Healthy Meals for a Healthy Lifestyle

If you want to serve healthy meals to your family, you must combine healthy foods. In fact, people who eat more nutritiously, generally live a healthier lifestyle. Healthy people have a glow about them, don't they? They feel and look more vital! The sad truth is that you simply cannot get essential vitamins and minerals from foods that are nutritionally baron!

Most people who live in the US follow the Standard American Diet, abbreviated SAD. People following the Standard American Diet are said to be 100% deficient in chromium, manganese, and essential fatty acids, 79% in folic acid, 76% in magnesium, 75% in selenium, and 65% in calcium. These same people are some of most malnourished people in the world. That means you and me!

An average American obtains about 42% of their calories from fats, 12% from proteins, (mostly meats and milk), and 46% from carbohydrates. In other words about 66% of the calories in the SAD comes from fats and sugar. Besides degenerative diseases which is what a deficient and imbalanced diet can cause, the SAD has been linked to violent behavior, learning disorders, aggression, and alienation.

Simply look no farther than your local supermarket shelves, fast food outlets, and school lunch programs for some of the most basic reasons.

Look simply scrumptious doesn't it?

Many people too, don’t know what healthy meals are or how to fix them. It’s not brain surgery but does take a bit of planning and relearning what you’ve been taught. What constitutes nutritious meals? There are many varied opinions but they are all based on the same principles. In order for meals to be nutritious, they must contain essential nutrients. When you cook foods too long, you cook out all the nutrients that they have which renders them useless to your body.

Healthy meals should consist of 3 or 4 ounces of lean meat, 1/2-more cup of vegetable or fruit, and 1/4 cup of carbohydrate or use the two-thirds, one-third rule.

In order to know how to cook foods, it’s also a good idea to go over what not to do also!

How to Cook Healthy Meals

Grilled and Smoked – Although many people loved grilled and smoked foods, it’s incredibly unhealthy for you to eat them for prolonged periods of time. The hydrocarbons that are contained in them are not only dangerous for you, they are toxic to your body! When grilled foods become black in color, the black part is the unhealthy part that contains dangerous hydrocarbons.

They may taste really good, but are horrible for your body and their effects can be far reaching. Hydrocarbons which are chemical carcinogens, are so powerful that they are commonly used to induce cancerous tumors in laboratory animals. Since these toxins are stored in the body and not easily excreted, the danger of consuming such foods grows greater over time.

Of all the food groups, meat is the one food that should not be overcooked. Prolonged heat alters the protein molecules in meat, which destroys most of its nutritional value. Cooking meat too much will completely destroy the natural protein digesting enzymes it contains and make it much harder to digest. Meat eaters would be well advised to eat their meat as rare as possible, preferably bloody.

Since pork cannot safely be eaten raw, it is best to forgo the pork and eat beef instead. Baking foods tend to dry them out and destroy all the enzymes and most of the vitamins. For this reason, it is best to avoid char-grilled and smoked foods in your choices for healthy meals.

Microwave - Microwaving foods alters the magnetic polarity of its atoms thousands of times per second, causing changes in the molecular structure and producing heat by atomic friction, thereby giving food the appearance, texture and taste of being cooked. This artificial alteration of electromagnetic polarity ruptures cell walls in food, releasing tremendous quantities of highly reactive free radicals. These are then consumed along with the food. Not only does microwave cooking destroy the enzymes, nutrients and energy potential of food, it also impregnates the food with free radicals which are known to be carcinogenic, immunosuppressive and a major cause of aging and degeneration. If you use a microwave to heat up leftovers, I suggest using glass containers only. Plastic containers can transfer harmful chemicals found within the plastics to the foods you heat up. I do not suggest that you don't eat your favorite grilled foods or that you avoid using a microwave altogether. Moderation is the key. Cook foods using these methods less often for your healthy meals.

Raw vs. Cooked – Raw fruits and vegetables are more nutritious, digestible, and cleansing to the body when consumed alone on an empty stomach. Raw fruits and vegetables provide more fiber to your intestines. Fibrous foods help to sweep digestive debris from the body. The best techniques to cook vegetables for easy digestion and top nutrition are steaming, poaching and stir-frying. All of these methods are relatively quick and help retain the foods nutritional values.

As a general guideline, it’s a good idea to consume 40% to 50% of your daily diet in the form of raw food. Raw fruits and vegetables are soothing, alkalizing and cleansing to the system.

One of the best ways to cook meat, especially fish or chicken, is to fry them in olive oil or broil them. Olive oil contains Omega 3 fatty acids and helps lower LDL cholesterol. Not all olive oils are created equal however. Olive oils that are most nutritious for you are cold hard pressed naturally which keeps the nutrients in the oil. Include nutritious oils in your healthy meals more often.

Snacks – When you think of healthy foods, snacks don’t generally come to mind. It's absolutely fine to eat a few healthy snacks inbetween healthy meals. The truth is that there are many foods that make very healthy snacks. Some examples include, plain popcorn, Sunchips, baked chips, fruits, yogurt covered raisins, trail mix, nuts, smoothies, health shakes, low sugar cereals, oatmeal, no preservative protein bars, natural breakfast bars, and so on. Other snacks we have in our home include low sugar cookies which don't have fiber but satiate the craving. Good choices include vanilla wafers, animal crackers, oatmeal cookies, and ginger snaps.

Healthy foods make healthy meals. Combine foods that have been nutritiously prepared into meals that are sure to please your palate and be good for you! If you have been eating a Standard American Diet for many years, it may take some time to get used to eating healthy meals and living a healthy lifestyle.

Rome wasn’t built in a day. Just like it took you a lifetime to get used to eating foods that were bad for you, it will also take some time to change your eating views and cook foods in a more nutritious way. Give yourself time. If you relapse or cheat, it’s fine. Don’t punish yourself. The trick is to eat nutritious foods more often and foods that are bad for you less often!

If you are interested in getting rid of the toxins in your body so you can be more healthy, please read this page.

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