[Closed] Help me to eat healthier

Sorry Welshfarmer 99% of your advice is excellent but E numbers are misunderstood and aren't all bad at all for example Vit C is E300.

If you can find the program on Iplayer the Truth about E Numbers is an excellent primer on what they're about. It's ok though we won't have them for long as the E stands for European.

Edit Link to a blog post that went with the program. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/food/2010/08/are-e-numbers-really-bad-for-y.shtml

Some suggestions are tricky because I just plain don't like them!

I grew up loathing vegetables. But eventually I figured out ways to cook them well.

Last night had a couple of slices of roast ham with roasted parsnips, baby pots, sweet potatoes and squash with carrots and green beans covered in butter. It was bloody lovely.

If you don't like a vegetable, roast it, fry it or cover it in cheese and try again.

No, I fully agree. BUT if you see an E number and don't know what it is then get your phone out an inform yourself. Maybe it is something benign and can go in the trolley, but maybe not. If you are happy you can buy vit C elsewhere for example, then fine. All I am suggesting is a very simple way to cut down on some of the, lets us say, less essential parts of our modern diet, and to actually think about what we are consuming.

You'd expect pasta sauces in a jar to have loads of crap in, but they don't any more. At least Dolmio and Lloyd G don't.

You'd expect pasta sauces in a jar to have loads of crap in, but they don't any more. At least Dolmio and Lloyd G don't.

And if you don't like the 'bits' you could blitz the sauce with a blender to get a smooth sauce (although I believe Dolmio do smooth versions of some of their sauces now).

They do, they are a bit sticky sweet but some might like it - I used to.

Some suggestions are tricky because I just plain don't like them! I love sweet potato, mushrooms, salad, tomatoes, cucumber, don't mind potatoes, some things I could prob put up with like carrots but I don't like cauliflower, broccoli, peppers, green beans

As molgrips implies, how you cook and serve vegetables can make a huge difference. Too many domestic and commercial 'cooks' in the UK think that cooking vegetables simply means cutting them up and boiling them in water. GolfChick, if you can afford it I would suggest that you try eating out at least occasionally at good restaurants offering differing types of cuisine (italian, spanish, turkish, medditerranean, far eastern, indian etc.) and see if you particularly like how they cook vegetables and what they serve them with.

For example, the typical italian dish of broccoli and pasta would involve boiling pieces of broccoli but what makes all the difference is that they are then sautéd in olive oil flavoured with garlic, chilli and possibly anchovies. Similarly as howsyourdad1 notes above, it is the olive oil and lemon dressing for boiled green beans that make them work so well with a rich cream laden dish like potato dauphinoise. And yet a completely different result can be had by cooking green beans in a curry like [url= https://www.the-pool.com/food-home/food-honestly/2016/34/meera-sodha-on-cooling-summer-curries-when-its-hot-outside ]this one[/url] which also contains tomatoes, mange tout and peas.

Tenderstem broccoli boiled/sauteed with butter and some almond flakes - lovely.

Also something like Thai curry or a stir fry of some Asian type for different veg served differently.

Slowster we should hang out

Simply check the ingredients and if there is ANYTHING in there that you don't recognise as a food in its own right or stuff you are pretty sure you would not be able to buy locally, then put it back on the shelves. So things containing, glucose syrup, lecithin, palm oil, hydrogenated fats, Most E numbers etc. get left behind.

It may be odd but it is a starting point if someone really wants to eat more healthily. Lecithin may be available in Holland and Barret but would you recognise it as a cooking ingredient? And why use a synthesised product which is essentially nothing more than egg yolk, when egg yolks are readily available?

As for sugar, I would agree, although most sugar-rich foods these days have had the sugar content replaced by glucose syrup anyway. Part 2 of my healthy eating plan would be to not buy anything containing sugar (or at least containing a significant amount??). But then it is up to the individual how far your take any of this.

BTW I cannot give up my baked beans despite them containing sugar and modified maize starch 🙂

howsyourdad1 - Member

More importantly for Golfchick, New Covent Garden soups are currently half price at Tesco (and some other supermarkets), so that's one or more to add to the online order.

processed crap, sorry. probably better than a Chicago town pizza however granted!

Like welshfarmer, I often check the ingredients of any processed food, and the presence of palm oil and long chemical names usually kills whatever appetite I might initially have had when looking at the enticing image on the packet. In the case of New Covent Garden, they have a reputation of making good quality soups with basic ingredients (and they have published a number of their own recipe books). The ingredients of their tomato soup are:

Water, Tomatoes (26%), Onions, Tomato Paste (3%), Slow Roasted Tomatoes (1.8%), Basil (1%), Sugar, Sundried Tomato Paste (0.5%), Cornflour, Balsamic Vinegar, Salt, Garlic, Coarse Ground Black Pepper

Slow Roasted Tomatoes contains: Slow Roasted Tomatoes, Rapeseed Oil, Garlic, Oregano

Sundried Tomato Paste contains: Sundried Tomatoes (53.5%), Rapeseed Oil, Wine Vinegar, Sugar, Salt

Processed? Of course, but it is fundamentally no different from the cooking and blending processes to make soup at home. Crap? I don't think so, and it passes welshfarmer's test.

Are you sure we should hang out? 😉

BTW I cannot give up my baked beans despite them containing sugar

They (Heinz) seem to have changed the recipe and they are a lot less sweet now. Anyone else notice this?

OP yes definitely a good idea to ditch the white bread for wholemeal, but just remember that there are loads of different wholemeal/brown breads available - you might have to try a couple before you find one you like.

Also try to do a weekly shop. Monthly isn't frequent enough for fruit and veg.

All the best with it.

@slowster I don't use 3 teaspoons of sugar per 300gms of soup when I make it at home. I don't need to mention the salt either. In half a carton.

It is processed crap, IMHO. It's less crap than a ready made pizza , but it is poor quality food. I stand by that. Everything in moderation of course and products like this certainly have their place in modern life.

That depends, when is prawn linguine night?

I want your metabolism, my diet is pretty good bar a couple of teas with sugar a day but I just eat too much of it 🙁

my dad who sadly died of cancer a couple of years ago was convinced that sugar and non organic dairy were the work of the devil. Probably total balls but I promised him I'd try to consume as little as possible!

I don't use 3 teaspoons of sugar per 300gms of soup when I make it at home. I don't need to mention the salt either. In half a carton.

Sugar is below something that's 1% on the ingredients list. Less than basil. So if it's 1% too, that's 3g, less than one tsp.

Most of the sugar will be natural, from the toms and tom paste.

Still better to make your own. And I agree on the salt.

Called into Aldi last night before circuits and bought a lot of green and healthy items, most of which I have no clue how to cook but I'm sure I'll figure it out, recipes seemed easy enough. Managed to spend about £16 on two bags worth and then spent the same on only one bag at tesco, typical!

Had my first tub of overnight oats this morning with blueberries and bananas, ridiculously yummy! For lunch had wholegrain bread sandwich with lettuce, cucumuber, tomato and a slice of ham. Dinner not so great as we're having burgers but I'm doing home made sweet potatoe fries and I'll have some mushrooms and salad on the plate as well, all in balance and I have to appears my boyfriend who isn't necessarily onboard with the whole healthy scheme!

a lot of green and healthy items,

Tell us what they are and we'll help.

Remember - most boiled veg are shit, they need butter, seasoning, nuts, bacon, spice etc to make them nice. At the very least the first two in that list. Then if that fails, roast them.

Dinner not so great as we're having burgers

Burgers are not a problem at all. Go with no bun if you like, but sweet pot fries (or roasted) and corn on the cob are nice accompaniments, as are buttery green beans. Then have cheese, optionally bacon and barbecue sauce on. Few jalapenos or some salsa too if you like. Nom. One of my most satisfying low carb meals that.

It is processed crap, IMHO.

Define 'processed'. Soup is always processed because you are boiling it all down, even when you make it yourself. And don't assume sugar on the nutritional breakdown means ADDED sugar. Tomatoes are sugary as are lots of other natural wholesome things.

it is poor quality food

Why, specifically?

GolfChick - Member
Called into Aldi last night before circuits and bought a lot of green and healthy items, most of which I have no clue how to cook but I'm sure I'll figure it out, recipes seemed easy enough.

Remember - most boiled veg are shit

Good (local or own) produce steamed is a world away from supermarket stuff boiled to rags. A squirt of lemon juice, garlic maybe, but I've been suprised at the difference. I steam in microwave in an old takeaway container, works a treat and is economical compared to stove-top

Forget the title, the recipes in here are awesome, and the portions are flippin huge, if you don't wanna lose weight, just eat more of it. All recipes are for one person too, which is such a sensible idea, and one that not many cook books do.

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Good (local or own)

Seems to be this idea floating around that if you grow it, it'll automatically be great. This is not the case in my experience, having tried to eat what our garden produced 🙂

tru dat @beej, unnecessary in my mind though , plus the salt yep.

@molgrips because of the added salt and sugar, over and beyond what would needed if you were cooking it from scratch with good quality ingredients. IMHO of course, you are entitled to yours. foods like this create the desire for sweetness, more salt etc in my personal experience.

but anyhow @golfchick that is massive progress, good work!

I don't use 3 teaspoons of sugar per 300gms of soup when I make it at home.

And neither does New Covent Garden: although sugar is indeed an added ingredient, most of the sugar that makes up the 12.6g per 300g serving is the natural sugar present in the tomatoes. By way of comparison their vegetable soup and carrot and corriander soup both contain 9g of sugar, even though sugar is not an added ingredient. In their recipe for making the slow roasted tomato soup for four people at home, they list 1 teaspoon of caster sugar in the ingredients, which is sprinkled over the tomatoes before roasting them in the oven, presumably to increase the caramelisation/Maillard reaction (or 'burning it a bit', which is my definition of most cooking).

I think the addition of sugar specifically to some tomato sauce and soup recipes is not uncommon, e.g. napolitana sauce for pasta, although my own personal preference is for those tomato sauces which contain garlic and chilli instead.

I don't need to mention the salt either. In half a carton.

I'm not sure what you mean. The salt content is 1g per 300g serving. Food manufacturers are obliged to list the salt content, whereas any recipe for cooking at home would leave the amount of any seasoning to the taste of the cook, and that might not be enough for some at the table who would add more: it's personal preference/choice. I imagine that New Covent Garden add the minimum amount of salt that they consider necessary for the flavour of their product, leaving it to consumers to add more if they wish.

when is prawn linguine night?

I've just taken the prawns out to defrost.

In terms of ingredients I've bought and not sure about I've gone for the following two recipes

[url= https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1897698/cheesy-leek-and-bacon-pasta ]Leek and Bacon Pasta[/url]

[url= https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1742634/butternut-macaroni-cheese ]Butternut Macaroni Cheese[/url]

I couldn't find the mustard powder so I'll be ignoring that part. PLan for both is left overs goes for lunch the next day so I can warm it up a little and serve with a side salad.

I think it may be a good idea to make a list of some meals I can cook to try to stop myself falling into a bad routine, so it occured to me this morning while making my ham salad that I could do egg salad sandwich one day too.

I really want some sort of seafood pasta and mushroom pasta as I love both but it's finding one that's not too super complicated. I'm tempted to try to just buy some sauce jars to go with both so that I dont have to quite cook from scratch.

I couldn't find the mustard powder so I'll be ignoring that part

Just use mustard. Mustard powder is just dry mustard.

I'm tempted to try to just buy some sauce jars to go with both so that I dont have to quite cook from scratch.

Despite what foodie snobs say, sauce jars can be brilliant, as long as you get good ones. For me I buy the Lloyd Grossman ones and they are better than a lot of Italian restaurants I've eaten in. And you end up with a pretty damn good super quick meal.

The tomato and chilly one poured over some chicken breasts and baked then topped with parmesan is bloody lovely and then served with roasted sweet potatoes. MMM. Just be sure to periodically spoon the sauce back over the breasts as it reduces so you get a nice coating.

Oh and top tip if you want roasted veg - microwave them first. For sweet pots it's about 5 mins til they are just a bit underdone then in the oven for 20 mins.

I think it may be a good idea to make a list of some meals I can cook

Yeah this is a great way - just learn a few staple meals and then you don't have think about cooking unless you want to.

@molgrips because of the added salt and sugar, over and beyond what would needed if you were cooking it from scratch with good quality ingredients.

Except we've already shown that there isn't loads of added salt and sugar in some of them. Don't look down on everything pre-packaged. There's a world of difference between New Covent Garden soups and a Farm Foods frozen ready meal.

There has been a lot of development in food technology since I started cooking for myself. Not quite sure what has changed but you can now buy food that is more or less exactly as it would be cooked by a good chef but put into jars and pasteurised. And our tastes have developed over the years too.

I think the addition of sugar specifically to some tomato sauce and soup recipes is not uncommon

For me I buy the Lloyd Grossman ones and they are better than a lot of Italian restaurants I've eaten in.

Yeah I love the Lloyd Grossman Tomato and Basil, use it for meatballs and pasta for when the kids come at the weekends. I need to have a look at the other flavours that would compliment a mushroom pasta. Good to know it's not too bad ingredient etc wise!

But this is where opinion comes in no as to what constitutes 'a load' ? I occasionally add a pinch, the smallest pinch, of sugar (or more often red wine vinegar) to a homemade tomato sauce. I don't feel like it needs more, particularly if they are good tomatoes grown in my greenhouse . A teaspoon I would find very sweet. Perhaps because I rarely eat packet sauces 😀
Granted that Covent garden one does seem better you are right there, but in general , in my opinion, most are to be avoided.

If we are doing cooking tips, if you cook the tomatoes whole and crush them later the bitterness from the seeds is less pronounced.

Lamb and lentils for me tonight , enjoy dinner one and all

The LG sauces are decent, but no more convenient, and way more expensive, than making a decent sauce from scratch.

It takes a few mins preparation to make a big pot of a good tomato sauce, then batch freeze.

but no more convenient

I really want some sort of seafood pasta and mushroom pasta as I love both but it's finding one that's not too super complicated.

If you mean pasta dishes containing both seafood and mushrooms, I doubt you will find (m)any. The Italians are often very dogmatic about not combining certain ingredients, e.g. cheese with fish, and I cannot recall ever seeing a seafood and mushroom pasta recipe.

Hoewever, if you are looking for seafood pasta recipes, presumably ideally with vegetables, then there are loads of recipes. One of my favourites is garlic prawn linguine with cherry tomatoes. I've posted the recipe below previously:

Heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a saute pan (or frying pan if large enough to contain the pasta at the end) at a medium heat.
Add a pinch of dried chilli flakes and a finely chopped garlic clove and cook till the garlic is 'pale gold' (beige).
Add around half a dozen prawns and cook for half a minute to a minute, then turn them over and cook another half a minute to a minute.
Add between 6-8 cherry tomatoes, sliced in half, and cook for a few minutes, adding salt and pepper to season.

In the meantime cook 75g-100g of linguine or spaghetti in approximately a litre of boiling water with half a teaspoon of salt added to it. Cook it till it's 'al dente' (so 10 minutes if the De Cecco brand), then quickly drain and add the pasta to the saute/frying pan, together with a good handful of fresh or frozen finely chopped flat leaf parsley.

Allow half a minute to a minute for the pasta to cook a bit more in the juices and then serve with some bread (focaccia is good) to mop up the spicy garlicky tomatoey juices at the end.

NB When I last cooked this I did it slightly differently, cooking the pasta in boiling water for 7 minutes, then adding it to the saute pan for 3 minutes with 25ml-50ml of the pasta water, and only adding the prawns at the last minute (cooking them just long enough to turn them pink all over, and cutting them in two or three to speed up their cooking, i.e. as is suggested in [url= http://www.greatbritishchefs.com/recipes/linguine-prawns-lemon-parsley-recipe ]this recipe which I linked to above for a similar dish without tomatoes[/url]).

You should be able to find plenty of other seafood/pasta/vegetable recipes by googling, e.g. [url= https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1965/pasta-with-tuna-and-tomato-sauce ]tuna and tomato[/url]. Another of my favourites is pasta puttanesca - albeit the only seafood ingredient is the anchovies - which there are various ways to cook, see [url= https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2014/sep/25/how-to-cook-perfect-pasta-puttanesca-recipe ]here[/url] and [url= https://thehappyfoodie.co.uk/recipes/spaghetti-alla-puttanesca ]here[/url] and watch [url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04zcn68 ]this[/url]. I batch cook puttanesca sauce and freeze it in portions. Have a glass of red wine with it (or possibly a Peroni).

An advantage of the last two recipes is that they used tinned tomatoes. I don't buy fresh tomatoes in winter, since I figure they will not be at their best (although maybe the cherry tomatoes in the shops now, especially on the vine, might still deliver good results when cooked in the first recipe above).

Another easy cherry tomato pasta recipe:

Halve 150g-250g of cherry tomatoes per person. Place cut side up in an oven proof tray large enough to contain them all snuggly together with 4 garlic cloves per person. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with a pinch of chilli flakes, a good grind or pepper and a pinch of salt. Roast in pre-heated oven at 200°C for 25 minutes (until garlic is soft and golden). Cook the pasta, drain it and return to the pot and add the cooked tomatoes and garlic and toss. In an ideal world you would also have some torn fresh basil leaves to scatter over the pasta just before serving.

Seems to be this idea floating around that if you grow it, it'll automatically be great

Now I never said 'automatically' ;).

Luckily have some very good friends and local producers who put the effort in. I have the idle thumbs of death when it comes to growing, so I rely on green-fingered wizards to raise the goods. Supermarket veg is shit tho. Even my grandad said so, and I agree with him as any one of his (say) tomatoes or onions had 10x the flavour of the ubiquitous plastic-wrapped pale stuff. We all did forget what good produce tasted like. I bought some parsnips the other month from mozzers, and roasted them. They were like tasteless foam. Then got some from a little greengrocers in Llangollen and they were big bad-ass dirty weighty buggers that impressed all the way to my end 🙂

Of course they're more convenient. In every way, from buying the separate ingredients, to preparing those ingredients, finding out what to do with them then doing it. Compared with opening

It's marginal IMO.

The time it takes to heat a pre made sauce, I can prep enough ingredients for 5 or 6 batches of sugo for the freezer, I can flavour it the way I want it too.

I'm not gonna argue about it tbh, I've cooked this way for years and quite enjoy it, but am aware that some folks [s]don't have time[/s] are pretty lazy, and thats up to them.

YMMV.

I've made sauce from scratch before. And done it fairly well. And it is significantly more work. Of course it's easy to defrost it from the freezer but you've only got a sauce base, so you have to have everything else.

A significant amount of effort when cooking from scratch is managing the ingredients, buying what you need, not too much, and using it up before it goes off. That takes organisation. I just don't want to put that much mental effort into something I don't really want to do. I can leave a jar of sauce in a cupboard and meat in the freezer as long as I like until one day I need something quickly, haven't got out to the supermarket and the jar's there.

I could spent a chunk of an afternoon making a batch of tomato sauce but why bother when LG is as good or better? The LG recipe is created by a chef, after all*. I am not a chef.

The time it takes to heat a pre made sauce, I can prep enough ingredients for 5 or 6 batches of sugo for the freezer,

Whilst my sauce is heating, I am cleaning up, unpacking or packing the dishwasher, cleaning up kids detritus, cooking pasta, emptying the bins etc etc. Cooking from scratch takes effort, I have to be actually cooking.

* not LG himself obvs, but still a professional chef working for whatever company makes them.

I could spent a chunk of an afternoon making a batch of tomato sauce

You're doing it wrong. 😀 I agree with Nobeer, its marginal. You can make it whilst cooking the pasta. Agree its perhaps a dish or two more to put in and remove from the dishwasher though.

Puttanesca linked above is the shizznit. A similar one , Baked white fish in Tomato sauce is damn good. Chopped basil stalks, sliced clove of garlic in oil. 2 cans of plum tomatoes and a pinch of dried chilli. Reduce. Salt and pepper , dash of red wine vinegar. In with some white fish fillets, chopped black / kalamata olives and capers on the top and in the oven for 10 mins. Fresh basil to finish, serve with pasta or steamed potatoes, green beans on the side ( with a squeeze of lemon) or a salad. Gold

I dont really have room in the freezer for batch cooking and storing most of this stuff. To give you an idea of the size of our kitchen, if I wanted to take a cook book in the cook book would have to go on top of the oven so that i can chop etc, if I then needed to use the oven top the cookbook would have to go where the food is now. Our freezer is just a small under counter one, freezer, then cooker, the fridge, sink...... thats it. The room in the small under counter freezer is more important to use up with meats and protein really.

Had a dramatic prep fail this evening, hadn't even defrosted the burgers!!!! Had to opt for a pasta bake but instead of eating half and garlic bread I went for a quarter with a side salad and garlic bread. Will have leftover pasta with more salad for lunch tomorrow. Maybe a single slice of multi seed bread.

As I said Molly, I'm not arguing, you do what suits you.

I agree with earlier posts though, no jarred sauce is ever as good as home made. Yes it takes effort, but I enjoy cooking, others don't, I see food as a pleasure, not just fuel. If I didn't, I'd eat processed shite from asda, or even worse, that huel bunkum.

I'm not arguing