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Eating Healthy: the Basics

1. What is a healthy breakfast?
2. What is a healthy lunch?
3. What is a healthy dinner?
4. How much should I weigh?
5. How many calories should I be eating?
6. What is the best way to lose weight?
7. How can I keep my weight loss goal in mind and stay motivated?
8. What is a healthy weekly weight loss?
9. How to set weight loss goals and make them happen
10. How to keep a food diary, and why it is essential to successful weight loss
11. Are all fats bad for you?
12. Are saturated fats bad for you?
13. Are unsaturated fats good for you?
14. Are carbohydrates bad for you?
15. Is fiber good for you?
16. How to read nutrition/food labels
17. How to plan your weekly menus
18. Why should I eat less salt?
19. What do the sodium (salt) numbers mean on food labels?
20. What is The Mediterranean Diet?
21. Why eating vegetables is good for you
22. Why eating fruit and nuts is good for you
23. Why are cereals and whole grains good for you?
24. What are legumes, and why are they good for you?
25. Why is eating fish good for you?
26. Which fats and oils are good for you?
27. Are dairy products good for you?
28. Which meats should I not eat?
29. Is drinking alcohol good for you?
30. Is it important to measure your ingredients?
31. Are snacks good for you?
32. How to choose the right portion size
33. Can you lose weight with a smaller plate?
34. Eat healthier by cleaning out your pantry
35. Which oils and fats should I keep in my pantry?
35. Which oils and fats are good for you - and when should I use them?
36. Which carbohydrates are good for you?
37. What is the best chicken or turkey for you?
38. Are dairy products good for you?
39. Which nuts and seeds should I eat?
40. Is red meat like beef or pork bad or good for you?
41. Is eating dessert good or bad for you?
42. Is drinking soda bad for you?
43. Is drinking coffee bad for you?
44. How can healthy food taste good? Part 1
45. How can healthy food taste good? Part 2
46. How to eat healthy while eating out
47. Are vitamins and supplements necessary to eat healthy?
48. How to eat healthy while traveling



 

Eating Healthy: the Basics

How can healthy food taste good?
Part 1

Eggplant Lasagna - click for the recipe!

It's common for folks to think that eating healthy means that food doesn't have any flavor. This couldn't be further from the truth. Understanding the flavors in ingredients and how they blend together is key to getting great results in your kitchen.

There are five types of receptors on the tongue that sense the flavors that we taste. They are salt, sweet, bitter, sour and one called umami. Each of these flavors acts on their own, but how they interact with each other is key to making recipes taste fantastic. Activation of any one taste will enhance another taste bud. Blending the flavors is important in all cooking and is the basis for great tasting healthy recipes.

Sour

The sour taste buds are activated by acidic foods and they are activated very rapidly. As a result these flavors can quickly brighten an otherwise dull dish. They can, however, also overpower a dish easily.

The properties of salt react with acids and soften the sour flavors in a recipe. In doing so, sweetness is enhanced.

Salt

Salty foods are obvious by themselves (like a salty pretzel), but just a little salt will enhance the other taste buds. In doing so the salty flavor gives good balance to other tastes. Adding a little salt to something sweet, such as chocolate, enhances the sugary flavor of the chocolate.

Because it doesn't take very much salt to activate the taste buds, you can use salt in healthy cooking. With experimentation, I have found that it takes at least 300 - 400 mg of sodium in a main course recipe to have it be salty enough to properly activate the salt taste buds. It takes a little less for side dishes. 300 mg is about 1/8th teaspoon.

Sweet

Sweet flavors stand on their own probably better than any of the other tastes. Certainly, sweetness helps to enhance other flavors also. Lemonade is a perfect example. Some people like bitter lemons, but most of us like a lemon flavor better if it has been sweetened.

Bitter

Bitter is not exactly sour but folks often confuse the two. Bitter flavors would be those in a cabbage, radicchio, spinach and collard greens. One of my favorite examples of a good balance of flavors is collard greens made with a touch of maple syrup, salt and lemon. Using just a little bit of the sweet, salty and sour flavors doesn't "mask," but enhances the bitter flavor of the greens.