document updated 16 years ago, on Jul 27, 2007
- fruits
- buy ~2 bananas at a time (I'm very picky and don't always eat everything right away) (there's nothing wrong with buying just one or two bananas)
- 1/2 cup of diced/crushed pineapple + 1.5 cups cottage cheese (note that the lactose content of CC can vary greatly)
- veggies
- an omelet with green peppers, red peppers, onions, ...
- stir-fry
- frozen broccoli
- salad: lettuce (red leaf, green leaf, or spinach), carrots, tomatoes, green bell pepper, onions, pepperoncinis, cucumber
- dill pickle spears
- things I can smaller amounts of:
canned chili peppers,
- try to figure out good cooked/prepared food that includes:
pumpkin (recipes),
tomatoes
- tips:
- the more saturated color, the better: carrots, broccoli, peppers, green beans, spinach, red lettuce
- Cooking veggies reduces their nutritional content, but cooked veggies taste better, and eating cooked veggies is better than no veggies at all. Steaming may be a reasonable compromise. However, if a vegetable is highly nutritous, that vastly outweighs any decrease done to it by freezing/cooking, so you should eat them in any way possible: broccoli, tomatoes, asparagus, kale, carrots, spinach, cauliflower, green beans, peas, artichokes, onions, mushrooms
- other things that are worth eating
- A multivitamin... I think most health-food-store supplements are unproven snake oil, but science HAS studied health for a long while, and recognized certain vitamins as essential, and without them there can be notable problems
- soups
- tofu (with nigari, if possible)
- nuts
- breakfast cereals — while sometimes containing more calories than needed when dieting, many are nonetheless fortified with a wide range of important vitamins and minerals (high in fiber, fortified with vitamin a, vitamin c, vitamin d, folic acid, calcium, ...)
- nutrition
- US FDA nutrition label highlights the five most important nutrients that you should make sure you get:
- Fiber (sources) — cauliflower, sauerkraut, spinach, broccoli, raspberries, pickles,
- Vitamin A (sources) — broccoli, carrots, green leaf lettuce/spinach/kale, pumpkin
- Vitamin C (sources) — oranges, broccoli, tomato, bananas, red bell pepper, potato, peas
- Calcium (sources: [1], [2]) — dairy products obviously, foritified cereals/breads/grains, almonds, some beans, collards, couscous,
- Iron (sources) — spinach, asparagus, potatoes, sauerkraut,
- pre-prepared products that have some amount of veggies I like:
- Jimmy Dean skillets — bell peppers and onions, meant to be cooked with scrambled eggs
- Stouffer's Skillets