In promoting health consciousness and awareness, there was broad consensus on the need for sustained creative and relevant communications strategies to penetrate primary settings such as the home, pre-schools,schools and workplaces. Other strategies include promoting food labeling; the provision of incentives and awards for effective programmes and initiatives; the popularization of traditional cooking techniques,healthy recipes, traditional dances and martial arts exercises; and the use of role models, e.g. government officials, national personalities and sports celebrities.
A healthful eating plan means more than choosing the right foods to eat. It’s important to prepare foods in a healthy way.We know that there are many traditional side dishes that your family loves, but that can often be high in fat and sugar. The holidays can play havoc with your health regimen. Between parties, late nights, feasts and traveling, healthy habits can go right out the window. Mastering a few cooking techniques can help you create a healthier diet without losing out on flavor.Healthy cooking doesn't mean that you have to become a gourmet chef or invest in expensive cookware.But you can cut back on the bad fats while maintaining taste, variety and even enjoyment.
Lunchtime can be a challenge when it comes to making good choices. Avoid fast food and long lines in the cafeteria by packing a delicious salad or sandwich that will keep you satisfied even when you feel stressed.The DASH diet promotes foods that are low in saturated fat and cholesterol. When you're dining out, you may be tempted to toss those DASH diet principles aside.The main rule of thumb for healthy cooking is to avoid methods that require excessive fat. I would urge you not to fry food and especially to avoid deep frying, which not only adds lots of calories but also exposes you to the health risks of oxidized fats.
You can use basic cooking techniques to prepare food in healthy ways.By thsese techniques you can capture the flavor and retain the nutrients in your food without adding excessive amounts of fat or salt.If you usually cook for one or two people — or if members of your family rarely have time to eat together — you probably face such frustrations. But small-quantity cooking can be made easier and more interesting even for small numbers. Once you've mastered these techniques, use them often to prepare your favorite dishes.;such as
* Cut down on saturated fat in creamy dressings by mixing in some nonfat or low-fat plain yogurt.
* Purchase foods that are individually frozen, such as fruits, vegetables, chicken breasts or fish fillets. These foods allow you to thaw out only the amount you need.
* Use non-stick cookware so you can cook with a minimum of oil or vegetable oil spray.
* For a wonderful flavor enhancer, sprinkle food with vinegar or citrus juice. Add it at the last minute so the flavor is at its strongest.
* Braising method involves browning the ingredient first in a pan on top of the stove, and then slowly cooking it covered with a small quantity of liquid, such as water or broth. In some recipes, the cooking liquid is used afterward to form a flavorful, nutrient-rich sauce.
* Broiling, baking and roasting can also be healthy methods of preparation, provided you don't add unnecessary fat.Grilling and broiling cooking methods expose fairly thin pieces of food to direct heat. To grill outdoors, place the food on a grill rack above a bed of charcoal embers or gas-heated rocks. For smaller items such as chopped vegetables, use a long-handled grill basket, which prevents pieces from slipping through the rack. To broil indoors, place food on a broiler rack below a heat element. Both methods allow fat to drip away from the food.
* Substitute chopped vegetables for some of the bread in your stuffing recipe.
* Avoid refined foods, such as white breads, pastas, and especially sugar.
* Eat fewer red meats and more lean meats, cold-water fish, tofu (soy, if no allergy), or beans for protein.
* Buy Choice or Select rather than Prime meat cuts.
* Remove fat clumps from poultry before cooking.
* Try to steam vegetables and fish - this is a particularly healthy cooking technique because it does the least damage to nutrients and, as a bonus, lends itself to a quick clean-up.Steam make vegetables tender and boil less delicate ones (potatoes, beets, corn on the cob). A rule of thumb is when you smell it, it's done.
* Use Canadian bacon or ham instead of regular bacon.
* Use extra lean ground beef or ground white turkey instead of ground beef.
* Baste a natural turkey with fat-free broth or white wine instead of a using a self-basting turkey.
* Use healthy oils for cooking, such as olive oil or vegetable oil.
* Reduce or eliminate trans-fatty acids, found in commercially baked goods such as cookies, crackers, cakes, French fries, onion rings, donuts, processed foods, and margarine.
* Substitute evaporated skim milk or fat free half and half for cream in soups
* Besides breads and desserts, you can bake seafood, poultry, lean meat, and vegetable and fruit pieces of the same size.
* Place food in a pan or dish surrounded by the hot, dry air of your oven. You may cook the food covered or uncovered. Baking generally doesn't require that you add fat to the food. In some cases, you may need to baste the food to keep it from drying out.
* For variety and increased nutritional value try whole grains instead of refined grains. Experiment with brown or wild rice, quinoa, millet, teff, buckwheat, amaranth. All have high amounts of vitamins, minerals, fiber, and phytochemicals.
* Storing food in your freezer helps prevent waste and keeps foods fresher longer. Most foods freeze well, including breads, meats, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and nuts and seeds. For best quality, freeze food while it's fresh. Don't wait until it's been refrigerated or on your counter for several days.
By relying more on steaming, boiling and stewing to cook foods and using acidic marinades on meat cooked with dry heat, people may be able to stay healthier, a New York City researcher suggests.
These strategies will reduce the amount of advanced gycation end products (AGEs), or glycotoxins that people consume with their food says Dr. Helen Vlassara of Mt. Sinai School of Medicine. With her colleagues, Vlassara has found that the more AGEs healthy people eat, the greater their levels of inflammation and oxidative stress.
"It is time that we pay more attention to these toxic substances ... because they are extremely abundant in our foods as we have developed them today," Vlassara told Reuters Health. "They do cause inflammation and they tend to accumulate in the body. Over a long time the constant low-grade inflammation can lead to organ damage and disease."
Vlassara points out that inflammation plays a key role in a host of increasingly common aging-related illnesses, including Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, and heart disease.
AGEs are produced by the interaction of sugars with proteins and certain fats, and are found in animal foods. Cooking foods for a longer time at a higher temperature, in the absence of water, significantly boosts their AGE content, as does processing them.
AGEs are also a byproduct of normal metabolism, but high levels are found in people with diabetes and heart disease, Vlassara and her team note in the Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences. As people age they may be less able to clear AGEs from their bodies, they add, while kidney disease also makes it more difficult for people to excrete glycotoxins.
She and her colleagues had previously shown that diabetic individuals who ate a diet low in AGEs had lower levels of molecules involved in inflammation. The researchers have also found that aging mice have less oxidative stress and insulin resistance -- and live longer -- when they consume a low-AGE diet.
To understand whether the amount of AGEs healthy people consume might be related to their level of inflammation, Vlassara and her colleagues looked at 172 healthy men and women. One group of study participants were younger than 45, while the others were over 60.
The more AGEs people ate, the researchers found, the higher their blood levels of two types of AGEs in their blood. Consumption of AGEs also correlated directly with key indicators of inflammation and oxidative stress.
People can reduce their AGE consumption, and possibly their risk of disease, by using high temperatures to cook foods less frequently, and cutting down on processed foods, Vlassara and her team note.
Anyone concerned about AGE consumption should try to cook with water as often as possible, for example using boiling, steaming or stewing, rather than frying, Vlassara said in an interview. But people do not need to abstain from barbecue or grilling entirely; "moderation is the message, not eliminating something completely from the diet," she added. And marinating foods in lemon juice, vinegar or other acidic substances before cooking them with dry heat greatly reduces AGE formation, Vlassara noted.
Extrapolation from findings in both animals and humans suggests it's conceivable that people could extend their lives by reducing AGE consumption, she adds; to date, one of the only other interventions that has stretched lifespan in mammals is severe restriction of calorie intake.
"Our study shows that this can be done just by changing moderately the way we cook," Vlassara said. "In other words, we do not have to suffer any calorie restriction."
More tips:
Here are a few simple ways to cut down on saturated fats when you're dining out and yet want to stick to the DASH diet. Another key feature to the success of the DASH diet in controlling your blood pressure is its reduction in sodium. Sure, it's easier to control your sodium consumption at home:
* Skip the bread and rolls — or at least skip the butter.
* Ask for reduced-fat salad dressing, on the side.
* Trim visible fat off meat and poultry. Eat only a portion that's about the size of a deck of cards since even very lean meat and poultry still contain fat.
* Ask that your dish be prepared with olive oil, rather than butter or fat.
* Select foods prepared with healthier-cooking techniques, such as steamed, grilled, broiled, baked, roasted, poached or stir-fried.
* Ask that food be prepared without added salt, MSG or salt-containing ingredients.
* Include different colored vegetables to increase the antioxidant variety! Orange squash, red bell peppers, green leafy vegetables, red beets, green Brussels sprouts. Don’t keep them as a side dish; vegetables can be the center of the plate.Use canola or olive oil to sauté vegetables.
* When you are at outdoors select grilling, but high temperature grilling (and broiling) of foods that contain fat and protein (meat and poultry, especially) produces carcinogenic compounds called heterocyclic amines (HAs) that can raise the risk of colorectal cancer in those with a genetic predisposition to the disease and may increase the risk of other cancers. To protect yourself from exposure to HAs, grill more vegetables and fish and less meat and try not to cook animal foods (including fish) to the point of charring.
* To prevent harmful bacteria from growing, don't let hot food cool down on the kitchen counter at room temperature.Instead, cool leftovers in the refrigerator. Cooling food first also prevents large ice crystals from forming during freezing , which can ruin flavor and texture.
* Divide large quantities of cooked food into smaller portions. Keep soups and stews to about three inches in depth per container, and divide meats into pieces that are two- to three-inches thick.
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