Clean eating: A new look at food

[Leon]

Next time you're with a young child, ask them where prunes come from -- it's highly unlikely they'll have an answer for you. (In fact: do you know?) We've come a long way as a society in terms of health knowledge, but it's scary how we've lost sight of where our food comes from.

All too often, processed and packaged foods -- colourful packages full of ingredients we can't pronounce and don't recognize-- have become our diet mainstays. We've forgotten the importance of what we put on our tables and in our bodies.

That's why the concept of clean eating is growing in popularity.

Clean eating is a new way of looking and thinking about food -- and it's not a diet. Essentially, it means eating food in its most natural state. It's a healthy approach that shifts your mindset from eating to satisfy, to eating to nourish.

Over the years, we've lost sight of what real food looks like. Foods have lost their nutritional value as a cocktail of sugars, salts, fats, preservatives, artificial colours and flavours have been added to extend shelf life. When a natural food is altered to this extent and over-processed, it is no longer considered "clean."

So what happens when you choose clean foods? These less refined and processed choices can improve energy levels, stabilize blood sugars and make you feel "full" for longer. They can help you boost your metabolism, lose weight and reduce your risk for chronic disease. These foods are broken down more slowly by the body, which means you take longer to digest them -- this keeps insulin levels in check and body fat levels down.

This permanent change to how you eat and look at food is liberating. By choosing water to quench your thirst over pop or sweetened juices, for example, you rehydrate, help remove toxins from your body and help keep your energy levels up -- all by making one simple choice. As well, you save more than 250 sugar calories from entering your body.

Deciding to cook your own baked sweet potato fries takes only an extra 15 minutes to prepare compared to opening a package of frozen, commercially packaged fries, and it prevents loading your body with refined carbohydrates, BHA, benzoates and sulphites.

By popping your own popcorn with an air popper and topping it with flaxseed oil instead of nuking and eating a package of high sodium, colour-laced and mystery-fat microwave popcorn you nourish your body with fibre, vitamin A, complex carbohydrate grade A fuel and lutein. And (bonus!), you save on packaging.

Making smarter, clean eating food choices isn't difficult -- it just requires planning ahead. When we have healthy food on hand, including snacks, we and our children make better choices. When you're more satisfied with good food more often, you have fewer cravings for sugars, fats and sodium-rich packaged foods.

So, depend on fresh fruits and vegetables for carbohydrate fuel, fibre, antioxidants and digestive enzymes. The more plant-rich foods you eat, the better you and your family feel.

Clean eating helps us restore and heal our bodies. It is a positive way of eating that will help us re-nourish our lives and our children's, today and for the future. Lastly, this smart clean way to eat is not only healthy, but also preserves our Earth. (P.S. It's plums.)

* Clean Eating Tips *

- Load at least half your plate at each meal with an assortment of fruits and/or vegetables.

- Move away from the refined sugar-rich cereals into more natural whole grains to increase your family's nutritional status overnight.

- Find new recipes for interesting grains and try to cook with wild rice, bulgur wheat, quinoa, brown basmati rice and millet.

- Eat steel-cut oatmeal more often.

- Use dried fruits, honey, maple syrup and preserves to naturally sweeten hot cereals.

- Include healthy fats, such as a variety of nuts, seeds, avocados and unprocessed oils. Healthy fats stabilize blood sugars and nourish all cells.

- Try natural nut butters, dry-roasted nuts and pumpkin seeds for satisfying snack foods.

- Have lean proteins with little or no saturated fats or trans fats at each meal. Egg whites, wild game, fresh fish, chicken and turkey, as well as legumes, such as chickpeas, lentils and black beans, are pure proteins that contribute to a lean body mass and a healthy metabolism.

- At the grocery store, the fewer ingredients on a food label the better. Shop the outside aisles to keep fresh, clean food in your cart. Once you enter the inside aisles, you'll find over-processed and highly refined foods.

[Super boy]

very nice sharing leon

[impressible4u]

very nice sharing 

[Master Mind]

very nice bohat achi sharing ki ap ne for sharing 

[King]

very nice good info.

[bakr124]

  nice

[anjumkhan]

  very nice