You know meal planning can help you create an excellent grocery list and can keep you from veering off your healthy eating plan. However, family meal planning is not the easiest thing to do, especially if you’re working around food allergies, picky eaters or a stringent budget.
If you need help to create nutritious and satisfying meals for your family, consider these four tips before you plan next week’s menu.
Add Legumes
You don’t have to eat a plate full of plain black beans to implement this suggestion. Instead, there are many great ways you can get even picky eaters to enjoy legumes and to start asking for them for multiple weekly meals.
For example, consider serving hummus made from chickpeas as a dip, making a hearty split pea soup or mixing together wonderfully smoky flavors with kidney beans to create baked beans as a side dish.
Include Whole Grains
Whole grains are proven to be incredibly healthy, especially for your heart. There are many whole grains available at your local grocery store, including quinoa, oats, bulgur and brown rice.
One of the easiest ways to increase whole grain consumption by your children is to serve them organic wheat bread made from 100 percent whole grains. Whole grains take longer to digest than enriched grains do, keeping your family satisfied longer.
Anchor with Protein
Every meal should be anchored with a protein source. This can be easy to do if you eat meat, but even meat-free meals can have hearty sources of protein. Try to include eggs, legumes, green peas, nuts, seeds, tofu, tempeh, or edamame at every meal including breakfast.
These will help give you the power to get through the day as well as sleep well at night. Everyone needs protein, and it tastes so good at the same time.
Therefore, make sure to always eat some protein.
Never Forget Fiber
Fiber can be found in wonderful quantities in many of the whole grains mentioned earlier. There are many other places where you can find excellent amounts of fiber.
Fiber that will help you round out your plate and add in delicious flavors to create an unforgettable meal. Many fruits and vegetables have hearty levels of soluble and insoluble fiber.
Fiber can make you feel full and can also be healthy for your digestive tract and heart.
Eating nutritiously doesn’t mean you have to rely on bland foods every day of the week. Many healthy foods are plenty satisfying and come with delicious flavors and textures that can inspire every member of your family.
Additionally, you can rely heavily on spices to amp up the flavors of your family meals. Many spices even come with great health benefits.
By following these four tips, you can get every member of your family on board with healthy eating and can keep their stomachs pleasantly filled at the same time.
Just as drug addicts crave for the drug they’re addicted to, food addicts crave certain foods in the same way. A large number of people are suffering from food addiction.
Food addiction was recently discovered as a serious problem. The brain becomes addicted to certain types of food through dopamine production.
This neurotransmitter is responsible for producing pleasure-inducing hormones whenever taste buds experience a pleasant taste. After becoming used to these pleasure-inducing foods, the brain cannot get enough of this “taste.”
These foods are hyper-palatable and contain high levels of sugar, salt and fat making them addictive. Learn what these hyper-palatable foods are.
