Five Steps to Healthy Cooking

Healthy cooking is very important to the overall process of healthy meal planning. Healthy meal planning is the overall task of food preparation. We are going to look at the five easy steps to healthy cooking process. These are : education about healthy food and diet, buying a good and credible healthy cookbooks, buying natural foods to cook, preparing the food you cook and lastly, cooking the food.

1. Learn about calories and nutrientsThe first thing to know is the number and amount of calories of each food group. Try as much as possible to follow the recommended caloric intake for an adult and children of all ages. Plus learn about the three basic food groups and healthy dieting. Vegetables, fruits, dairy and other nutrients are essential to a healthy cooking and living.

2. You should invest on book, buy a good healthy cook book. There are lots of healthy cookbooks offered by refutable agencies and investing to buy a good cookbook menu is good. try also to visit the appropriate Internet health site like the American Cancer Society Cookbooks.

• In general when you buy and prepare the food to cook, keep in mind, low sugar, low sodium and low fat is best plus choose natural products.
• Buy grades or lean - extra lean beef instead of prime beef as prime beef contains more fats. Loin and round pork are preferred other and avoid red buying red meat.
• When you go to market choose all the natural foods, meaning avoid the processed and canned ones. In general buy foods specifically natural food products or those that comes from plants, like fruits vegetables and eggs, poultry, fish and meat products from the nearest farmers market or supermarket. Include fish always when you buy foods.

1. Removed the skin of the poultry and avoid the legs because the fats are concentrated there.
2. If you are going to put ingredients for the food you are going to cook, read the label thoroughly and be sure it has low sodium and additives on it.
3. Avoid the egg yolk, always prefer the egg white as it is lesser in fat or no fat at all
4. For cheese and dairy products always prefer the low fat milk and use low fat salad dressings
5. Wash all the foods thoroughly specially meat to remove fats, when washing vegetables, don’t soak them in water as the nutrients will be washed away
6. Cut the vegetables in smaller portions so that when you mixed it for example with meat products, it will absorb the other fats
7. Avoid all canned foods when you can otherwise read the content always prefer low sodium, low sweetener specially artificial sweeteners and low fat in all products you buy including canned foods.
8. Avoid instant noodles, those pack things sold by bulk at supermarkets as they are very salty and they have preservatives.

1. Prefer steaming of vegetables rather than boiling it so that the nutrients is still there in the veggies.
2. When you fry, you should always have a dry “wok” invest in wok and put little oil only, canola, olive, sunflower ,vegetable oil should be preferred.
3. Cheat on the recipe, like say it is said that the needed oil is two tables spoons, you can put half of that, if two eggs are needed put three white of eggs instead of the egg yolk
4. Use vinegar, now I use this one, for fruits for seasoning, and also use of herbal like rosemary is good for seasoning, it is recommended to ground them in little pieces so that the flavor is good
5. Prefer grill rather than fry, stir fry is always recommended for healthy heart .
6. When baking, use wheat flour as it is lesser in sweets
7. Use brown rice rather than the white rice
8. When grilling meat products, boil it first so that the fats will be removed then throw the water and marinate the meat products. When marinating avoid additives and colored substances, use instead vinegar, garlic plus soy sauce -- the best. I use the Chinese soy sauce for marinating
9. When baking, don’t let meat products or poultry products sit on it, it should be with a rack so that the fats will be removed.
10. Use sour cream instead sour fat cream, low fat and low fat milk when you need it for food cooking
11. Reduce eating hot dogs, salami and bacon as they are all processed foods which are very rich in fats
12. You can eat fish at least three times every week and avoid frying it, sweet and sour fish is good, all you need is red tomatoes, little salt, garlic, broil first the fish and then cook it with medium cooking, put little salt on it.
13. Avoid at all cost monosodium glutamate or artificial seasoning which are proven bad for the health as they are carcinogens.
14. Dont burn the food you are grilling as it is carcinogen.

In general minimize sodium, fats and sweets in your diet and cook food with healthy cooking.