Nutritious and Delicious: Tips for Tasty, Healthy Eating

By Cynthia Gentry

Nutritious and Delicious: Tips for Tasty, Healthy Eating

Picking out the perfect outfit takes a lot of thought and creativity. Pairing the right shoes with the right accessories can make or break an ensemble. But do you put as much thought into how the inside of your body looks as you do to what the outside does? 

Many people have the impression that healthy eating means eating grilled chicken over greens with no dressing and no flavor. However, one of the most common misconceptions is that healthy eating is tasteless. 

We're here to silence that rumors. You don't have to be a professional chef to make healthy foods delicious, with just a little TLC and these tips on kicking your culinary creations up a notch you'll be on the right track to making a mouthwatering, nutritious, delicious meals. Here are my key tips to keep your meals nutritional and delicious. 

 Fitness Inspiration: Doutzen Kroes
Foods: Quinoa Salad and Blueberry Smoothie 

1) Ditch regular meats for lean meats. Traditional meat is packed with sodium, cholesterol, and calories. Switching out regular meat for lean meat ensures your getting higher quality ingredients and better flavor. Instead of making meatballs with beef, switch out the ground beef for turkey, chicken, or even wild game meat such as bison. Choosing leaner meats ensures your meal is packed with protein and not fat and fillers and its still delicious!

2) Embrace Greek yogurt. Greek yogurt is a great protein source. It also can be a substitution for a ton of other high fat, high sugar ingredients such as sour cream and butter. Here's a quick guide for substituting Greek yogurt for other ingredients.

3) Choose local and in season produce to maximize taste. The benefit of local produce is it has less "food miles" on it. This means it takes less time to get from the farm to your kitchen, ensuring that the produce is fresher. The fresher the produce, the better the taste. 

4) Spice it up. Adding herbs and spices not only adds extra flavor to your meals but there are also a lot of health benefits associated with them. Herbs and spices create delicious aromas and add tons of flavor to yours meals without adding on unwanted calories. Here are my top three herbs and spices.

Cinnamon: You can add it on to almost every meal. I'll sprinkle it into my plain yogurt or oatmeal in the mornings or onto an acorn squash or sweet potatoes for lunch and dinner. Cinnamon also helps increase blood circulation and lower blood sugar levels. 

Rosemary: For my meats, I like to use rosemary, it has a lot of flavor and is rich in iron and calcium. It has been known to improve memory. 

Basil: Basil is extremely refreshing. In the summers, I keep a small basil plant in my kitchen and use it to add the fresh leaves to as many meals as I possibly can; in the winter, I keep dried basil on hand. It's great for your digestive system and even has cancer fighting properties.

The most important thing to keep in mind is to always be creative. It's okay to take risks with playing around with ingredients. Variety is the spice of life after all. What are your favorite ways to play around in the kitchen? 

Bon Appetite Fashionistas!