Making Healthier Food Choices

Recently, a friend emailed me and asked that I put together a short list of beginner steps toward making healthier food choices. She said that she would be sharing my list at a local MOPS meeting.


Sounds like a simple request, right?

Paring it down to only a few beginner steps certainly had its challenges, but here are the five ideas I chose to share.

Drink more water

Drinking more water can help your body eliminate toxins, give you more energy, and lower your risk of a heart attack.

Choose a little more veggies, a little less meat

Eating more veggies and less meat has a host of benefits, including reducing your risk of breast cancer. Your serving of meat should be no bigger than a deck of cards.

Go meatless once a week

Taking this extra step towards a more plant-based diet can help with weight loss, since you will likely be consuming fewer calories. It could also help lower your cholesterol.

Avoid HFCS

The dangers of high fructose corn syrup are finally being made public, despite corn refiners that try to argue otherwise. It contributes to diabetes and damages your immune system. It alters your metabolic levels. Research has also proven it to increase aggression in some young children. I know this firsthand; my oldest son was terribly affected by HFCS until we began to research this ourselves and then removed it from his diet. If you’re feeling really ambitious, try to reduce your use of highly processed sweeteners altogether; that includes white sugar, brown sugar, Splenda, aspartame, and the like.

Try to eat mostly “real” foods

Make it a priority to eat foods as God created them, and not processed foods with added chemicals, preservatives, stabilizers, etc. Begin reading food labels while you shop. If your great-grandmother wouldn’t understand the ingredients listed, then you probably shouldn’t be eating it. God knew what He was doing when He created food for us! Let’s try to stick with the foods He created, rather than what a scientist in a laboratory created.

Would you have included different beginner steps? What works for your family?

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This post is linked at the Nourishing Gourmet and Food Renegade.