If babyboomers are interested in things other than music and fashion, then food and drink are among them. The first generation able to subsist solely on ready meals and take-aways is becoming more aware of the need for home cooked meals and closer control of what goes into what we eat. Better off and with more choices, we have made good use of time by buying prepared meals and eating out.
Yet making better use of time does not always work and time spent munching TV dinners, warmed up supermarket Yorkshire puddings and takeaway curries can be positively harmful. The aim of this article and associated forum is to help us get out of the supermarket rut, eat more healthily and expose the myth that supermarket menus are customer led.
OK so you are one of the babyboomer generation. Or you’re not and you are concerned about what you are eating. Maybe you have slightly high blood pressure. Perhaps you have been told (or you already knew) that you need to reduce your calorie, salt and sugar intake. Using supermarkets make that harder. They say that they know what people want through their research. They think that we want unhealthy amounts of fats, seasonings or sweeteners, we don’t.
OK., so what do you do about it? The doing is important. Firstly, you need to buy fresh food. Let’s worry about the cooking later. In towns where there is a street market or proper market place, there is likely to be a butcher’s shop nearby. Go there before 9 o’clock on a Saturday morning and buy yourself the fresh meat and vegetables for your Sunday lunch. Parking will be easy, you are likely to get better quality meat and pay less for your vegetables. Buy a slightly larger piece of meat than you will use and some additional vegetables. Then cook them along with your meal and you will have some left over to freeze for that healthier frozen meal.
Here is our 10 point plan to help you eat more healthily.
1. Always buy your basic vegetables fresh from a market. In particular, onions, garlic, potatoes, carrots, tomatoes and herbs. There is always a wider choice.
2. Tell the butcher how many you are cooking for. If you want to freeze a meal for two, add this on.
3. Use more olive oil instead of fats. For example, you can make perfectly good dumplings with olive oil instead of suet. Pay for the extra cost of olive oil by not buying suet or hard margarine.
4. Cook yourself. It’s the only way for you to be certain of what has gone into your meal.
5. Don’t always add salt to vegetables and steam instead of boiling.
6. Don’t add salt to gravy if you are using stock cubes or granules. The salt is already there in the stock.
7. Sometimes supermarkets are the place to go especially if you follow advice and eat fish twice per week. The old fishmongers are vanishing but we don’t want butchers to go the same way. If there is a fishmonger near you, it could also be near to the market.
8. Calm down sugar intake by cutting out the Chinese takeaway. Do your own at home using your olive oil and selecting your own ingredients. Onion, garlic, mange tout, home grown runner beans, carrot, cabbage, and lots of other things work.
9. Catch up with the 5 a day rule with fruit and vegetables.
10. Grow something yourself, even if you are in a flat. It might just be a pot of coriander on the window cill. One of the easiest things to grow is runner bean. You only need a few beans to sprout in late May to get yourself fresh green beans for 3 months.
Do you have any questions on food, drink or cooking? Post them here and our resident expert will answer them.
