Healthy Food Choices: Mexican Food

Mexican food can be quite healthy when it's homemade and avoids fried foods. Learn about making your own healthy Mexican dish in this video.

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Watch out for high fat Mexican food
Stay away form guacamole & sour cream
Try making homemade Mexican food with lean beef

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Alice Merritt is currently the Campus Dietitian at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. She has a masters degree from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in public health with a concentration on nutrition. Alice has worked as a registered dietician for four years, and believes that helping people reach their nutritional goals will lead to a long and healthy life.

ALICE MERRITT: Now I am going to talk to you about Mexican food. Mexican food can actually be a very healthy dish especially if you can make it homemade. Some healthier Mexican choices are things like grilled chicken fajitas or shrimp fajitas. Salsa is a wonderful source of lots of vitamins and minerals with the tomato base. You really want to watch out for some of the higher fat Mexican foods such as the fried shells, the toast taquitos. A lot of times taco salad, people think is a really healthy option but it comes with the fried shell on the outside which increases the fat and calorie content. Other things that can make Mexican foods unhealthy are thing-adding a lot of high fat things like sour cream, guacamole, a lot of extra cheeses. So when you are thinking about Mexican foods, it is always a great idea to try to make it at home using leaner ground beefs. You can also use chicken again. If you are going out to restaurants, try to choose some of the leaner options like black beans, seasoned rice. You can get things ala cart which is really helpful. You can get a one's soft taco or one burrito and they kind of leave off a lot of the higher fat things like the sour cream, guacamole and cheese. So remember some of these healthy tips when eating Mexican food.

Healthy Food Choices: Mexican Food Video

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