Healthy Cooking – 4 Golden Rules How To Prepare Healthy Meals You Will Love

Food is food, so why should you make a special effort to cook healthy? Because if your meals are healthy, you will be healthy too. Eating healthy can significantly reduce your risk of suffering numerous severe diseases like diabetes, stroke and obesity. You think cooking is an art? It is, but if you know certain basics, you’ll see that it is not so difficult to prepare a healthy meal. Here are four golden rules how to prepare and cook healthy meals:

1. Store foods properly to retain nutrients
2. Use preparation methods that retain nutrients best
3. Use fats responsibly
4. Use sugar sparingly

Rule #1: Store foods properly to retain nutrients

• Don’t store fresh foods too long. Many vegetables lose a lot of vitamins within days already, especially when being exposed to heat (even room temperature) and light, and meat can quickly develop bacteria which can make you ill.
• Vegetables: Ideally, only buy what you need for the day. The best place to store your vegetables is in the veggie compartment of your fridge. Alternately, keep them in a cool dark place like a cellar. Leave the vegetables in their package or cover them to avoid them losing moisture.
• Meat: Keep it in the fridge for the most for a couple of days. Minced meat should be cooked the same day you buy it as it goes off extremely quick.

Rule #2: Use preparation methods that retain nutrients best

• Wash foods thoroughly but short. Avoid soaking them as water-soluble nutrients then get lost.
• Cut foods only shortly before cooking them to avoid loss of vitamins.
• If you cook foods in water, use as little water as possible and use it for a soup or sauce.
• Vegetables: Steam, stew or braise them. Especially stewing retains lots of nutrients.
• Meat: Briefly roast meat on high temperature to close up the pores. If you cook it, add it to boiling water to reach the same effect.

Rule #3: Use fats responsibly

• Add as little fat as possible to your meals. Cut down on oil and butter, but also on high-fat foods like cheese, cream, sour cream. You can also use their low-fat versions to reduce calories.
• If you need fat, choose healthy ones: Olive, canola and rapeseed oil and products made from these are the healthiest options. In general, vegetable fats are healthier than animal fats.
• Avoid frying foods in oil. Pan-frying or baking in the oven uses much less fat.

Rule #4: Use sugar sparingly

• The less sugar you add to your meals the better. Try some alternatives:
• Artificial sweeteners: These are low- to non-caloric sweeteners and a great alternative to sugar. Unfortunately, in some sensitive people they may cause unpleasant side effects.
• Naturally sweet foods, like sweet potatoes, corn, yellow pepper, fresh and dried fruit
• Natural sweeteners, e.g. honey or maple syrup (these contain less sugar than table sugar but they do contain sugar)

As you can see, the principles that determine whether your meals will be healthy are quite simple. If you follow these four golden rules, making sure your foods are stored correctly so that they neither lose their valuable nutrients nor start growing bacteria, if your cooking method retains as many nutrients as possible and you avoid adding extra calories in form of fat and sugar, you can easily prepare the healthiest meals yourself.

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