Can someone help with healthy options please, ie butter or flora?

[greenbananas29]

So I'm wanting to make some changes to our food shop.
I've swapped my milk to organic milk.
We usually have countrylife spreadable or anchor butter, but is Flora better for you? It's such a mine field 🤦🏻‍♀️
Any other swaps you recommend please? Thanks

What if you actually have high cholesterol though? Then clearly the balancing out hasn't worked.

STILL HAPPY
I guess it's just not that 'clean'
We eat fruit and vegetables, but have things like ham sandwiches for lunch, chicken kievs for tea (with veg but still) pasta bake, spaghetti Bolognese, meatballs, hungers chicken, fish cakes etc.
I just feel I need to 'cook from scratch' more and not buy easy stuff.
Cereal for breakfast, and we drink orange juice and apple juice.
I just want to make changes so am great full for any help you may have :)

Invest in a breadmaker if sandwiches are regularly eaten. Panasonic do the best ones. It only takes 5 minutes to throw in a few ingredients.

Health advice on this subject, overall, has really not changed in decades.

It remains;

Eat a wide variety of food. Not too much, mainly plants. Move around more.

If I were to suggest a practical way to make changes around that it’d be to try to have a dish based on lentils, pulses or grains once or twice a week, to try to control portion size through weighing and measuring amounts, and by using a smaller plate, and to try to cut out sugary drinks.

#teambutter

I would pick a meal to improve & start there. I think you'll get the most bang by changing breakfast - starting with a savoury breakfast will keep your blood sugar more stable & that way you won't be hungry as soon etc (& swap fruit juice for actual fruit 🙂)

Or start with 3 days a week with no bread.

aiming for 30 different plants in a week is good for focus or try to "eat the rainbow" every day

2 of my kids are totally into the idea of "feeding" their gut microbiome 😂 reminding them that they need to feed their wee pets gets all sorts of veg down them!

Definitely butter..flora destroys any sandwich,toast and definitely isn’t healthier!

A ham sandwich and other processed meat definitely should be an occasional part of your diet, not every day. Aim for no more than once a week.

Pasta or cous cous salad, or slice of Spanish omelette or similar instead? I once made a massive one in an oven tray that was very easy and made 4 large portions.

Have sandwiches a couple of days a week but with egg, tuna or leftover roast chicken on wholegrain/seeded bread?

Instead of chicken kievs have marinated fresh chicken or chicken breast topped with tomato sauce and cheese? Of course, you could make your own chicken kievs, but that sounds fiddly and probably a step too far in the beginning.

If you buy yogurt, just get plain full fat Greek style and have with a drizzle of honey (or make your own fruit purees, they freeze well in ice cube trays) and/or dried fruit, nuts and seeds.

But it's hard if you're trying to feed a 'ham sandwiches and sausage and chips' person because that's very easy and that type of food is very palatable and probably addictive so they'll often just refuse to eat healthier food. How old is DS and how do you think he's going to take the move away from his beloved ham sandwiches?

With bread, if you look at the ingredients or ask to see the ingredients list at the baker's you can see which are decent. The one I buy just has wheatflour, salt and yeast. Some have all kinds of nonsense in them. You only want more ingredients than that if it's a positive addition, like seeds on the top.

Your meals sound ok if they're homemade. Just swap processed meat for higher quality meat. Make your own meatballs, get high quality sausages and don't have them so often. Every change is worthwhile. Maybe learn to make great stir-fries or curries and then you've got lots of options.
Breakfast sounds a bit sugary maybe? You could make porridge or soaked oats and fruit with just a bit of extra sugar. Get the vitamins from whole fruit not fruit juice. Omelettes take two minutes.

Everyone goes on about how is importantly to use 'proper' butter only but when DH is lactose intolerant we have no choice but to use a dairy free version 😑

Back in the day (1960s-80s), Flora and solid margarines were properly dangerous because of their high trans fat content. They literally killed people in significant numbers.

Nowadays there's no evidence that there's anything harmful in them.....but then again that's what they said in the 1960s.

Personally I tend to pick organic milk because it has a slightly higher omega 3 content and is generally a bit better for the environment, (although my lip curls at the organic farmers treating their cows with homeopathy). But if I were on a tight budget it wouldn't be my priority in the UK.

It depends what for, surely? Yes, in cakes etc, but on sandwiches, toast etc you can each have your own.

Thank you!
So sorry for being naive what is high quality meat and processed meat? Is there any ham I can have without it being processed?

Processed meat is just meat that's gone through a process like smoking or having chemicals added to it to make it last longer or to add flavour. The chemical could be just salt or there could be tons of additives, flavourings and preservatives. It'll all be on the label of the packet. There's no such thing as unprocessed ham because that's what it is: pork that's been preserved.
By high-quality meat I'd mean meat that contains good amounts of nutrition - protein, zinc, iron etc, is not too high fat and is unprocessed. (I'd also look for high welfare but that's not strictly a choice about nutrition.) Up the top of the healthy list is stuff like fresh or frozen (freezing doesn't count as processed) fish, chicken, venison, then lean beef & lean pork.
Personally I just eat ham, bacon and sausages sometimes without worrying but I wouldn't eat any of them more than, say, once a month.

Sorry, so by high quality sausages I meant look at labels for additives and fat content. And maybe ask at your butcher's. Mine does sausages with decent cuts of meat and just adds breadcrumbs, herbs and spices.

Just choose food which isn't processed