You may not feel motivated to cook yourself a healthy vegetable stir-fry dish after making fried chicken and mashed potatoes for the rest of your family. If you want to improve your diet, it helps if everyone in your household adopts healthier eating patterns. With a bit of patience and creativity, you can create family-friendly, health-conscious meals for your entire family to enjoy.
Gradual Change
Make small changes. If members of your family expect to eat pastry for breakfast, burgers for lunch, and large slabs of meat for dinner, they may not support a total ban on all processed and take-out foods. If you approach the idea of healthy eating as lifelong process rather than all-or-nothing proposition, both you and your family can adjust to -- and eventually embrace -- change. Try having "meatless Mondays" or "fish Fridays," so that your family feels excited rather than deprived by healthier meal plans. You can also replace margarine and shortening with olive oil for cooking, make sure there are nuts, seeds and fruit on hand for snacking rather than chips and cookies, and incorporate more whole grains and vegetables into meals, making meat a side dish rather than the focus of the meal.
Breakfast
Simple changes for healthier breakfasts include stocking up on high-fiber cereals, low-fat and non-fat milk and yogurt, fresh fruit and nuts. Try a bowl of oatmeal cooked with non-fat milk and topped with cinnamon, almonds and a chopped banana. If someone wants a sweeter version, add a few chocolate chips rather than sugar for fewer calories and extra antioxidants. Replace white bread with multi-grain bread and try topping toast with peanut butter and a sliced banana rather than jam. Add raspberries to 1 cup of non-fat plain yogurt for a fat-free breakfast rich in calcium, protein and fiber. You can also consider low-fat cheese melted on a whole wheat English muffin.
Lunch
If you pack lunches, let your children help. Provide choices from the basic food groups -- fruits, vegetables, grains and dairy -- and let them make choices. Keep some cooked chicken, turkey or ham on hand rather than buying luncheon meats. Buy almond butter as well as peanut butter for variety. Buy different kinds of bread, such as seven grain, flax seed, whole wheat naan, or pumpernickel, to keep sandwich-making interesting. Buy a few each of several different varieties of fruits rather than a large bag of one kind. Let family members choose sandwich toppings such as romaine, spinach, sprouts, tomatoes, carrots and avocados.
Dinner
For dinner, try whole wheat pasta instead of white. You can mix the two types in the beginning, so your family can adjust to the difference in taste and texture. For protein, try adding chicken instead of ground beef to the marinara sauce. For additional fiber, add vegetables such as mushrooms, broccoli, onions, baby spinach, corn and kale. You can make a nearly fat-free and fiber-filled meal of beans and rice. Add barbecue sauce or taco sauce to the beans and serve over brown rice. Top with salsa or fresh tomatoes, and sprinkle with cheese. For dessert, try a blueberry crisp, using a recipe that uses oatmeal in the topping. Reduce the sugar and butter in your recipes by half and add cinnamon for extra flavor.
References
- MayoClinic.com; Healthy Diet: End the Guesswork With These Nutrition Guidelines; February 2011
- American Dietetic Association, Eat Right; Health Implications of Dietary Fiber; 2008
- University of California San Francisco Medical Center; Cholesterol Content of Foods; Feb. 2 2011
- MayoClinic.com; Nutrition and Healthy Eating -- High-Fiber Foods; 2009
