Health & Wellness - India Herbs Blog

With the growing production number of processed food, more people are cashing out on them, indeed they are more affordable. With the rising cost of living, most family would opt for the latter.

This has again led us to think about clean eating which would meet threefold objectives - maintaining good health, keeping up the optimum fitness levels and bringing culinary satisfaction.

1. Stop the Consumption of Highly Processed Staples: There is no need for you to take a giant step by overhauling your inventory completely in the initial stage. You can initiate a change by eliminating the highly processed corn oil and soda/sweetened soft drinks from the stock. You can also think of substituting white breads and pastas with the wholegrain counterparts!

2. Read the Labels While Buying Processed Foods: Highly processed foods come with loads of information about the ingredients. It is not possible for you to omit all the processed foods, but you can still afford to choose the ones with simpler constituents. You should avoid the purchase and consumption of artificial flavors and colors, preservatives, hydrogenated oils and all the processed foods which come with added refined sugar or with additional amounts of fat and sodium.

3. Concentrate on Favorite Foods: You need to find out the food source from where you are deriving the maximum amount of calories. These foods appear in the list of your favorites and are taking up considerable portions of your plate. So you should focus on eating the healthier forms of these favorite foods. For example, if you are a vegetarian, you can focus on the consumption of healthy, organic produce. Omnivores can choose to buy meat which is derived from grass-fed cattle or eggs which are obtained from chickens raised in the pastures i.e., from animals which are raised organically. This would ensure that the foods which are supplying the maximum number of calories are derived from healthy sources. So it would allow you to eat healthy.

4. Consider the Nutrient Value in a Product: You often consider the price of a product rather than giving much importance to its nutritional value. You can assess the nutritional value of a product by weighing the vitamin, fiber, mineral and protein contents against the fat, sugar, sodium and chemical additives.

5. Prepare Meals at Home: When you choose to cook foods at home, you not only save money, but you also turn your attention towards whole food. This would save you from the ill-effects of highly processed foods which contain trans fat, saturated fat, sodium and refined sugar.

6. Retrain your Taste Buds: You might be loving foods with excess amount of fat, sugar, salt and chemical additives and so it might not be possible for you to switch over to the soft tastes of whole foods instantly. If you don't feel like eating brown rice, then mix some portions of the whole grain with white rice. Gradually your taste buds will get accustomed to the taste of brown rice and then you can think about a complete switchover!

7. You Need Not be Perfect: We often fail to strictly adhere to our diet plans. So there is no point trying to be perfect. Instead, you can take up an 80- 20 approach in which you should try to stick to your clean eating goals by 80 percent and maintain a 20 percent buffer for junk foods and processed foods while you are traveling or in a social gathering.

8. Find the True Pleasure in Real Food: You need to be mindful and give importance to minute details like the ways of buying foods, the ways of cooking and the ways of eating. Clean eating simply comes from the pleasure and the interest that you take on food and cooking.

Clean eating is not a science, but it is just common sense. In fact, you have full knowledge about the foods which can harm you! But still your taste buds rule over your urge to switch to healthy foods. But taking these miniature steps would allow you to shift to healthy and clean eating in a very short time.

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