Healthy Eating is not ONLY about adding super foods and nutrient-dense foods to our everyday diet, but also about eliminating the harmful, the unnecessary ones. I believe, if we focus more on “cutting down” rather than “adding more” foods, then 80% of our health issues would vanish.
Here are the 5 foods that I stopped buying this year.
1. Ginger garlic paste
Though the brands call themselves “mother’s recipe”, “home made” etc, the ingredients paint a different picture with various chemical additives in the form of stabilizers, preservatives and acidity regulators. In the morning rush hour cooking, it takes just a few seconds to grab the pack from the fridge, squeeze a tsp of such pastes in gravies and put it back in the fridge. But is it really worth it? Definitely not. The alternative is to make a batch of home made ginger garlic paste and stock it. I find that too cumbersome a process to peel a big batch of garlic and ginger. So as and when needed, I peel 3-4 cloves of garlic and a small piece of ginger, finely chop them up and add it to my gravies. They taste fresh and bring amazing flavour to the dish without any preservatives. Takes me an extra 2-3 minutes, that’s it.
2. Biscuits
Earlier, there used to be stock of biscuits at home, mainly to go with our evening chai. This year, I put an end to it completely. Even the so-called healthier “digestive biscuits” are high in maida and unhealthy fats. If we feel like having some munchies to go with chai, we either have it with roasted peanuts or roasted makhana. When my daughter asks for biscuits, I buy the smallest pack once a month.
3. Bread
We used to buy bread on a weekly basis, as my husband used to have sandwiches almost on a daily basis, either after his morning run or pack it for his evening office snack. He has now stopped bread altogether and takes fruit, dates and chikkis. Many of us tend to buy brown bread or whole wheat bread, thinking they are healthier. But they do contain large proportions of maida, along with various other additives in the form of improvers, raising agents and preservatives.
4. Oats
I have written enough about oats in my previous articles. Though I wasn’t eating oats on an everyday basis, I used to stock them once every 3-4 months, primarily for mornings when I feel like having a light breakfast. Being a firm believer of adopting local foods, I decided I no longer need oats in my pantry. The quick cooking ones we get from the market are highly processed to the extent that there are no nutrients left. For light breakfast, I resort to fruits or ragi porridge these days.
5. Instant Coffee
One of the many benefits of doing Yoga on a regular basis is that you’d be able to understand the signals from your body more clearly. Through such signals, I learnt that I have started to hate the flavour of instant coffee. I made it a couple of times and after 2-3 sips, I didn’t feel like drinking it anymore. Yes, the same instant coffee brand that I have had for years. I can't believe it was so easy to quit instant coffee.
What foods did you stop buying this year? What were your alternatives? What foods do you plan to stop buying in 2018? Please share in the comments below.