How to shop for healthy food on the market?
As the demands for healthy food is
increasing thus healthy food option on the market is becoming more ubiquitous
as well. In 2017, Forbes wrote that people who view on food related contents is
more than 23 billion and search on healthy food content like vegan or gluten
free food on the internet is increasing more that 100% (1).
As people are started to search for healthy food and
there are many healthy food options on the market, how do consumers make the
right choice in buying healthy food? Or is healthy food is more to marketing
strategy rather than ‘healthy’ itself ?
Tips for buying healthy groceries.
Buying groceries seems easy until, you put into account
your budget, how many heads need to be fed and the need to make healthier food
choices for everyone in the household! Even more headache, if any of the
members in the house have specific food allergies or certain medical condition
that allow only specific food to be eaten. Fret not, here we try to simplify
things for you and smoothen your grocery shopping experience!
1. Plan ahead (2,3,5).
In order to ease your groceries shopping out, you may
actually plan ahead your meal of the week, this can as well make sure that you
only shop within your budget. Meal planning not only saving your money and
time, but it also can ensure you and your family gets healthy and nutritious
meal. Below is the example of meal planning for family of two throughout the
week.
You may get this kind of template for weekly meal
planner online since it can be exciting, to incorporates your family members
favourite dish or trying new recipe using this. Based on this, you get to know
what are the things you need to stock at your kitchen and pantry with.
2. Looking for healthy food on the market (3,4,5,6,7).
Here comes the tricky one! After you have planned your
meal of the week, you may divide it according to classes of food, since food in
the supermarket or even your local grocery shop (support local, small SME), is
usually by category. Food classes can be divided into carbohydrate, protein,
fats, fruits, and veggies.
Carbohydrates (3,4,5).
Always remember to consume food in variation, balance
and in moderation, to keep you and your family a healthy balance diet. When it
comes to carbohydrate, make sure the source of your carbohydrate comes from
variety of source. Example of carbohydrate sources are pasta, rice, bread,
noodle, and some vegetables like potatoes. Vary food from these sources
throughout the week and choose food from the low glycaemic index and
whole-grain product more than the high glycaemic index.
Glycemic index (GI) is a rating system for foods
containing carbohydrates. It shows how quickly each food affects your blood
sugar (glucose) level when that food is eaten on its own. High GI foods are
broken down quickly by your body and cause a rapid increase in blood sugar
level, such as sugary and sugary foods, soft drinks, white bread, potatoes, and
white rice. Meanwhile, low GI food is the kind of food that will slowly spike
your blood because it is broken down slowly and makes you full longer (promotes
satiety). Example of low GI foods are green leafy vegetables, wholegrain food
such as oat and brown rice, legumes and many more.
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Protein (3,4).
Protein can also derive from various food resources,
commonly known are chicken, meat, and fish, but there is also other soy-based
food that is high with protein content, such as ‘tauhu’ and ‘tempeh’. Not only
that ‘tempeh’ (local soy-based food) is high with protein but rich in
probiotics as well.
Always choose white meat over red meat, since red meat
has high saturated fats which is not good for your heart health, it is ok to
consume it but in moderation and not too seldom. Dairy products are important
as well in incorporating healthy, balance meal, thus consider including dairy
product in your diet as well.
Fats (7).
There are many types of cooking oil on the market, they
are also marketed as the cooking oil which has low cholesterol level. Is it
true? This is all marketing strategy, as all of the cooking oil such as
sunflower oil, canola oil, corn oil, olive oil, or even the common one which is
palm oil is derived from plant thus, plant-based food generally does not
contain cholesterol. Cholesterol is only coming from animal -based food.
Below is the classification of cooking oil;
It is suggested to mix your cooking oil in the 1:1
ration, which means 1 part of monounsaturated fat and polyunsaturated fat.
Vegetables & Fruits (3,4,5).
As for vegetables, it is suggested to consume 3 servings
of vegetables per day, thus you can tell that it needs to be the most food
items that you bought for the market in order to make sure everyone consume
enough vegetables.
It is quite troublesome when it comes to vegetables
since most of the vegetables have short life span. Make sure 20%-30% of your
vegetables coming from green leafy vegetables, since these are insoluble fiber
which is good for your digestion and slow down the spike of your blood glucose
level, but these are the kind of vegetables that is easily perishable as well.
The rest you may add with rhizome types of vegetables such as carrot and
radish, and another one us tuber such as potatoes.
Tuber kind of vegetables are mostly high in carbohydrate
as well, it is still helping the digestion, but it can spike your glucose
level. Thus, be careful on the consumption of this kind of vegetables.
3. Looking for LOW sodium, LOW sugar, LOW fat (6).
Always read food labels especially for condiments, but
it is also suggested to use natural herbs as to give flavour to your dish.
Garlic, ginger, celery, onion spring, turmeric, chilli powder are the kind of
herbs that can be used to improve your dish flavour.
As for condiments, less sugar, less salt and low fat,
does not mean that it has no sugar, fat and salt, but it just means that it is
the improve formulation from the previous. Meaning to say as an example if the
previous formulation has 30g of salt the current formulation perhaps has only
15g of salt. Thus, do not go and binge using all these low in salt, sugar and
condiment, still need to use in moderation but it is still the healthier option
for your health!
In conclusion
Though it is very essential to buy healthy food in order
to eat healthy food, but cooking method is as well as important. Make sure most
of your cooking method is boiling, grilling, and steaming. Taste is something
that you can mould if you mould your taste bud into consuming healthy food, as
time passed by you will get use to it and eat healthily.
References