'Shake up your shopping ... and start cooking' – how to get better at healthy eating

Forget the takeaways, the meals out – and all those overambitious cookbooks

The simplest way to improve your diet and eat more healthily isn’t counting calories, “eating a rainbow”, buying low-fat everything or following any other of the tired, ineffective mantras that are trotted out. In practical terms, the surest way to eat better is cooking most of your food at home or, failing that, talking some other nice person into doing it for you. The more you eat out or rely on convenience food, the more the balance of your diet will go the wrong way. The more food you eat that isn’t homemade, the poorer your diet is likely to be in terms of nutrition and the quality and provenance of its ingredients. If you base your meals on mainly unprocessed or minimally processed ingredients, and cook more often than not, you won’t go far wrong.

Motivate yourself for more hands-on activity in the kitchen by calculating how much money you’ll save. It’s easy to spend £20 a week on barely satisfying sandwich-based lunches. The most basic, most functional restaurant meals or takeaways will make an even greater dent in your finances. Kick the habit of reaching for the phone or dropping into the takeaway when you’re hungry and head for the kitchen instead. You’ll free up more money than smokers do when they give up fags.

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from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2QgzfFI