PREPARING meals at home usually leads to healthier eating. However, there are some missteps you could be doing that could affect the quality of your diet.
- Salting without tasting
Whether you’re following a recipe or cooking on your own, salting your food without tasting it can result in a meal with more sodium than you need. Also, during the preparation of the meal, you can replace the salt with numerous spices that will complement the dish you are making. Additionally, the spice has been linked to antioxidant and anti-inflammatory health benefits, according to a March 2019 study. published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. - Do not use all parts of the food
How many times have you peeled vegetables before cooking them? This is one of the most common culinary mistakes, but you lose extra fiber, vitamins, minerals and antioxidants by doing so. For example, unpeeled potatoes have 42 percent more fiber than peeled potatoes, according to the USDA. Peeled potatoes also have significantly fewer antioxidants than unpeeled ones, according to a June 2013 study. published in Food Chemistry. - Use only foods that do not contain fat
Avoiding fat entirely while cooking is a recipe for disaster. Your body needs fat to absorb fat-soluble nutrients, such as vitamins A, D, E, and K. Fats are also an important source of energy and are necessary for cell growth, according to Harvard Health Publishing.
On top of that, low-fat alternatives tend to replace fat with sugar, especially when it comes to dressings and sauces. Instead of avoiding fat altogether, be mindful of how much and what kind of fat you use.
- You wait until you feel hungry to start preparing a meal
This is a common pitfall when it comes to preparing healthy meals, and it usually leads to one of two possibilities: Either you forgo the home-cooked meal you planned to prepare, or you eat everything in sight before the meal is finished. - You focus on what you need to get rid of instead of what you need to add
Almost every year there is a new hit diet that tells us which foods we should cut out of our lives. This may sound incredibly overwhelming, but it usually backfires.
Instead of focusing on what you need to eliminate, you can try adding vegetables to your meals that will fill you up and are low in calories.
- You always prepare the same meals
Nutritionally, you are not doing yourself a favor. There are many benefits of eating a variety of foods, such as obtaining various vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and other nutrients. Eating 30 different plant-based foods per week is associated with a more diverse gut microbiome, according to a May 2018 study. published in mSystems, according to Livestrong.
