Healthy food, I dont understand?

[Crawling]

Hi I am a young mum I was 17 pg with my first and unable to cook. I have taught myself as much as I can and growing up we had a lot of crap food E.G Pie and chips.

I do my best make sure the kids get at least 5 portions but other than that I dont know what makes something healthy or unhealthy. I obviously try not to fry and use olive oil if I do, wholeweat pasta and bread, (white rice but I add some veg to it) but other than that I dont know what to avoid.

Please dont judge me I am not stupid but no one has ever tried to teach me the difference between healthy and unhealthy food. Can someone give me some basic guidelines please and why it is important?

TIA

Sounds like you are feeding them a very good diet, OP! Don't worry about white rice, it's not unhealthy. You don't mention pulses, things like chick peas; lentils; and kidney beans. It's easier to buy them tinned, rather than dry. They are healthy and cheap and you can add them to salads, or mix them into things like tuna to have as a baked potato filling. Remeber, there is nothing wrong with the occasional junk food treat!

A book I rather like on healthy eating is Michael Pollan's 'In Defence of Food'. He breaks down his advice on healthy eating into a few handy rules of thumb. One that makes me chuckle - but which is very true - is this

"If you?re concerned about your health, you should probably avoid products that make health claims. Why? Because a health claim on a food product is a strong indication it?s not really food, and food is what you want to eat"

If you have that in the back of your mind next time you go shopping and check out something like the biscuit aisle, you'll see hundreds of colourful packets with big flashes on them making health claims... And if you then go to the produce department you'll find that the packs of apples and broccoli don't have health claims on them even though those genuinely are healthy. The labelling rule is that if a manufacturer has reformulated their product to have less fat or salt (and replaced them with other nasties) it can then be flashed 'low fat' and 'low salt' etc. But because a head of cabbage is a naturally healthy food that can't be reformulated, it can't make that claim. QED

Chill - I like that explanation of what i always think of as the swap claims - low fat stuffed with sugar

Avoid anything claiming to be sugar-free, trends to have sweeteners in it which IMO are worse than the full sugar version. Dh insists on having squash and dd1 likes to have some occasionally so we buy High Juice.

Two of our local SureStarts run free cookery courses for young parents. You get some ideas and you have a laugh at the same time. It sounds like you have some pretty good ideas already so it might be a confidence booster for you to have those recognised.

It sounds like you are feeding your kids a great diet already (congrats on the pregnancy!!)

I found it really helpful when someone told me to imagine the plate at each meal should have half veg/fruit, quarter carbs and quarter protein - ish! Variation is definitely the key and I find it easy to smuggle the veg in with the carbs - so potatoes mashed with carrots, peas and corn in with the rice, sticks of carrrot and courgette in with the pasta!

If you need new meal ideas try:
-Stuffing big tomatoes and peppers with rice/cheese/tuna/pesto/chicken etc etc etc then baking in the oven

-Stir fries - just chop up any veg with chicken and serve wiht noodles and a different stir fry sauce

• Stews and soups - chuck in a tin of chopped tomatoes and some seasoning and herbs

• Cous cous can be a great variation on rice/pasta

• Fajita wraps with either hot or cold fillings

-Pittas can make a fun change from bread with salad/ham/cheese

Good luck!

Agree with posts above. As a simple visual clue - more differenet colours the better, orange is a sign of processed and seeing adverts for items from say Iceland for christmas parties you can see its all the same colour - orange!

There is endless info handed out fOC on eating plenty on google, HVs etc.

Start from basics forget things like those stupid youget bacteria drinks. Buy plain quality natural yougets, add fruits and honey instead. Buy all basic ingredients. As a basic think about diets before supermarkets came about - what our grandparents used to live on - it was high fat, but small portions, and meat was the smallest part of the meal - loads of veg.

Dont beleive your supermarket is your friend - these companies are out to 'buy you in' with promotions can tell you what to buy. You must go with a list and stick to it. Get a menu planner sorted first so that you have good variations in daily foods. There are plenty of posters on here that do a weekly menu - you could pinch some of these?

You sound like you've got it sorted already, and some great advice on this thread.

Another good explanation I once heard was the 'farm or factory test'; if the ingredients sound like they come from a farm (milk, eggs, cream, sugar etc) it will be healthier and more natural than long lists of chemicals.

One of the best things I ever bought was a metal stove-top 3 tier steamer, which I use 2 or 3 times a week cooking for my 2 toddlers. In the water at the bottom go potatoes/new potatoes, the middle tier has a piece of salmon or chicken wrapped in foil, top tier has some frozen veg; brocolli, sweetcorn, peas etc (put on about 5 mins after the previous 2). This means a very healthy and very quick dinner is ready in about 10 mins, with no effort other than assembly.

Sorry if this is repetition too, but whenever you can bung extra goodness it it helps, so if I'm cooking pasta to have with pesto, I'd throw in frozen peas, spinach, sweetcorn, green beans etc for the last 5 mins of the pasta cooking, then stir through the sauce.

'Egg fried rice' is dead easy and quick too - cook some rice, add peas/sweetcorn, once cooked, heat a small amount of oil in a frying pan, add rice mixture, make a small space in the middle and add some egg beaten with milk, and 'scramble it' whilst mixing it in with the rice.

Sorry to go on.....

Have you had a look at The Dinner Lady Cookbook ? has lots of basics like spagetti bolognese, lasagne, cottage pie, mild curry. I'm always dipping into it & it's very simple to use.

Getting your kids to eat home cooked 'clean' food (ie not processed) with lots of veg is a fantastic healthy start.

PS not sure about kids 'needing' stodge - they give proper wholesome food to help them grow strong.

Thanks all this is brilliant advice, I do use beans and pulses.

Chil your advice on how to tell was really great and easy to understand, it makes perfect sence thank you .

I may get a few recipe books and see which I like and I will look into the sure start lessons .

The only real problem I can see is DS hates water, I try to give him mostly milk, a glass of fruit juice and then I give squash because he makes himself ill by not drinking if I only offer water. I cant think of anything else to use instead though.

Fruit juice with fizzy water is cheap and more interesting.

Dont buy recipe books, here is the interwebs..and they are your recipe friend. Enter the two ingredients you have and add the word 'recipe' and loads will turn up 'chicken and sweet potato recipe' etc etc

Thank you Moosemummy that is a excellent idea

Could you afford a bread maker or could you ask for one as a gift for birthday/christmas? Then you know exactly what is going into your bread so it is really healthy, only has six ingredients, flour,butter, yeast,water and a little salt and sugar. It tastes very delcious and fresh and you can make white bread, or bread with half white flour, half wholemeal etc etc. It is extremely easy to use and it takes two mins to put the stuff into the machine and then afew hours later you have a lovely fresh loaf.
I would recommend a Panasonic one as they are always recommended on here, the cheaper ones don't give such good results.
It wil also half you bread cost too!
it sounds like you're doing such a great job already. Have you thought about making a tomato and lentil soup, very cheap and very easy and very healthy! xxx

Oh, and my two year old hardly drinks water too, its a problem here she drinks the high juice squash but i know it has sugar in it. I'm not happy about it....

oh, and with a bread machine, you can make pizza dough which is so so so easy to do and then you top it and bake for about 12 mins = healthy pizza!!!!
(Can you tell I love my breadmaker xxx