Healthy foods change your life…
They are not difficult to spot grocery shopping and easy to incorporate into your daily healthy lifestyle. This article is about anti-inflammatory healthy foods that will give your body and wallet the best bang for the buck, so you can have a healthy year and future.
…And that’s something to get excited about and celebrate. 🎉
…Which btw, I’m all about celebrating. That was how I started my career as a hotel catering sales manager and later for restaurant parties. My job in those roles was to plan event menus with prepared food dishes and desserts that made hosts and guests attending happy. These days, in similar fun festive spirit, I still do this at home weekly.
…But healthy-minded.
And to offset the happy food (that’s not always healthy), I bake in and eat lots of anti-inflammatory healthy foods in between.
Because anti-inflammatory foods help to work against all the foods and bad adds that are not helping our bodies.
Many of the good adds are plant-based foods and their anti-inflammatory properties are meant to protect the plant for survival.
…And as consumers, we benefit. 🎉
When I realized that fact, I never looked at my produce house plants grown from seeds in the same way again. 🌱🥑
Shelling out out the greens 💸for the green healthy foods is an investment in our bodies. And if you’re a green thumb, maybe you grow your own! 🥬
There are endless variety lists of healthy foods (and that’s the exciting part I’m talkin’ about!).
Elevating to the next degree is putting on AI (as in Anti-Inflammatory) glasses 👓 to choose low-glycemic foods and rainbow polyphenol foods 🌈
That’s just another way to finding anti-inflammatory healthy foods all around us.
They prevent free radicals in the body that I learned about in my college days when revealed science was already ahead of its time.
I even hung up a poster from the American Cancer Society that promoted basic whole foods like apples, oranges, and avocados. The colorful poster made me happy, splashed against my wall of poster art that was popular to do in those days.
…Ah, but those were the innocent years when adults didn’t know that healthy Omega-3 fats and nuts would be deemed good one day. How nuts! 🥜
…And those were also the days I educated my vitamin supplement consumers I had on the power of super foods with Vitamins A, C, and E that thankfully hasn’t changed healthy value much over the test of time. If anything, they are even more sought after in these longer living years.
Vitamin C was used to cure scurvy as early as the 1700s and today is a top immunity booster.
These Vit-C anti-inflammatory foods are the same healthy foods found around the world that protect against the common chronic diseases that we know, like: heart diseases, lifestyle born diseases, certain cancers, and even cognitive decline… that’s becoming more common family table talk on the rise.
…But it doesn’t have to be this way.
We can point to people who inherited pretty good or great genes, but now look decades older than their age because of lifestyle choices or causes.
Then there are others who weren’t so gene-blessed, but despite their genes they chose to live a healthy lifestyle and you would never know their unfavorable hidden genes based on their active lifestyle and healthy appearances.
One big difference for either is how they take care of themselves in life. Healthy, they protect their mind, body, and spirit, and they have purpose and community.
Anti-inflammatory foods and beverages also helped carry them into their golden years so they could optimally live.
Anti-inflammatory Foods Is Self-Care
Anti-inflammatory healthy foods is self-care in action.
The healthy foods can be weaved into daily eating habits and even baking… I know this intimately well because I do it weekly.
You can make delicious and comforting Southern-type meals and bakes with anti-inflammatory ingredients. It’s mindful and can be simple effort tweaks with an anti-inflammatory recipe.
Replacing with anti-inflammatory ingredients instead of the inflammatory, processed ones (that offer little to no nutritional value) makes a world of difference to the body.
Take a Southern dish like collard greens. Instead of loading with butter and bacon (like a stuffed potato), additive choice could be to add capers and olive oil as a healthy version. For a foodie, that tastes great and is comparable in the wallet for a food shopper. 🛒
But ah… there are traditionalists who don’t want to change a generational recipe… or find that style bland.
The challenge benefit is that if you do change it up, your tastes will help change along with you.
And that’s one way where you can improve your health legacy from previous generations. If your ancestors knew better or had better ingredients, they would have used them.
…And we do today. So we have a better choice.
It’s up to us.
Believe me, I know it’s hard to eat skinny, healthy, lean and mean during wintery months when comfort food is calling. This help keep us Vatas warm and cozy.🧶
Plus, winter season is a natural time to bring out our sad or sleepy Kapha body and mind sides. We’re complex beings in our comfort pants 😉.
And that’s when you can bring out the warm, savory healthy foods and anti-inflammatory healthy, delicious bakes to the table.
…And for starting the day and changing journey. 🌅
In mine, I took a sweet tooth cereal breakfast to a healthy savory habit.
That was not an easy path until I made up my mind.
Plus, age is on our side. Our taste buds help us out as we have less sweet taste buds as we get older.
Changing habits and ways to match desires is the challenge that gets to the goal. 🎯
It’s made easier with baby step action, habit changes.
…Like entertaining the idea of dinner leftovers for an easy breakfast or prepared vegetables for starters. And then doing it!
Even if we don’t naturally gravitate toward veggies first. 🙋🏻♀️
…Or we’ve created a habit of cereals and croissants.
I grew up that way along with oatmeal and fruit.
To bridge the wide gap, I made it easy on myself… I found that raw veggies eaten the next day don’t need to be refrigerated or prepared. So they’re easy to grab-n-go.
…They can be left out in plain sight even when feeling morning groggy and waiting to drink a cup of coffee.
The habit can be as easy as drinking a glass of water or brushing your teeth, first thing.
And getting in those few pieces of fiber healthy foods revs up the engine. It gets the gut happy, and that helps us get happy.
Happy gut = happy empowered day. 😊
Water and healthy foods are the gas and oil that makes the car go without hiccups so we can have a healthy life.
And these are a few simple fiber and anti-inflammatory healthy foods you can add to your diet that require little to no prep. They are healthy good if you’re on a keto diet of sorts because of the net carbs factor (in case you’re counting):
Asparagus – it’s a prebiotic fiber food that feeds your gut good food (bacteria) and has Vitamins A, C, and E. The net carbs for 6 spears of asparagus is about 2 grams. That’s pretty darn good!
But, with an anti-inflammatory diet rainbow assortment of foods 🌈, you don’t really need to count the good.
Green lentils – this is a quick cook, protein-filled meal and is a cleanse. It has almost 16 grams of fiber per cup, and sometimes double that of other lentil types. This is where reading labels comes in handy!
Add your alliums like onions or garlic that are fiber and also immunity boosters.
Bug pests hate them as well as viruses like the common cold. You can buy these whole foods in bunches for pennies to the dollar and they last a long time.
Sunflower seeds – are full of protein and Vitamin E, an antioxidant. You can add these for crunch.
And maybe even imagine them instead of chips.
Avocado – is great for breaking a fast (like breakfast). It has Vitamins C and E antioxidants and has all 3 macronutrients.
Red bell peppers – were stuffed peppers in my catering days that became a Vegetarian dish we served. With a little rice, you can make this a meal stuffed with Vitamins A, C, and E.
Squash – like spaghetti squash and butternut squash sauce can be the new tomato sauce (especially if you’re avoiding high acidity). These nutrient-dense healthy foods are polyphenol-rich, anti-inflammatory good.
Spinach – is an easy one to add to a bowl. Spinach doesn’t expire quickly like other salad types… and rather than eating it as a cold salad, try adding a few drops of water and steaming.
Your greens get wilted down into one or two bite-fulls. With a little garlic, sweet pear or apple bits, and crunchy chopped walnuts, this becomes a delicious bite. And, 1 cup of spinach is about 1 net carb gram.
My plan starts with foods winning points for the body keeping score, like the ones described with veggie fiber, healthy oil, protein, and healthy carbs.
Certain protein foods like quinoa and lentils are an efficient cooked starter as they cook fast and fill the body with nutrients and keep you from feeling hungry.
And, quinoa cereal became one of my bridge foods from sweet to savory.
Then on Sunday brunch weekends, I make Greek yogurt parfaits. Almost everything on my brunch recipes table that looks white and creamy is probiotic yogurt healthy. That goes for the tartar sauce, “whipped cream” toppings, and sweet fillings.
Rarely, do I find a need to use the whipped cream that’s stored in my freezer. And these days, I think the tart yogurt tastes better with the paired sweets.
…That’s how your tastes can change!
And these are 3 ways you can get inspired to add and eat more anti-inflammatory healthy foods:
1.Lean into the seasonal produce foods that interest you. Like squashes, citrus, apples, pumpkin, and winter berries. You can find so many new fruit varieties like jackfruit and dragon fruit on the grocery shelves (and so many others that haven’t even made it from our tropical climate lands to our markets where they are named).
2.Reinvent sides. The stuffing sides can be what gets some of us in trouble, and if the carbs is what you’re worried about, you can reinvent the starchier side carbs to work for your body.
Stick with veggies carbs that are the opposite and with very few calories, and some have great flavors such as mushrooms, asparagus, and onions that you can turn into a Provencal herby-forward experience with a little tarragon, white pepper, vinegar or sherry.
Carrots (raw and cooked) are so versatile for sweet and savory dishes where you can substitute the fun marshmallows with a divine anti-inflammatory diet pairing like ginger and nut or seed textures. Appreciating food textures is a no-calorie add. 💭
3.Make healthy desserts. This is my specialty area and weakness turned into a positive, net gain.
It’s no baking secret that butter and refined sugars add to weight gain. And ingredients like white flour and white sugar are inflammatory foods. Moderation is still the best modern way.
Plus incorporating more healthy foods to add a cushion.
Keeping a balance between tasty and healthy is a dynamic pairing duo.
And the sweet spot is they are usually easy bakes in minutes like a healthy pear or apple pie with cinnamon spice sweetness.
You can make a pumpkin pie from pumpkin puree that’s loaded with antioxidant Vitamin A and beta carotene. Mix in plant-based almond milk. Then add allspice that’s all anti-inflammatory goodness as the sweet five-spice version!
For holiday sweets, you can start with those whole food ingredients like cranberries with oranges or sweet potatoes and honey and holiday spices… and then zhugh up with a few cherries or nuts…
You don’t have to give up the party sides 😉 (I personally wouldn’t want to from all my party planning years).
All this to say, re-branding healthy foods into your daily life is rewarding to your body and food table, enjoyable, and a challenge you can embrace! 🎉
