Our grandparents’ generations used to wake up to a breakfast of ham, butter, cheese, jam, milk, eggs or whatever there was that their families could afford. Warm milk or tea with some bread to be dunk in. No digestive biscuits, no blackberries and low-fat yogurt, no cereal bars.
Nowadays, most of us have the luxury of affording to be fussy. And it’s this very pickiness that has led to the current four major mistakes and utterly wrong food approaches of which we are sublimely unaware.
Sweet Breakfast
Eating a so called salty breakfast, that is bread, butter and ham, is just not fashionable. Instead, cereal bars, low-fat yogurt and berries are deemed as healthy and are the norm.
We praise multiculturalism and support diversity, but we stick to the same breakfast day after day after day and we ingest way too much sugar than we should. Numerous studies and research have already pointed out that certain cereal bars and low-fat products contain more sugar than their regular counterparts and that the fat-free diet that we have recently become obsessed may actually cause more harm than good. This article published in the British Medical Journal states that saturated fat has actually been found to be protective; dairy foods provide vitamins A and D as well as calcium and phosphorous that may have anti-hypertensive effects. According to the same article, the advice of cutting out saturated fat has, paradoxically, increased our cardiovascular risks.
What to do?
Overcome our fear and try some eggs, boiled or fried with some bread or toast with butter.
Is butter too much for a first step, even though it has been finally proven that “butter is bad” is nothing but a myth? Then sprinkle some olive oil on that toast. And yes, adding some tomato slices on top is allowed. The whole purpose of eating is to satisfy a biological need: hunger. Let’s try some oatcakes or crackers with some cheese and whatever vegetables you fancy. Let’s be a bit more creative and diversify our breakfast. Meatballs and sausages are fine as long as there’s a sensible portion and we lower the quantity of the food during the rest of the day.
This used to be the norm on our grandparent’s days: eating a larger quantity in the morning, a bit less at lunch and even less for dinner, so that the body can process the intake of food and eliminate the toxins.
There’s no cheap place where you can eat healthily nowadays
Oh yes, there is such a place right under our nose: our very kitchen!
But cooking is no longer a necessity with all the supermarket shelves filled to the brim. We cook because we get bored, because we want to show off, or because it’s trendy. But we don’t cook because we need to eat.
Some recipes take less than 30 minutes, but we still find this too time consuming, difficult and messy. Unfortunately many people also wrongly assume you need to have some extra skills to be able to cook. Anybody can cook – that some can do it better than others – that’s a different story. But stick to the first statement – anybody can cook – it’s not rocket science!
It takes 10 minutes to make an omelette – whisk two eggs, grate some cheese, chop some parsley or whatever herbs you want and there you go. Whisk four eggs and you’ve saved tomorrow’s lunch or breakfast as well. We have invented fridges and microwaves and this one-day old omelette will be much healthier than the supermarket foods sprinkled with “anti-aging” potions.
Fancy some meatballs? Why don’t we make them? Buy some minced meat, put it in a bowl, add one or two eggs, salt, pepper, herbs, grate one raw potato (the starch will make the composition stick together) mix everything, make some patties and fry them. 30 minutes of our lives to save our own lives!
You’ll probably say that all that fried oil is far from being healthy, but the truth is that home-made meatballs are at least twice healthier than the powdery sachet lunches we pour into a bowl. This article published in Circulation, an American Heart Association journal explains that it’s not red meat but the processed meat that is associated with higher incidence of coronary heart disease.
A Burger is Cheaper than a Fruit Salad
I’ve heard this so many times – that fruit salads are more expensive than a bar of chocolate or some crisps. Well, with half the money we pay for a nicely packed salad, we’ll buy all the ingredients needed for five such portions. It does require some peeling skills indeed, and maybe 10 more minutes to chop the fruits as well.
A “Shortcut” for Homemade
There are so many food recipes and home-made cake pictures that although classified as homemade they just don’t seem genuine.
Buying some chicken stock to pour over some vegetables spoils the whole home-made concept. The same goes for the pancakes made with bought batter or the home made cupcakes we make as colorful as the rainbow. Good old recipes with butter, milk and flour are still to be found. Why spoil a day’s work with colorants and additives?
Eating healthily is neither expensive nor complicated. It will take some time, but it will save some money and most importantly our lives. It’s all about getting back to cooking for eating.
