Old Foods Made Healthy For New Times
Today’s dietary climate is not what it used to be. Whether we like it or not, the fact is that Americans are busier than we were 30 or 40 years ago. Plus, we exercise less, go outdoors less, and rely on increasingly unhealthy foods for our daily calorie intake. We eat fast food regularly, we rely on preservative-heavy frozen and packaged foods, and we eat fewer fresh fruits and vegetables than any generation before us. These are just the simple facts.
But there is good news. Thanks to 21st century culinary and dietary movements, we’re now living through a renaissance in the American diet. We’re re-learning the value of fresh produce, healthy ingredients, and old-fashioned home cooking, and we’re applying these new (or old, depending on how you look at it) approaches to a far wider and more cosmopolitan variety of food choices than our grandparents could have imagined. If you live in a city, you’ll see this renaissance flowering in your local restaurants. But no matter where you live, you’re likely to hear talk of these new food trends buzzing all around you, whether in the media or in the talk of your family, friends, and co-workers.
There is a downside, though. Firstly, the thousands of small family farms that once existed are not coming back. Today’s produce is largely cultivated by huge corporate entities that lack a personal touch and whose quality is often suspect. The organic movement makes up for some of this loss, but it will be some time, if ever, before this trend can be reversed. Secondly, thanks to modern developments in food and dietary research, we now know that some of the foods our parents and grandparents subsisted upon, while often perfectly fine, were not exactly the healthiest choices.
No big deal. Thanks to the huge variety of healthy and organic choices available to us, it’s not that hard to adapt old recipes to new ideas about what’s healthy. For example:
Substitute whole-grain options. Whether we’re talking about pasta, bread, crackers, rolls, pancakes, pizza, cakes, cookies, or a million other grain-based foods, it’s easy to substitute healthier whole-grain varieties with no loss of flavor. While some younger people raised on white bread and white pasta may not instantly take to the flavor of whole grains, some people actually prefer the whole wheat flavor. At least up to a point, when we know something is healthier, it tends to taste better.
Did you know that some foods are healthier uncooked? It’s not true in all cases, but when it comes to most fruits and vegetables, cooking tends to break down chemical components, resulting in a cooked food whose nutritional properties are not what they would be in uncooked form. So, any time you can go without cooking an ingredient in a recipe (think garlic, carrots, tomatoes, onions, etc.), why not try keeping it raw?
Make your own juice. Why spend money at the store for juice that has been processed and sitting around in a plastic container for weeks or months? Juicers and food processers are relatively inexpensive, and they allow you to be creative and have fun with your juice concoctions. Using raw fruits and vegetables, home-made juices can be both delicious and full of the vital nutrients that tend to get lost or diminished in the typical factory processes used to create mass-produced juices.
