together. Peeling it open, we see a frozen slurry of light-orange colored goo on a stick. Clearly, the creamsicle was produced in a factory.
And that’s pretty much the difference. The more processed a food is, the more difficult it is to tell what it used to be.
Also, generally speaking, the more processed a food is, the less nutritive value it contains.
Meaning, if you want to be healthy, cooking your own food is going to get you there a lot faster and for less money than buying pre-packaged “health foods.”
Especially if you’re growing your own fruits and vegetables!
Here on our Eclectic Sanctuary Homestead, we’re growing fruits, veggies, squashes, tomatoes, peppers, and a bunch of culinary herbs. We even have a set of laying hens that provide us with the freshest eggs you’ll ever eat.
Don’t have your own garden yet? Do you have a friendly neighbor with a garden? How about a nearby farm stand?
Are you willing to get a little dirty? Even if you have a compact property, or live in a townhome or apartment with no yard at all, you can get a container garden going.
Container gardens won’t be as productive as plants sown directly into the Earth, but you can still get a decent yield. (Container chickens, not so much…)
Herbs are a great choice for container gardens!
If you don’t want your food to be boring, you need to season it. Seasoning with fresh herbs is the best taste you’re going to get.
Speaking of seasoning, there are a lot of spices to choose from, and it’s not likely you’ll be able to grow all of them in your yard. Which means you’ll want to have some ground, granulated, or powdered (or any combination thereof) spices on-hand.
When it comes to cooking, I like using as much fresh stuff as I can. Typically that means I’m chopping up at least a fresh onion and a handful of garlic cloves when making dinner.
You can, of course, use powdered or desiccated flakes instead of the fresh; however, you do get more benefit from adding the whole foods into the meal. Some of the nutritive value is lost when these foods are dried and turned into powdered spices. The flavor is still there, but when the goal is health, the whole foods have the most nutrients.
When I was unhealthy, I still cooked dinner. At that point in time, I used to use dried onion flakes and granulated garlic for everything. I hadn’t switched to olive oil yet, so I would add canola oil to the pan, dump in the onion flakes, add heat, and “reconstitute the onion flakes.”
At least, that’s what I told myself I was doing back then. The reality is that once those flakes had been dehydrated, allowing them to soak up oil was only making them more fattening.
It is totally possible to make a meat chili and not add any vegetables to it. I know, I’ve done it. Ground beef, onion flakes, granulated garlic, chili powder, cumin, paprika, salt and pepper. That was the very first chili that I ever made.
It was as awful as you’re imagining.
I was still in my 20’s and didn’t know to add pureed tomatoes to give it that smooth consistency. I was working at my Uncle John’s commercial bakery in New Brunswick, NJ at the time. He had owned Van’s Deli for over a decade before opening the bakery and had worked as a chef in various restaurants.
Naturally, I told him about my chili-making escapade, and the first thing he said was, you forgot the tomatoes, and you really should throw some bell peppers in there.
Now, I really like chili, so I’ve since learned to make it a bunch of different ways. All of them, though, are loaded with fresh veggies. In addition to being healthier, the fresh veggies also taste better. Your tongue knows the difference.
I am not a Master Chef, and in fact, I have no formal training in cooking, but my food tastes good, and it’s healthy. If you want to learn how to cook, let me know. We periodically run Deliciously Healthy classes right here at the Homestead. If you’re interested, join the waitlist by clicking on the link below and we’ll let you know when the next class will be 😊
https://www.eclecticwellbeing.com/DeliciouslyHealthyInterest
Until then, I encourage you to experiment in the kitchen! The worst thing that can happen is you’ll discover what you don’t like.
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