COOK HEALTHY, COOK TASTY! Tips for a Healthy Kitchen

COOK HEALTHY, COOK TASTY! Tips for a Healthy Kitchen

Every day, crores of rupees are spent on advertising that coaxes you to eat things that are not healthy. Often even I have faced situations where there is nothing healthy to eat either in a friend’s home, or at an occasion with buffet options, and definitely on domestic and international flights. Particularly on one airlines, I would say that the food options are definitely not fit for human consumption. The last 15 to 20 years has seen a boom in restaurant/takeaway/processed food consumption and a huge expansion of options and choices of food ingredients, but simultaneously, a sharp decline in the quality of nutrition and healthy choice-making for the average person in our country as well as across the planet.

Good evening, it is 12 October, 2022 and and time for my weekly blog on Integrative Living. I am Dr. Aneeta Madhok. I am an Integrative Nutrition Health Coach qualified from the Institute of Integrative Nutrition in the US. By profession, I am a Coaching Psychologist and I went through a self-healing health transformation a few years ago. I coach people to lead healthy and vibrant lives, with my six-month Integrative Living program. Because I am a psychologist, for Health Coaching I focus on the mind-body, Heart and Soul of my clients. Each client is on his or her own journey and the coaching helps achieve many milestones along the way.

I say, it’s time to learn and re-learn how to cook healthy and tasty at home! The joy of creating a dish infused with love and good healthy ingredients, and sharing with those we love and meet often, is incredible. Cooking healthy can be as simple as simply cutting some salad and preparing a simple dip, or as complex as a buffet for a party or a five-course sit down meal for those around the dining table. My father used to say it’s not about the effort you take, but the emotions you cook with that infuse the food with authentic, emotional nourishment. Cooking at home for both men and women can be an act of self-love and self-care if we rework our relationship with the actual act of putting food together.

In this blog, I will share with you some of the ways in which we can infuse our cooking with health and taste.

Pots and Pans

It begins with the pots and pans we use. Several years ago, I learned about health hazards of using Teflon coated pans, aluminium kadhais (woks), and got rid of all of these in my kitchen in one go. I learned the art of cooking in cast iron pans and how to maintain them, and also in copper-bottom stainless steel pots and woks. The steamer became a go to choice for so many veggies to be steamed to perfection. You have to modify your techniques a bit but once you get the hang of cooking on low heat for stainless steel, and non-acidic cooking for cast iron, you begin to become a masterchef.

Ingredients

Organic-Fresh-Local-Seasonal

Growing up as a child in the 60s and 70s almost everything was organic, because pesticides were not created yet. I remember the first time we heard of DDT as a pesticide that was sprayed in the fields, only to be banned for being too toxic, and this paved the way for ‘approved’ pesticides. Did you know apples have upto 56 different pesticides on their surface, or that one study found 300 contaminants in new born babies, or that one research found California strawberry fields used about 280 pounds of pesticides per acre of cultivation?

Do you remember a time in your childhood when the only vegetables available in the market were the seasonal and local ones because the transport network was not so evolved to bring all the vegetables from different parts of the country and abroad, to your local market?

Is it too much to ask for organic, local, seasonal, fresh produce? Organic produce is now easily available at most online platforms, and local markets. The price difference is usually small, and rarely too much. Farmers markets also spring up in every locality to bring the fresh and local and seasonal produce to you.

At the rate the world is learning about health, someday non-GMO foods will be added to this list. If you read about how genetically modified food is created, you might want to insist on a label that identifies non-GMO foods too!

Food variety

The more diverse your food ingredients, the more your chances of getting all the macro and micro-nutrients needed for a healthy body. Not only different veggies, but different varieties of the same vegetables (as in brinjals etc), with a range of rainbow colours, balances out the polyphenols, anti-oxidants, vitamins, macro minerals, trace minerals, etc. The same goes with macronutrients like proteins, carbohydrates, and fats which should be available from a variety of sources. So don’t limit the food items you consume and be open to experimenting with different types of food varieties.

Detox Ingredients

There are many foods that have a detox effect on the body. Things like apple cider vinegar, ginger, turmeric, lemon, mint, watermelon, cucumber, citrus fruits. Every day our body produces waste chemicals as a by-product of living processes. Preparing a good detox smoothie or meal once a day, mostly in the morning will help your body stay healthy.

Freezing food

It’s perfectly fine to freeze many food items for your own convenience, provided you have a good freezer that maintains low temperatures and don’t live in a place where there are frequent power cuts. Freezing at home is better than buying processed and canned foods for convenience. Spice mixes, pre-cooked, raw veggies like peas etc…. all do well in the freezer. Make sure you put a sticker with the date of freezing in and follow the FIFO (first in, first out) principle.

Cooking methods

Raw cooking

Raw cooking is not an oxymoron. There are a huge number of “recipes” for raw dishes, some are so masterful, you might even get a medal or a Michelin star for them. Frozen fruit smoothie bowls, raw zucchini noodles, dehydrated veggie chips, dessert custards, chocolate mousse, avocado ice-cream, nut granolas, and of course, coconut milk curries, nourishing and detox juices, millions of salad combinations. Raw food is a great detox and keeping one day a week for a raw feasting will go a long way in the making of a great healthy body.

Cooking on gas flame/electric or induction burner

Of course, this is the most frequently used method. A few tips is to keep cooking time to a minimum to avoid destroying the nutrients. Always cook with the lid on to keep the natural water of the veggies being cooked within the dish and not to let the nutrients evaporate too much. Use high temperatures only for stir fries as that seals the ingredients within the vegetables, and also for bringing food to a boiling point. Use the simmering temperature cooking once food reaches a cooking point, to avoid over-heating the food. Cook your meals just before eating and avoid re-heating to the extent possible.

Baking/grilling

Great way to cook with less oil. Most vegetables like aubergines, capsicums, cauliflowers etc. are amenable to grilling and taste delicious that way. Get yourself an oven and grill to bring out the best taste in your foods today.

Microwaving

Some divergent opinions exist in the health world about microwaving. Traditional and alternative therapy specialists do not approve of microwaved food. Apparently when food is microwaved, the water particles in the food are agitated and consuming them is not a good idea. Opponents of microwaved food also claim that microwaving food turns alkaline elements in the food carcinogenic, but it is the container that is used which makes the difference.

On the other hand, a growing body of modern research has proved that microwaved food has the same structure and nutrients as food cooked by any other method. Yes, the cooking dishes in microwave should preferably be made of borosilicate glass and not plastic of any sort, because the plastic molecules escape into the food.

My best recommendation is to allow microwaved food to rest for at least ten minutes before consuming, to allow the vibrations to come to rest. Never use plastic, melamine, or food wrappers in the microwave even if they are ‘certified’ to be microwave friendly. And lastly, use microwaves to the minimum extent possible. This is because the long term effects of microwave cooking are not yet studied as the microwave ovens were invented only a few decades ago and not a traditional part of our cooking methods.

Doing a Pantry Makeover

One of the major steps in our six-month health coaching program is helping our clients do a pantry makeover that supports their new lifestyle and good health. This includes a complete turnaround of your pantry and kitchen gadgets that will support your healthy home cooking, like measuring cups spoons and scales, steamers, juicers, smoothie makers, sprout makers etc.

Ingredients to add in your pantry:

Plenty of whole grains, like millets, sorghum, quinoa, amaranth, brown rice, etc. Plenty of pulses and beans, dals, and other lentils like chick peas, black and green chick peas, yellow peas etc.. Cold pressed seed oils like sesame, groundnut, sunflower, mustard, olive, coconut oils. Flours like whole emmer wheat, millet, chick-pea flour, black chana flour, buckwheat, amaranth, sorghum. Sugar sources like monk fruit, stevia, jaggery, dates, raw sugar. Plant based milks like almond milk, coconut milk, soya milk, oat milk. Nuts like almonds, walnuts, cashews, brazil nuts, etc. Seeds like pumpkin, sesame, flax, blackseeds, etc. If you are planning to do fermented drinks, some kefir grains and kombucha scoby as starters. More advanced stages of pantry makeover could include plant-based yogurt, cheese, nut butters. Of course, an ongoing supply of fresh fruits, vegetables and salad items, whole spices and other consumables.

Ingredients to delete

Throw out or compost these ingredients: White rice, white refined sugar, white wheat flour, refined oils. For those who are going completely plant-based, donate the milk, buttermilk, yogurt, meat, chicken and fish packets accumulated in your pantry.

Some of these ingredients are not supported with diabetics, or with obesity, or other related lifestyle diseases. Each person’s health journey is unique and self-healing is a personal trip, so a bio-individual approach to pantry makeover is essential.

There are so many more things to say about Healthy Cooking including recipes, inspiration, creativity, originality, and much more, but this is all for now…. Signing off…

One last word…. Always remember that the feelings that go into your cooking are the feelings that the person eating internalises…. So if you enjoy your cooking, infuse with the best ingredient: love. Nothing can go wrong, ever!