Eat This, Not That

Have you heard of the "Eat This, Not That" series? I have seen these books around for a while now and I have looked through several of them in grocery and book stores. So far, I never ended up buying one, but I think it's a really good concept that everyone can easily incorporate in their lives.

The idea behind the books is to make simple food swaps and reduce your fat, sodium and sugar intake and with that reduce your daily calorie intake to loose or maintain weight without really "dieting".

So on Sunday, we saw a little segment in one of the Sunday morning shows (forgot which one) about food swaps to enable everyone to survive the grilling season without packing on the pounds and still be able to enjoy the time and the food. I am ALL for that! Unfortunately, I can't find a video clip of that segment anywhere online, probably because I can't remember where I saw it. But anyways, here are a couple of swaps that I can remember:

• Italian turkey sausages instead of bratwurst
• avocado instead of mayo on burgers and sandwhiches
• Mojitos instead of Margaritas
• tortilla chips and salsa instead of potato chips and spinach dip

Some swaps that I do on a regular basis is: replace ground beef with ground turkey, skim milk for 2% milk, avocado instead of ketchup/mayo, grilled instead of fried, veggie side instead of fries etc. There is so much more to swamp though!!

Sunday night, I was grocery shopping and was browsing the aisles with a refreshed commitment of both Terry and myself to make a real effort of eating more healthy again (things got a little out of hand lately!). A meal that I always enjoyed and that is so simple and healthy is "rice and beans". It's a nutritionally very dense food, yummie and available in cans, which is really nice and handy when I plan on having it as an emergency "health" lunch in my desk drawer. But watch out, not all "rice and beans" cans are created equally. The first can that I picked up had mono-sodium glutamate (MSG) as fourth ingredient* on the list, right after water, rice and beans. No bueno! So I moved over a rack to the "organic" section and et voila, the next can I picked up had only ingredients that I was able to pronounce. Yes, the can was a little more expensive, but eating out over lunch I would spend even more, so for me it's worth it. I added artichoke hearts to the mix then warmed it up in the microwave and then added half an avocado. Good stuff!

*In case you didn't know, ingredients on food labels are listed in descending order by predominance and weight. If you want to learn more about how to read a food label, click here.

So long! ;-)