Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Are Restaurant Meals Really Healthy?

By Dan Sewinski

With the humongous servings that restaurants serve these days, Americans have grown used to eating large amounts of food every day. This is good if the food that they eat is nutritious and lesser in calories. Unfortunately, this is not the case. That is why, it is important that when you do eat at home, you eat healthy and light as much as you can to counteract the calorie intake that you have gotten. This starts with the cooking light.

The oil used in cooking is as important as the food when it comes to cooking light. Oil can greatly increase any food's calorie and fat totals. Even if you use only healthy vegetables and other low-calorie foods, adding a lot of animal fat in your cooking oil will make the dish unhealthy when you've finished cooking it.

Follow these tips to make sure your home cooking is light and healthy. First and foremost, use oil that is vegetable-based. Doing so will allow you to cook your food so that it does not have much fat or calories. Corn oil and palm oil are some of the most popular choices. These oils are made of good cholesterol which helps in two ways. First, good cholesterol actually helps your heart function right. Second, good cholesterol counteracts bad cholesterol as from the fat from animal products.

No added chemicals: As much as you can, do not put any other chemicals or flavoring into your food that are not natural. It adds to the unhealthiness of the dish that you are serving. Powder flavoring may help enhance the taste in the dish that you are cooking but it can also cause liver and kidney problems because of its high salt content. Another thing to avoid is to use deep fried mixes and batter to your food as this only add to the caloric content of the food but none to the nutritional content.

In order to have a healthy diet, you should replace some servings of meat with vegetables and seafood. It is best to have meat for only one or two meals a day. Your family will still gain the protein they need, while reducing harmful fats and cholesterol. White meats, such as turkey or chicken, are more healthy than red meats, such as pork and beef. Turkey and chicken contain less cholesterol than red meats. If you must serve a red meat, choose pork because you can quickly remove the fat from the meat. It is difficult to remove fat from beef since the fats are distributed throughout the meat.

You should definitely cook fewer servings while you're cooking healthy, low-calorie foods. This is even more important when you're cooking dinner. You should gradually change the content of dishes to include less rice and more of the main course, but you can run into health problems if you do this suddenly. Young children need to get all the nutrients required for their bodies to mature, so don't change their dinners. Kids should not overeat, but they also should not be placed on diets unless a doctor makes it clear that's what you should do.

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