Apart from our best plans, making good and healthy food selections can be difficult. Between meal prepping, grocery shopping, food processing and finally cooking, it’s easy to get off from the mood or give up. But following few simple kitchen hacks, like keeping stocks of healthy foods, aids ensuring you have always options in hand when hunger demands.
Your brain becomes overloaded when you have many things running in your mind. Samantha Cassetty, RD, a wellness and nutrition expert and co-writer of Sugar Shock, termed that as “decision fatigue”. According to her, planning is the most critical part to eat healthier. When you have more nutritious foods stocked in your pantry and know exactly how to gather those for a quick snack or a meal, it will make it lot easier to better eating, even if you feel tired – she explains.
Here below are five staple foods Cassetty loves to stock in her pantry. Let’s follow her choices and to help promote making healthier decisions and better eating at home.
Fruit bars
Cassetty believes that, the healthiest snacks should have to be simple, with whole food ingredients, added with low or no sugar and should have good nutritional value. She likes the brand “That’s It” for fruit bars as they are made of real fruit with no added sugar. An option like this will help you meet your fruit demand when you need a quick snack right away or you don’t have other options left – she explains.
Canned tuna
Cassetty knows that there are very few people who use to consume suggested 2 servings of seafood in a week. That’s why she tops canned tuna to include in her pantry picks. Tuna contains fatty acids omega-3s, which have anti-inflammatory activity that are responsible for brain and heart health, and vitamin D, which is vital for immune function.
Pulse-based pasta
Typically boxed pasta is composed of flour and water, but pulse-based pasta, on the other hand, has ingredients like chickpeas or lentils, which provide fiber and protein. Going for pulse-based pasta is easier and quicker way to balancing your meals as you don’t need to go for cooking a protein component separately.
Raw oats
Apart from loaded with micronutrients like zinc, magnesium, iron and selenium, when eaten raw, unsweetened raw oats provide a prebiotic fiber called as resistant starch. Studies have linked that this resistant starch has potentials to improve weight management and blood sugar regulation and also can lower bloating from gas. Use raw oats with avocado toast, sprinkled over a salad dish or add with homemade energy bites to get the most out of them.
Walnuts
These strong foods hold more anti- inflammatory omega-3 fatty acids than any other available nuts. Each serving or each 30 grams of walnuts provide 4.3 grams of protein, 2 grams of fiber, anti-oxidants and 185 calories, which are good to feel your satiety fuller for long. Several studies have also backed this as they have revealed that eating walnuts are associated with better appetite control.
