In the Kitchen
Take control over the type, quality, and source of the food that goes into your body.
Your food choices have a significant impact on your health and the world around you. These choices:
- Affect your physical and mental health
- Affect the environment
- Affect the lives of those who grew it
While fad diets such as the South Beach or Atkins low carb diet come and go, they may not always be the best ways to lose weight and keep it off – for good!
“The best way to loose weight is to expend more energy than you consume each day and to eat a healthy well-balanced diet”
A well balanced diet plays a bigger role in our lives than just helping us to lose weight. It may have other positive effects on reducing our risks of diabetes, cancer, stokes, and heart attacks. Our diet plays a vital role in our physical health.
Not only does what we eat effect our physical health in terms studentof our weight and cholesterol levels but it also has an effect on all of our health including our mental health. For example, scientists are beginning to find links between the food we eat and mental health conditions such as Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and depression.
Then, there is also the question of who grew and produced your food?
Not only what we choose to eat, but how it was grown is important. For example, if we choose to eat fast-food hamburgers that were produced by “slashing and burning” rainforest to provide grazing lands for cattle, then we are indirectly supporting the destruction of that rainforest too.
For example, if you looked in your fridge right now, would you know what country your food came from, who grew it, and using what techniques?
You might also want to ask yourself:
- Was your food grown from genetically modified seeds?
- Was it sprayed with harsh chemicals and grown in soil full of artificial fertilizers?
- Have you supported local farmers or ones from other countries?
- If your food was grown in another country, was it fairly traded?
Here are some simple pointers to get started at eating healthier:
- Try serving a non-meat meal twice a week
- Change red to white meats
- Buy organic meat
- Eat a wide variety of foods
- Choose whole, unrefined foods
- Buy whole grain breads
- Buy organic produce
- Eats lots of fresh raw vegetables and fruit
- Lightly stream vegetables using only a little water as this will help preserve the nutritional content
- Use small amounts of oil for cooking (use an oil “mister” to lightly spray the bottom of pans )
- Cook with lots of fresh herbs as they often have healing properties
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