Whether its for you, your significant other, or your child/children it is important to pack a healthy lunch. Buying groceries and packing your lunch is a great way to cut down on additional food cost and help you control exactly what you are putting into your body (calorie, fat, sodium, etc.). Below are some key points to remember when packing your lunch.
- Remember your fruits and veggies! It’s recommended to consume 5-9 servings of fruits and veggies a day. So take advantage of your lunch to really rack in some servings.
- A salad is an easy way to score big on veggies, with fresh greens, carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, radishes, or any vegetable you want. You can also add some dried or fresh fruit and you will be feeling good. You’ll be scoring big for your health without having consumed a lot of calories (remember veggies and fruit are very nutrient dense, meaning you get a lot of nutrients and small amount of calories and fat). However, keep in mind to pick an oil-based salad dressing and to remember to lightly pour it on… you don’t want to drown your salad in dressing.
Store-bought cupcakes are guaranteed to have these five unhealthy ingredients.
Everyone from Biggest Loser trainers to Dr. Oz and less famous nutritionists will urge you to remove these five food ingredients from your diet. Today. Making a habit of reading food labels can make a meaningful difference in your weight loss efforts.
Know what is in your food, and make a conscious effort to cut out these ingredients:
1. High Fructose Corn Syrup – A man-made sweetner with zero nutritional value. The list without HFCS is shorter, but a few examples include soda, fruit juice, cereal, condiments, cookies, pickles and even cough syrup.
2. Sugar – A cup of white granulated sugar has 774 Calories. You’d have to walk for 90 minutes or swim for an hour to burn that off. Don’t burn it off? It converts to fat.
In May of 2008, the FDA finally added brown rice to its list of whole grain products, which allowed it the right to bear the Whole Grain Health Claim. This claim states that the food contains at least 51% whole grains and can specifically say, “Diets rich in whole grain foods and other plant foods and low in total fat, saturated fat and cholesterol may reduce the risk of heart disease and some cancers.”
Since there is no lab test to determine “the whole grain content,” the FDA decided in order to use the whole grain claim the product must be able to prove that the product meets or exceeds the fiber level of wheat. Originally, brown rice could not prove this claim and therefore was delayed from being added to the approved list and could not use the Whole Grain Health Claim.
Now, however, the FDA has clarified, that a compliance test is not necessary for brown rice or other single-ingredient whole grain foods. If the ingredients list shows that a product contains whole grain and nothing but whole grain, then it’s obvious that the package contains 100% whole grain and clearly exceeds the 51% requirement.
There are now numerous brown rice products out on the market, some in which all you have to do is throw it in the microwave. I encourage you to venture out and eat brown rice in place of white rice. You will never know if you like it or not until you try it…and if it’s better for your health then why wouldn’t you give it a taste?
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