Tag: healthy eating

Natural Flavor Enhancers for Healthy Eating

 

Although many variables influence how much you eat, flavor matters most. When trying to lose weight, we should take advantage of what flavor has to offer and make sure it works for us, instead of against us. In earliest posts, I talked about ways in which the taste of vegetables can be improved by cooking them with canola oil or with meat. If you incorporate the following ingredients in your cooking, you can further cut down on the amount of cooking oil or meat needed to flavor up your vegetable dishes. All of these ingredients are fat-free, cholesterol-free, and rich in anti-toxicants and nutrients.

 

Green Scallion is a young onion with a white base (not yet a bulb) and long green leaves. Available in Asian grocery stores, it is perfect for sautes and soups. When preparing green scallions, first cut them into halves lengthwise and then chop the halves up into half-an-inch long strips. Since they overcook easily, green onions should be added last, about 1 minute away from the completion of the cooking, to preserve their green color and crispy texture.

 

Garlic is most suitable for salads and stir-fries. For Salads, I like to use minced garlic. For stir-fries, I like to use sliced garlic. At our house, we consume large amounts of stir-fried leafy vegetables, almost all of which are seasoned with garlic. I generally add 2 cloves worth of sliced garlic to each dish. Garlic, when picked in salt, also tastes wonderful.

 

Ginger is yet another spice that I use frequently in my cooking. I seldom peel it although some people do. Ginger can get rid of the fishy smell of seafood so I use it a lot when preparing seafood dishes. 

 

The struggle for weight loss does not have to be tedious or joyless. By tapping into the flavor factor, you can make sure you stay on the right foods and at the same time keep on enjoying delicious food.

 

 

How to Optimize Flavors in Healthy Eating

A great many factors influence how much humans eat—and overeat. Social, environmental, psychological, economic, and biological factors can all trigger our appetites to behave badly. Among those pressures, flavor ranks as the most important: we tend to eat more of that which tastes good to us.
In our struggle with our weight, we often find that willpower alone is not enough to overcome the addictiveness of the foods that surround—and tempt—us day in and day out. We may be able to put up with the tedium of a low fat, low carb diet for a day or two, or for several weeks even; over time, however, our willpower weakens, and we backslide into unhealthy eating habits again. We need a more powerful weapon that can sustain us in our fight against weight gain. Flavor is such a weapon.
We all know that foods high in volume, such as vegetables, fruits, soups and stews, fill one up with fewer calories. These wholesome foods are also generally rich in nutrients. Making them a regular part of a healthful diet, on the other hand, can be difficult because most people don’t like the taste of vegetables.
Is there a way to flavor up the veggies to make them more palatable? The answer is yes.
In my experience, we can arrive at a happy compromise between flavor and wholesomeness by mixing veggies with meats or stir-frying veggies in small amounts of oil.
Have you noticed that sweet foods taste even sweeter when they are made with oil? This is because fat can serve as a vehicle for flavors. Even though it may not add a specific flavor to food, it enhances the potency of other added flavors. In the case of sugared foods, the oil distributes the sweetness throughout the mouth. Similarly, when we add oil to veggies, it can bring out all the hidden flavors in them and make them more delicious.
We have two picky eaters at our house. Both abhor veggies and wouldn’t touch veggies regardless of my best efforts to persuade them to. One day, I tried a recipe I got from a friend of mine. When stewing pork spare ribs, I put in some carrot and turnip cubes. The dish turned out to be a big success. Both of my children asked for seconds—something that never happened before.
Another favorite dish of ours is sesame tofu. Tofu, as we all know, is rich in protein and calcium. A lot of people are aware of its nutritional value but shy away from it because of its drab and slightly bitter taste. The next time you eat tofu, try adding one drop of sesame oil and some soy sauce to taste. You will find that the whole thing tastes different.