Baby Steps to a Healthier Diet

Eating Healthy, What Changes We Made and Why They are Important


So most likely if you are not used to eating healthy you wont switch all at once so here is a few changes to make and why you should make these changes!

Bread(This is pretty popular)

But not only to I mean sandwich bread I mean everything with flour.
We made the switch to Whole Wheat Flour. I do still use a mix of White and Wheat in my breads but hopefully that will change soon.

So Why do we need to use Whole Wheat flour or buy Whole Wheat Bread?

Okay, so wheat has 3 layers Bran, which has b vitamins and minerals, Germ(the inner core) and endosperm which is starch. When White Flour is made the bran and germ are removed and they grind the endosperm so we have less nutrients in our White Bread.

For Whole Wheat Bread all parts of the wheat berry is ground which gives us healthier bread!!

Also our bodies need fiber to run smoothly. The fiber in wheat is in the Bran, which is removed to make white Flour.

Rice


Brown, White, Wild, I'm sure there is more what do we choose!!!

Okay I will start with the most popular White Rice

White Rice is white because all of the bran and germ have been polished away. So less fiber

Brown Rice is a Whole Grain because the nutrients haven't been stripped away. Brown Rice has 4 times the fiber as white rice as well as being high in magnesium and other minerals.

Wild Rice Is higher in protein and lower in carbs.It is also higher in Vitamin A and folic acidbut not as high in minerals.  Wild Rice is also a good source of Omega 3s.

We choose Brown rice most of the time because Wild rice is hard to get used to the texture and taste. The kids call Wild Rice little sticks. LOL

Turkey or Deer instead of Beef


Turkey and deer is way more lean with a lot less calories.  and deer is higher in iron than beef.  We use ground turkey and ground deer instead of ground beef, however we still like a good lean cut of Beef steak on occasion.

Turkey in place of Pork


We switched to turkey bacon and sausage instead of pork because of fat content. As well as because  pork tends to bother my stomach. :( We do occasionally have pork loin chops.



Nonfat plain Greek yogurt in place of sour cream


We made this change for a few reasons. One being fat and calorie content. The other is that yogurt is higher in protein than sour cream as well as it helps us to get that good bacteria in our digestive tracks.  and we can do so much more with yogurt than we can sour cream. My kids favorite way to eat it is as a fruit dip. I just take about 1/2 cup of yogurt and add 1tsp-1 Tb of honey or agave nectar to it. No refined sugars and still a yummy treat!

Fresh or Frozen produce instead of canned


We have decided to use fresh or frozen instead of canned goods because lets face it canning food at high temperatures kills ALOT of nutrients and they have a lot of sodium. Fresh produce can be expensive so we choose frozen which has health benefits over fresh because it is picked and frozen when ripe instead of picked before it is ripe and ripening in transit.