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Eating Healthy And Cooking Healthy
Eating healthily is all about balance
and having a bit of everything you fancy in moderation. But does this
need to be the case? I love fitness, and I love healthy food, but I
also love getting meals delivered to my door and enjoying them on the
sofa.
So I've decided to see whether it's
possible to eat healthily ordering all my meals from delivery apps
for a week:, and I won't allow myself to order the same dish twice.
For breakfast, I'll just have a simple
a bowl of porridge every day, and then I'm setting myself a budget of
£30 per day for lunch and dinner.
I think it might actually be quite
tricky to know what's really healthy because the delivery apps don't
tend to share any nutritional info, and you just don't know how things
are cooked and whether there's been loads of oil, but I'm really
looking forward to giving it a try and taking a break from cooking.
The first day starts really well. The
the order came in looks pretty good. It turns out it's cold, and it's
come with instructions saying I can either cook it in the microwave
for six minutes or the oven, and I just don't have time for that, so
I'm gonna have to eat it cold.
The end result seems to be quite a
healthy meal, but when I check the ingredients list, I realize it's
pretty high in sugar. I've also spent £29 today, It's Tuesday,
and I've ordered myself a protein-packed lunch.
It looked pretty good, and they say
it's 400 calories. That's quite a lot of food for 400 calories. All
the nutritional info is available, which helps, and it really fills
me up.
Now I know most people don't usually
think of Nando's when you think about eating healthily, however, you
can actually get some really healthy stuff. Eating well certainly
doesn't mean cutting out carbs.
Pita bread is delicious.one thing that
I have noticing about delivery is that I can often find the
nutritional info on the restaurant's websites even if it's not on the
app. But on Wednesday, things startto go somewhat off track.
My dinner is super tasty, and it's a lot
of food for just over 500 calories,which I certainly enjoy. However,
I do end up feeling super bloated after wards, which is less enjoyable.
On Thursday, I end up regretting my food
choices. This was almost unbearably spicy for me, and I was promised
a whole cauliflower, which I certainly do not receive.
I think I actually ordered some really
random stuff that doesn't actually go together mainly just because I
was trying to make healthy choices. And then for dinner.
There's just so much food, and it's all
quite greasy, It also arrives early whileI'm still in the shower
because you can't track the driver.
To be honest, I totally failed in my
quest to have a healthy dinner, probably both through the food I've
ordered and the quantity I've ordered. One silver lining, this is the
fourth day that I've come in under budget having ordered two large
portions a day.
Going into the final day,I'm feeling
pretty positive ordering from the app ,but I'm also shocked by the
amount of packaging that I've accrued this week. Seriously, so many
of the restaurants have included unnecessary packaging, flyers, and
extra bits of paper.
I basically have got a fajita but minus
the wrap with, like, extra chicken for extra gains. I finished the
week on a high with this delectable dinner. the smell was amazing.
Delicious, and Delivery guy pulled through with the order, and I'm
within budget again.
There were a few restaurants that were
available on multiple apps, but generally the best-quality food
options were on my fav, but you just need to know where to look, and
there are pitfalls.
Making healthy choices involves doing a
lot of research, looking up nutritional info online, and scrolling
through the apps for ages, and it was pretty time-consuming.
And the whole process certainly isn't
cheap. I barely managed to get a good filling lunch and dinner for
£30 a day, and imagine if you did that all year round.
You'd spend over £7,000. What's
more, I managed to accrue a terrible amount of plastic packaging. So
is it possible to eat healthily ordering all your food from delivery
apps? Yes, but it won't do your wallet or the planet any favors.
I started reading all magazine about
food and nutrition after ordering from outside and eating, Just for a
change I have tried something new
I am trying to experiment on some food
that I have red in some food magazine, It was amazing, they used all
kind of herbs in salads and the nuts, they used were so flaverful
well I want to make a few changes with
the orignal ingridiants.
My secret ingredient in making healthy
food to taste good is cashew cream, which is simple enough to make,
just start with a whole bunch of raw unsalted cashews.
Wrap in plastic wrap and let sit at
room temperature for at least 4 hours and once that's done, drain
them out and pour them into the jar of a high-powered blender along
with just enough water again to cover the cashews.
Blend on high speed for 1-2 minutes,
adding water as necessary until you get a thick creamy cashew cream.
This stuff has myriad uses in making healthy dishes creamy and rich.
It's high in fat but it still has
about half the fat of mayo and those are good fats ones that are
perfectly healthy to eat in moderation as I shall now demonstrate.
I'm going to combine 1/2 a cup of
old-fashioned rolled oats, a quarter cup of chia seeds, and a quarter
cup of our cashew cream diluted with 3/4 of a cup of water to make
cashew milk.
Close it up and give it a shake, and
then the overnight oats, live up to their name by going into the
fridge overnight.
Then in the morning you will be greeted
with a light sweet flavorful 2-3 servings of a nutritious base to
start your day.
I like to top this guy off with a few
handfuls of the berries of my choice and a little bit of freshly
chopped mint and this healthy, filling breakfast clocks in at about
366 calories and I personally like it a lot, but it does taste very
healthy.
How about something that tastes
decidedly unhealthy? And for me, that's a BLT. I've got four slices
of low fat turkey bacon here I'm frying up and it looks like a lot
of oil, but that helps make the bacon super crispy and it barely
absorbs any of it.
To make our cashew cream taste a bit
moreI will add mayonnaise to a couple tablespoons of the stuff, I'm
adding little sprinkles each of mustard powder cayenne pepper, garlic
powder, and onion powder along with the requisite sprinkle of kosher
salt and freshly ground pepper.
Give it a tiny whiskin' and a taste and
we're off to the races as with the real version, a BLT is only as
good as its T so try and find some heirlooms to make sure that it's
packed with flavor.
Next up I'm spreading some of our
"mayonnaise" on some sprouted whole wheat bread, lightly
toasted of course.
And then you can use butter lettuce if
you want the more traditional version, but I'm using a bit of spinach
for a healthy boost, stacking high with the ingredients in the order
of your choice.
Is this as good as a real BLT? Of
course not. Is it going to scratch the itch? Absolutely, and is it
going to do it while only costing you about 357 calories.
Now a big tenant of most training
diets is to eat smaller, more frequent meals throughout the day and
next up, I wanted one absolutely packed with protein.
One of my old favorites: chicken
salad, and I'm starting by butterflying three chicken breasts,
pressing them betwixt sheets of plastic, and using a meat pounder (or
a frying pan if you can't find yours)
Pounding them out to a uniform
thinness because when we're cooking breasts without bones or skin, we
want them to cook as quickly as possible which we're going to do in a
pot of not-quite boiling water 185 degrees Fahrenheit to be precise.
Adding the breasts is going to lower
the temperature so keep the heat on until the temperature comes back
up to 185 Kill the heat and try to put the lid on, realize that you
put a little bit too much water in there, wonder why you included
that in the edit cover it up and after about 15 minutes your chicken
should have reached 165 degrees Fahrenheit internally.
This method of poaching chicken poaches
it very gently and slowly which prevents it from getting all dry and
stringy like chicken breast dropped into boiling water.
Once those guys have cooled off a
little bit, 15 - 20 minutes we're going to wrap them in plastic wrap
and chill them completely for about an hour in the fridge.
Unless you want to eat your chicken
salad warm, which is your prerogative, We're chopping them into
bite-sized pieces and adding a few tablespoons of our cashew cream.
Then I'll toss some finely minced
green onions and parsley but this is really where you can customize
your chicken salad with whatever fruits, vegetables and herbs you
like.
I like to spice my chicken salad with a
little bit of curry powder, gain this is up to you. You could go
sweet, you could go savory, you could go Italian, you could go
Mexican.
Just make sure these are seasoned with
kosher salt and freshly ground pepper and you've got yourself a ton
of protein and healthy fats. This recipe yields 3-4 servings
depending on your appetite.
439 calories per serving which might
not come as much of a surprise, this looks and tastes pretty healthy.
But what about when we need to eat some pasta?
We'll peel and devein about a pound
of shrimp you can optionally hang on to all the shrimp shells to make
some shrimp stock to give your pasta some extra shrimpiness
It's simple enough to saute the shells
in a little bit of oil for about a minute and then add 2 cups of
water bring that to a simmer and then boil until reduced by about
half, leaving you with a nice basic seafood stock which will make a
great addition to our pasta.
In the cleaned out pan we are sauteing,
one small finely minced shallot jamming out with all our new-found
health and energy, adding about a cup of halved cherry tomatoes and
our crushed clove of garlic, sauteing together for about a minute.
Before adding maybe a half a cup of
water to help the tomatoes cook down then it's time to add maybe a
half cup of our shrimp stock and our shrimp spreading them out.
Make sure they evenly exposed to the
cooking liquid, getting rid of any errant shells and then over here
in a medium sauce pan I've got some red lentil pasta.
Flip the shrimp after about 2-3 minutes
and let them cook an additional 2-3 minutes on the other side.
Once the pasta is about a minute away
from being fully cooked It's time to add about 1/2 a cup of the pasta
water to the saute pan along with the cooked pasta, and let the pasta
finish cooking in with the sauce.
We will season it with kosher salt and freshly ground pepper and then just to kick the creaminess up to 11, a little dollop of our cashew cream which will give the pasta an almost vodka sauce like consistency.
Which just enhances the fact, the dish is a packed full of flavor. Now this makes two servings and each one will run you about 472 calories and unlike normal pasta, It's very high in fiber and protein. And there you have it: four meals with a grand total of 1634 calories.
Conclusion
Should you eat cashew cream with every
meal of every day? No, definitely not.
Otherwise, just stick to lean proteins
and green vegetables cut out as much sugar as you can and use these
recipes as tools in your arsenal of health.
Do not eat ordered food from the app too often though they serve good food, but it is bad for the nature and to your pocket, eat home cooked food and you will be safe in terms of money and health.
Try to cook your food by yourself, then you will be aware of what is going into your foods and into your body, you will be sure of your health and the factor e that is causing it.
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