I pretty much considered that focussing on being ‘healthy’ is a boring and time consuming thing – who can be arsed with that?
Thing is. It’s not boring, food doesn’t have to be bland and tasteless and it doesn’t have to be time consuming either.
The most time consuming thing I’ve found about all of this health nonsense is the research – what food does what, why do we need it, how does it work blah, blah, blah. Fortunately for me, I’m finding it all rather interesting!
Anyway, referring back to my previous post on exactly what foods we need to eat to help boost our moods I had a look today through the list and I was pleasantly surprised. Most of the foods I have been eating, or recently incorporated into my diet are on the list! Yay! I will blab on no further and list these out below, foods in bold appear more than once in this specific nutrient list. Oh, just to note, I haven’t written down every single food, just the ones I like (or in brackets ones am prepared to try) – to find out more Google is the place to go! Here goes:
- Calcium: dairy like milk, cheese, yoghurt, spinach, (kale), salmon, broccoli, (edamame), figs, almonds
- Cromium: sweet potato, apple, organic egg, tomatoes, whole-grains, broccoli
- Folate: lentils, (pinto beans), asparagus, spinach
- Iron: egg yolks, fish, lamb, beef, chicken, spinach, walnuts, pistachios, cashews, raisins, green pepper
- Magnesium: spinach, almonds, cashews, pine nuts, lentils, avocado, goats cheese, bananas
- Omega 3 fatty acids: walnuts, salmon, beef, cauliflower
- Vitamin B6: Pistachios, salmon, chicken, pork, raisins, beef, bananas, avocado, spinach
- Vitamin B12: All bran, beef, yoghurt, feta cheese, eggs
- Vitamin D: oily fish like tuna, salmon, cheese, egg yolks
- ZInc: lamb, spinach, beef, garlic, egg yolks, salmon, pork, peas, cashews
So that’s just a quick and dirty mashup of various foods containing these particular nutrients, looking at it again I have probably missed duplicating some foods in the list but it’s too time consuming to Google every single food item to ensure I’ve captured every nutrient it holds, it’d make the list too long anyway and this is just to give you (and me) an idea – specifically for mood enhancing as per previous blog post ‘How to be Happy!’
As I’ve found, you probably eat quite a few of them already – especially since that isn’t the entire list and there’s plenty I’ve left off there. The general idea is replace the sugary crap in your diet with these good guys. FYI dark chocolate came up a few times but I haven’t listed it as I’ve never really liked it that much.
So to conclude – eating healthily doesn’t have to be boring, a lot of the foods there are pretty tasty and can be whipped up into quick meals. With online shopping it doesn’t have to be too much of an effort to get these foods in either – maybe the first time but next time you can hit the re-order button! Obviously, as I’ve mentioned in a previous post buying organic, hormone free etc type foods can be more time consuming but once you find the best place to buy, you’re on a roll.
Happy eating!
Featured image from: http://www.naturalawakeningsmag.com/Natural-Awakenings/February-2013/Food-Mood/
Health Becomes Me 