Eight Solutions For Healthier Eating

Healthier eating means healthier living, so please consider implementing these eight solutions.

Between all the conflicting information about food, diet, and nutrition and the powerful marketing messages from food marketers, it is not surprising that many people give up trying to find healthier and better ways to eat.

Of course, there is also our upbringing and the food and shopping lessons we learned from our family, which are often flawed or misguided—especially now that we have much better information about food and nutrition than a generation ago.

It’s clear, today, that certain ingredients, certain foods, and certain growing methods are unhealthy for us – especially in the quantities we are consuming, combined with our sedentary lifestyle.

Why should you eat healthier? If you want to live a long and healthy life, the time to change your eating habits is now. You may or may not be aware of how sick you are, but we see from statistics across the U.S. and the world that millions and millions of people (many at much younger ages) are dealing with chronic health conditions such as hypertension, weight gain and obesity, insulin resistance, and diabetes. These often lead to heart and cardiovascular disease, strokes, cancer, and dementia.

How can you begin eating healthier? Start with using one or more of these solutions, eventually adding them all over time. It is not a difficult task, but it will take some added time, money, and effort because the food system is so broken, as is our culture of eating.

Solutions for Healthier Eating

1. Make the Financial Commitment to Healthy Foods. It shouldn't be this way, but healthier food options typically cost more than the standard, crappy foods. Buying organic, especially regenerative organic -- while your best option for the most nutrient-dense foods -- can be much more expensive. The same with shopping at your local farmers market. But food is the single most important factor affecting your health, so to be healthier, you must eat healthier, which means channeling more of the monthly budget into healthy food choices, and changing your perspective to seeing food as an investment.

2. Clean Up Your Pantry and Cupboards. At home, the healthiest thing you can do is remove all the unhealthy ingredients from your kitchen, including all refined sugars (including syrups, honey, etc.), all artificial sweeteners (which are almost as harmful as refined sugars), all “vegetable” oils (including canola, corn, safflower, sunflower, soybean, etc.), as well as all refined flours and rice. This also means cleaning up all the foods with those ingredients, so dump the cookies, cereals, breads, pastas, crackers, and chips.

3. Reduce Your Consumption of Ultra-Processed Foods and Beverages. On the go, the healthiest thing you can do is stop purchasing and consuming most ultra-processed, convenience foods – whether take out, fast food, or from the grocery store. These products are what I call Imposter Foods because they look like real foods, but they are not; instead, they are filled with unhealthy fats, added sugars, and questionable additives for flavor, texture, color, etc.

4. Return Your Kitchen to Cooking, Not Simply Reheating. Our kitchens are meant to be places to create healthy and nutritious foods, not a hazardous reheating zone in which we reheat ultra-processed foods in our microwaves (typically using a plastic container). While you are focused on your kitchen, revamp all your cookware and containers away from any plastics and nonstick coatings to products made from glass, steel, ceramics. Never reheat anything in plastic in the microwave.

5. Learn or Enhance Your Basic Cooking Skills. I admit it; I grew up in my mom’s kitchen and not only learned my basic cooking and baking skills from her, but also the joy and love that comes from feeding your family. If you never learned how to cook, there are lots of videos and tutorials. You might also look and see if your local community college has one or more cooking classes. You do not need to learn to be a gourmet chef; all you need are basic skills unless you fall in love with cooking and want to push yourself into creating more exotic meals.

6. Find/Rediscover the Joy in Eating at Home. Most homes have at least one place to sit down for meals; others have several places. Stop eating in front of screens and missing what you ate. Instead, eat together as a family. Eating a meal around the table can be one of the most fun and joyous experiences, bringing family members closer together. There can be so much joy in sharing healthy-ingredient, home-cooked meals together.

7. Start Reading the BACK of Food Labels. Many consumers use the front of the label as a shortcut and timesaver, but the front of the label is all marketing and marketing misinformation. Will your shopping time expand? Yes, but here again, see your time commitment as an investment in your health. Once you start reading labels, you will not stop – because you will be shocked at the amount and type of ingredients hidden in plain sight… from added sugars and seed oils, to numerous additives. Sadly, you will still not have all the information you need, such as how each ingredient was raised/farmed, unless you buy organic.

8. Make Healthy Foods and Choices a Top Priority. Try your luck at gardening, even if it is just a tomato plant on a windowsill. When we grow some of our foods, we are not only eating the freshest foods possible, but also deepening our connection to nature and the soil. Shop in season, ideally at your local farmers markets; supporting local farmers is a win for everybody. If you eat meats, buy grassfed from local ranchers when possible; there are also several wonderful online stores, such as US Wellness Meats. Finally, while organic foods are not perfect, they are the highest level of protection against synthetic chemical exposure from buying conventionally grown foods.

Final Thoughts on Healthier Eating

Small changes can lead to big results, and choosing to spend more time and money on finding and eating healthier foods will lead to such positive changes in your life, from simply feeling better to improving all aspects of your body’s function systems, from your gut to your heart to your brain health.

Our collective health has never been more precarious, with so many people suffering from preventable chronic conditions – because of our unhealthy foods and sedentary lifestyles. Unfortunately, if things continue, experts predict more and more people will die prematurely and unnecessarily from cancer, strokes, and heart disease.

These eight ideas, while fairly simple to implement, do require a mindset shift – a new perspective on food and the power of food to fuel health… or to fuel illness and premature death.

Additional Resources for Healthier Eating

• Are Ultra-Processed Foods Killing You?

• Change Your Grocery Shopping and SAVE Your Life

• The Deadly Truth About Our Sugar Addiction

• Healing Starts With Eating Real Food: No More Fast Food

• Keys to Truly Understanding Food Labels

• Purge Your Pantry For Health and Healing

• The Ten Dangerous Foods/Ingredients to Eliminate From Your Diet

• Vegetable Oils Are Ubiquitous? Yes… and Please STOP!