The secret to eating well at home is having a repertoire of easy-to-prepare meals.
Dr. David A. Kessler has dedicated his career of late to thinking about what keeps Americans from eating healthy food. There is, he says, a frightening preponderance of fat, salt and sugar tempting us at every commercial break, street corner and in grocery store aisles.
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But in his recently released book, The End of Overeating: Taking Control of The Insatiable American Appetite, the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner lays out a battle plan against the seductive forces of highly processed food. Chief among his strategies: exercising control through thoughtfully planned eating.
"If you know what you're going to eat," he says, "you're not susceptible to the constant barrage, and the cues don't have such power over you."
Yet instituting such structure is intimidating when you don't have the proper tools, namely a repertoire of healthy, easy-to-prepare recipes. Such dishes might include wheat pasta with homemade tomato sauce or a marinated baked turkey breast with a side of kale. Meals like these rely on basic staples like whole grains, legumes, lean protein and vegetables, as well as herbs and spices, which are essential for flavor. These ingredients, experts say, are the pillars of a healthy, nutritious diet.
How to Plan Meals
An important part of meal planning, Kessler says, is looking forward to what you've chosen to eat. In other words, creating structure in your diet doesn't mean that breakfast, lunch and dinner have to be bland affairs. It does mean, however, that you have to find joy in eating well-seasoned, sautéed lean ground beef as part of a pasta dish instead of a fast-food hamburger loaded with fat and salt.
Some fear cooking, worried that their homemade efforts will be less than sophisticated, or worse, flavorless. But meal planning actually helps home cooks discover new techniques and flavors.
Sarah Krieger, a national spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association, recommends borrowing ideas and inspiration from the countless cooking resources online, which offer recipes by the dozen as well as tips on technique.
One of her go-to meals is a brown rice stir-fry with vegetables and spices; a quick Internet search of this mainstay yields plenty of versions, including ones with edamame beans and walnuts or lentils and shrimp.
Preparing dishes from your repertoire will be much easier when you've stocked up on staples you can use over and over. Bethany Thayer, a national spokeswoman for the ADA and a manager of wellness and program strategies at the Henry Ford Health System, says the most effective meal-planning strategy is built on knowing what you want before going to the supermarket. It sounds obvious, but plenty of shoppers return home only to realize the next day they neglected to pick up a key spice or carbohydrate.
Such oversights can quickly upend any plans you had for healthy eating. The neighborhood fast-food chain, after all, is likely to require less time and energy than a trip to the grocery store--which would be followed by standing at the stove.
