How healthy are your meals?

The single most confusing thing about living healthily? Food. It is by far the hardest thing to wrap your head around. This leaves most people confused and not knowing or understanding how to eat healthily. In fact, there was a time where I didn’t understand it either. With the media and food industry always adding confusion, it’s hard to keep up and really understand what’s right and wrong and what you should really be eating. So, I’m going to bust some myths and make it easy for you to understand.

Now, I know you don’t have to be a genius to figure out that cake is bad and veg is good - I’d like to think we all know that - but, that’s about where we draw the line between knowing what’s really good and bad in terms of food.

I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t taught about nutrition at school and I “learned” from hear-say, the media (I didn’t have social media then, thank God) and what food labelling lead me to believe. Low calorie and low fat were what I aimed for when I started to lose weight because that was the extent of my knowledge on how to lose weight. However, these days:

“The British Nutrition Foundation (BNF) has welcomed news from Secretary of State for Education that all children in England, aged 5-14 years, are to receive lessons in food, cooking and nutrition, as part of the new National Curriculum. The new curriculum will require children to learn about where food comes from, healthy eating and cooking, and will be compulsory from September 2014.” - https://www.nutrition.org.uk/press-office/pressreleases/educatingfoodies.html

This is great, but you and I are still left to educate ourselves in food and nutrition. I obviously chose to go into higher education and receive my PT and Nutritional Qualifications. So let me help you understand where to begin with it all…

Why do we need to eat? To survive, obvs. But other than that, what does it do for you and why are some foods better for us than others? All types of food supply one exact same thing - calories. Apart from water, every food and drink contain calories and they each have a set of unique roles to - take care of, or actually damage, your body’s ability to function. This is where we can start to separate “good” and “bad” foods. As you may have already worked out, good foods help your body function optimally and bad foods can make your body dysfunction or not run smoothly, and this is why some people suffer from so many health issues - it’s a lack of good nutrition - hence why it is so important to follow a healthy and balanced diet. Bad food also has a negative impact on your cognitive behaviour (yes, really), leaving you feeling unenthusiastic, moody, lack of motivation and can actually make you feel rather depressed, so, just think of the negative physical impact it has on your body. You can expect to feel: lethargic, tired, lack of desire to exercise, “heavy”, bloated, constipated, low sex drive, you may come out in spots, it can make you look “grey” and unwell, and then there are the more serious conditions such as high blood pressure and cholesterol, risk of heart attack and stroke, diabetes, low bone density, low muscle density, obesity, it can disrupt normal hormone production and can mess with your blood sugars which can lead to other complications… Just to name a few…

What types of foods do you think cause these problems?

The obvious ones: Fast food/takeaways, processed and cured meats (such as pork), deep-fried foods, pastries, candy and sugary soda, meats high in fat, baked goods, alcohol and crisps.

The not so obvious ones: Margarine, *some* frozen foods and semi-cooked frozen and fresh foods, prepared packaged foods, convenience foods, cereals and sugary cereals, flavoured yoghurts, special (high calorie) coffees /sachet coffees, fruit drinks (not from concentrate), microwave meals, canned foods, deli foods, mass-produced white and brown wheat products, processed gluten-free alternative foods, processed vegan alternative foods, agave nectar and other forms of natural sweeteners, breakfast bars, foods that have been altered so that they are lower in fat than in its original form, processed low-carb foods, *most* protein/”healthy” snack bars, frozen yoghurt, packaged foods labelled with “fat-free” or “low-fat”, sports drinks, vegetable oils, flavoured instant oat sachets, reduced-fat peanut butter, rice cakes/crackers (flavoured and unflavoured), bottled “health” drinks, Muller light/rice, *some* smoothies, vegetable crisps and pre-cooked meats. The list could go on, to be honest… Not all of the foods above will have the same level of associated health risks as the previous list (the obvious bad foods) but that doesn’t mean to say that they’re not going to cause you future problems.

Eating these foods once in a while won’t make a difference to you, it’s if you were to consistently consume them where the problems begin. It’s like running a few times and expecting to be fit, it won’t happen. Development of said diseases only occurs when it’s continually repeated.

Most people, myself included, will fall victim to these alleged “health foods”. How could you not when the packages are labelled with buzzwords such as “low-fat, fat-free, no added sugar, high-protein, low-carb, gluten-free”? In fact, they’re more likely to be less healthy for you than something that isn’t labelled at all. All it is is so that their products sell and all the different companies are in direct competition with each other so try to use as many buzzwords as they can to make their packaging visibly appealing so that you’re drawn to them. One word comes to mind… Scam.

Let’s say, for example, your meals and snacks for the day usually look like this:

• Breakfast: A cereal bar, a banana and a latte and with an added caramel shot

• Snack #1: Flavoured yoghurt (fat-free) topped with some granola

• Lunch: A baguette (from Greggs) with chicken tikka filling and a bag of Quavers

• Snack #2: 3 chocolate digestive biscuits and a cup of tea (1 sugar and milk)

• Dinner: A frozen Toad-in-the-Hole with homemade mash potato and frozen vegetables

• Pudding: Rice pudding with jam

Not a bad day of food, right…? While most of these foods may not seem too unhealthy, some are actually very unhealthy and can be swapped for a healthier alternative.

So, what’s wrong with breakfast? “That doesn’t look that bad” is what some people would say. Bearing in mind, the daily allowance of sugar for adults per day is around 20-25g, breakfast alone brings us to a total of 32g. You may be thinking “get rid of the banana as that contains sugar”, and you’re right, it does, but the level of sugar in a banana (12g (which is naturally occurring)) is on par with the cereal bar (12g) and the added caramel shot (8g). So, in fact, I’d get rid of the cereal bar and the shot leaving you with having 12g of sugar for breakfast.

Have these instead: A good old fashioned bowl of cereal (something with low amounts of sugar such as Bran Flakes, Corn Flakes, Weetabix and Shredded Wheat), or even better - make your own porridge. You can keep the banana if you want it and simply take the shot out of the coffee. They may taste bitter to you at first as your taste buds are acquired to a sweeter taste - you can thank processed food for that - you will adapt over a short amount of time.

Snack #1: This is where people will get confused with where they’re going wrong. Fat-free, flavoured yoghurt isn’t very “calorie expensive” as they’ve had the fat stripped away. That’s good isn’t it? Well, not really. You see, the naturally occurring fats in yoghurt may be more “expensive” in calories, but they also make the yoghurt creamy and tasty, (and yes, it contains some saturated fats - but we do need a low amount of it in our diet), as soon as you take the fat away, you’re left with a bitter and watery yoghurt that’s not very palatable. So, what do food companies do to keep it low calorie and almost zero fat? They add sugar. Until recently, Muller Light yoghurts were a “Sin-Free” food on slimming world, and now they’re not. Why do you now have to sin them? Because “Sin-Free” or “Free-Foods” can be consumed as much as the person wants, regardless of how many calories. In the real world, this just doesn’t work, so people were gaining weight because they would eat too many of these yoghurts as it was a “Sin-Free” food. When you add low-calorie and high-sugar together, you’re guaranteed to be hungry within half an hour as it’s easy to digest and won’t leave you feeling satisfied for very long. The same can be said for the granola that’s been sprinkled on top. What once was a slow releasing energy food (oats), from adding sugar to it, it has now become (again) a sugar bomb of food and gets digested very quickly, which can spike your insulin and leave you feeling hungry more quickly.

Try these instead: Full-fat plain yoghurt, (yes, really. Trust me) a few nuts and seeds with some cocoa powder and honey mixed in, topped with plain porridge oats straight from the box.

Lunch: A Greggs baguette with chicken tikka filling - The baguette alone will set you back upwards of 400 calories, which is also low in nutrition and high in salt. You’ll also probably have a generous serving of chicken tikka filling which comes in at around 360 calories, taking you to a whopping total of around 760 calories. And a 20g pack of Quavers is 107 calories - a grand total of a staggering 867 calories for essentially a packed lunch… and you didn’t even have a KitKat…

So, instead: Just make yourself a packed lunch (even with the KitKat). You could still have a tasty chicken tikka flavoured sandwich - simply by using chopped chicken breast with chicken tikka spices mixed in a dollop of mayonnaise. Add some salad in there to boost your vitamins and bulk out your sandwich. Keep your Quavers and you can even “afford” to have a KitKat. The total calories of your packed lunch are now 564, saving you 303 calories and you won’t feel as bloated either by not having large amounts of bread and salt.

Snack #2: This is a pretty obvious one - chocolate-covered digestive biscuits should be something we all know is not the best choice - but if you’ve made a conscious decision to have them, then just have them. It’s not “wrong” to have a little something you enjoy, just be cautious of how many you have. Let’s face it, the only thing that can make this a little healthier is if you just have plain digestives and if that doesn’t cut it for you, then just enjoy having them and limit yourself to those 3. The same goes for the sugar in your tea - it’s just one teaspoon of sugar. You can replace it for sweetener but you are no better off by choosing it as sweeteners are just made from other forms of sugar such as Stevia, Truvia and erythritol which are low calorie as they are up to 200x sweeter than regular sugar. Some sweeteners are a blend of natural and artificial ingredients or even solely artificial to make them low-calorie. There are a plethora of these artificial sweeteners, which include: acesulfame potassium (also identified as acesulfame k and ACE), alitame, aspartame, aspartame-acesulfame salt, corn syrup (also identified as corn sweetener and corn syrup solids), cyclamate, high fructose corn syrup (also identified as: corn sugar, corn sweetener, glucose-fructose syrup, HCFS-42, HCFS-55, HCFS-90, isoglucose), hydrogenated starch hydrosylate, neohesperidine dihydrochalcone (also identified as neohesperidine dc), neotame, saccharin, sucralose, and sugar alcohols (which include: erythritol, glucitol/sorbitol, glycerol/glycerin, isomalt, lactitol, maltitol, mannitol, sorbitol and xylitol) to name a few. By choosing sweeteners, the only thing you’ll be avoiding is calories and if you only have 1 teaspoon in your beverage, you’ll only be saving around 16 calories which is nothing, but if you’re the type of person to have a lot of hot beverages per day, then it can equate to a lot of sugar. Try reducing the amount you have little by little so that your taste buds adjust over time to a less sweet taste. I never used to enjoy coffee/tea because they were too bitter. Now I just add a dash of milk to my cup of tea and only have cappuccinos with the frothy milk.

Dinner: A frozen Toad-in-the hole with homemade mash and frozen veg. Actually not that bad! The only thing that isn’t too good is all the batter in the Toad-in-the-hole. And, ok, possibly the low-quality sausages that are in it, too. There’s an easy solution though - instead of having a lot of batter, you can swap that for 2 Yorkshire puddings - It’s exactly the same but on a much smaller scale. And get yourself some high meat percentage sausages. You could even try out beef, chicken or turkey sausages. And they’re much higher quality meat. A regular Toad-in-the-hole will set you back around 500 calories with little nutritional value, 2 pork sausages are around 400 calories (again, low nutrition) and 2 chicken/turkey sausages are around 180 calories with a higher quality of meat and less fat.

Lastly; Pudding:

Rice pudding with jam. Unless you make it yourself and have control over what goes in it, the thing to be aware of with rice pudding (minus the jam) is the amount of sugar it contains… it’s very high. Although rice itself isn’t really a concern, the sugar most definitely is: a serving of shop-bought rice pudding can contain as much as 20g of sugar! Then you have to take into consideration that you’re adding jam (which is all sugar), so the total amount of sugar for your pudding is now around 25g. And don’t be fooled into thinking that the “light” version of a tin of rice pudding is any better. It’s exactly the same in sugar. The lighter version just has 2g less of fat. Kind of pointless if you ask me.

Try this instead:

If you enjoy the consistency of rice pudding, you should try homemade porridge with jam: it’s packed full of nutrition, lowers cholesterol and is a bowl of loveliness (I clearly enjoy porridge). You can still add jam/honey/conserve as there’s no other source of sugar in porridge (depending on which milk you use (lactose is sugar)). You can add nuts and seeds, frozen fruit and make it a hearty bowl of nutrition that doesn’t break the bank in terms of sugar.

Are you unsure if your food is really that good for you and you need some advice? Keep a meal diary and we can go through it together.