Three tips for a healthier menu

We all try to prepare healthy food for our families, but when we are surrounded by unhealthy options, creating a healthy weekly menu can feel hard. How can we make meals healthier without compromising on taste? I’ve put together three top tips to help make your weekly dinner time menu tasty and healthy.

Include wholegrains

Adding wholegrains, like brown rice or wholemeal pasta, to your meal plan a few times a week will add to your family’s intake of fibre. Fibre expands in our stomachs, making us feel fuller for longer. If your children complain of feeling hungry a short time after a meal, they might not have eaten enough fibre. If you are new to eating wholegrains, they can take a little getting used to. Children especially can struggle with the taste change at first. Try making your children’s sandwiches with one brown slice and one white slice of bread, to help ease them into wholegrains.

Make veggies a part of every meal

To be in our best health, we need to have at least 5 serves of vegetables a day, but many Australians do not reach this target. Vegetables are rich in vitamins and minerals, which keep us healthy. Like wholegrains, veggies are also rich in filling fibre and will stop you and your family feeling hungry between meals. Try planning your meals around vegetables, instead of just meat. This will help ensure they are less of an afterthought and more care has gone into their preparation. For example, you might make your main meal a veggie and chicken stir fry or, perhaps, spaghetti Bolognese with half of the meat replaced with mushrooms and spinach. That sounds more appetizing than meat and three soggy, over-cooked veggies on the side, doesn’t it? Get your kids involved in choosing the vegetables at the supermarket, to make it less likely they will refuse them. (If you would like me to write a blog post on other tips to get children to eat more veggies, let me know in the comments).

Avoid salt and high salt sauces

We often rely on salt to add flavour to our food, but we can add taste without the white stuff. Experiment with different herbs, pepper, garlic, chilli and even lemon juice to make meals taste great. Herbs are also a good source of antioxidants, so they can support our health. Exposing children to these unique flavours early on will help ensure they have a taste for them later in life, rather than a taste for salt. Step away from the salt shaker and embrace a new herb this week. Try some basil and oregano in your Bolognese, some fresh coriander in your burrito, and dried chives in your scrambled eggs. We often do not realise how much salt is in the sauces we usually eat. Sometimes it is easy to make our own (like whipping up a quick salsa from an internet recipe), but there are some sauces most of us would not be likely to make ourselves, like tomato sauce. If you enjoy having tomato sauce with a meal, switch to low-sodium tomato sauce and try to keep the serving size to a teaspoon.

Your three tips to improve your weekly dinner menu are: swap whites for wholegrains, add some veg and say no to salt. It is easier said than done, so be kind to yourself and try working on one tip at a time. If you make a capsicum and chicken fajita topped with coriander and chilli on a wholegrain wrap tonight, you are well on your way!