Easy, healthful food suggestions?

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I just discovered a combination of foods that I wished I had learned about earlier. This one is cheap too. Take a potato, microwave it, and instead of loading it with butter, combine each bite with an olive of your choice. Kalamata is my favorite. You may say this is not good if you are trying to lose weight, but I am not. I consider this healthful, because it is heart healthy, and without any of the usual ingredients in most convenience food, like preservatives.

Usually, Kalamata olives are combined with feta cheese, which, like most cheese types, is not the most healthful thing you can eat. It is fine in moderation, but easy to overdo.

Any other suggestions?

I would use Macadamia Oil which has a rich buttery flavour and so uber healthy with even more monounsaturates (highest I believe and has the highest smoke point too so a great frying oil). But I don't eat many 'white' carbs.

-I stir fry broccoli, bock choy (sp?), onions in macadamia oil, add chilly, garlic, finishing with oyster sauce a squeeze of lemon, teaspoon of sweet stuff sugar or honey and a sprinkle of sesame seeds. YUM!

-Chop sweet potato and toss in 'mac' oil (Love this stuff!) cumin powder, salt and pepper and oven fry.
You can eat on it's own like hot fries or tossing a salad for texture and flavour, no dressing needed, (Add chicken or seafood like prawns or scollops to salad with these too, they love each other)

-Cook pasta, (any sort I use wholemeal) while you:
Nuke chopped pumpkin (make sure you get one you can eat skin of too) when tender drizzle honey and toss in curry powder
Fry some halumi cheese till golden brown
Add to large bowl:
Halved grape or cherry tomatoes
Chopped mushrooms
Baby spinach leaves
Jar of Basil Pesto (This would probebly serve 4-6 is is strong in this recipe)
Cheese
Pumpkin
then warm pasta and pesto... enjoy. You can add chicken to this too


I don't worry about how much of each ingredient, bit of this bit of that, it's all good.

A lot of people have it wrong, thinking that potatoes make you gain weight. They will if you eat too much, and that goes for basically any food. I used to use potatoes to give me energy, nutrition, and lose weight. I even used butter some days! Yup, I lost 50+ lbs eating a potato or two paired with a lean meat almost every day, including other foods and regular exercise for 5ish months! So don't believe that foolishness, if it works for you, then that's what works for you, not everyone else. Anyways, ramble ramble... Potatoes are very healthy so good for you for enjoying them! The nutritional contents in them is quite high, might I suggest eating the skin too? Most of the fiber and a lot of the vitamins are in the skin. Just make sure to clean it off first in case you do, as the skin can be dirty and have pesticides on it even if they are pre-washed. Microwaving them also seems to eliminate the negative possibilities from eating potatoes that some people experience from cooking them in different ways. Maybe if you are looking to consume potatoes in a different but healthy way you could mash them down a bit, shake a bunch of pepper on them after cooking, or bacon bits/fake bacon bits, even "butter buds" which has no fat at all, not even trans fats.

I would recommend trying stews of many kinds. Most are very easy to make and affordable to most people. Chicken or beef and vegetable stews and soups are great. Get the free range and low sodium brands of broth for a healthier meal. Spice it as much as you like, with whatever you think goes well, and as much as you like. This is good if you are trying to be heart healthy. Spices and herbs of many kinds are packed with antioxidants, vitamins and minerals plus they can help get rid of salt cravings that a lot of people seem to have in this day and age due to how normal it is for food to be packed full of sodium. I would recommend looking up the top healthiest spices/herbs on a search engine, there is lots of great info, and instead of me telling you all of it, it would probably be better to just explore and learn yourself.

Last edited by Pondering on 31 May 2012, 11:42 am, edited 2 times in total.

Don't olives have a ton of sodium?

I think there are pros and cons to Starch depending on a person's situation. I'm am interested in losing weight and at this time I don't think I really need starch or very much bread. The 2 together make my stomach feel bloated anyway.

This may be tied into the current state of my metabolism to.


However, I'm interested in trying a summer special gym membership. If I start to get better body composition I could see reintroducing the potato into my diet for the nutrients it has and even if I think I can use those carbs.

Welcome to WP! Your tastes match mine, as far as I can tell from your post. Those are just the sort of things I would order at a restaurant. I tend to be less inclined toward actual cooking for myself. I often wash and eat bell peppers raw, out of hand to keep things as simple as possible, for example. I should start another thread about the purported advantages of eating raw produce. I am not convinced, but in some cases. I enjoy them raw and am lazy enough to look for that sort of produce.

Thanks for the reply. As much as I like my new combination, I like variety, so your suggestions are welcome. I am surprised to read that you know them to aid in weight loss. Do you have a source for that? I am actually trying to gain weight.

I usually find them to be excessively salty tasting. Mixing them this way really helped. I forgot to mention that I had already put a heart healthy spread on the potato before I thought to add an olive to each bite. Next time I will experiment by leaving out the spread. I did add pepper, but no extra salt. Anyone on a low sodium diet might want to skip my idea.

Nuts, seeds (raw, as opposed to oil-roasted and salted)
fresh fruits
whole fresh vegetables


God, I'm terrible about salt. Really. Really bad. All my favorite condiments are sky-high in them- mustards, steak-sauces, soy sauce, and then things like pickles and pickled peppers. I cook using some liquid aminos as opposed to oil, and that stuff has an obnoxious amount of sodium.

Last edited by ValentineWiggin on 31 May 2012, 2:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It's all relative- I find it hard to justify eating a potato, which has all the calories of a regular soda,
when I could instead (or for even less) have an entire head of cauliflower, or something else much larger, volume-wise.
It's the equivalent of anyone else asking if they'd rather spend their calories on an entire meal or a mini Kit-Kat.

Self Nutrition Data

Soups are very healthy considering none of the nutrients are wasted and you can add things like beans.

Last edited by ZX_SpectrumDisorder on 01 Jun 2012, 3:33 am, edited 1 time in total.

No problem. I like variety too... Like I and "spectrum" already said, soups also a really good food. It can be very nutritious and very easy to alter to a way that fits your needs the best. You can also freeze it for another time. I am talking about home made soups, not the canned kinds, since those contain tons of sodium.

I mostly have my own life experience to show proof that potato can aid in weight loss. I of coarse, exercised on a regular basis, but there were a lot of times where I would not, and I still ate potato without gaining weight. Semi recently, I gained some weight back on due to life issues, some being injuries, and eating wrong. I healed up eventually, but I changed my diet back to a similar way, like how I ate when I was working on losing a bunch of weight. Fish and a potato or two was often dinner, some times with a little butter! My weight went down from simply eating a clean diet of healthy foods(a little unhealthy food aka butter too *I'm no saint), potato being staple food because it seemed to 1. fill me up pretty easily, 2. gave me long lasting energy, and 3. has a very healthy combination of nutrients which can aid in weight loss. I would say the potatoes I would eat are... "Mediumish but not hulking big like some I've seen". Also, I make sure not to eat potatoes that are even kind of sprouting most of the time, as I've read that some of the potato changes when this happens, and it begins to contain more sugar. Overall though what matters is what works for you. Different foods work in different ways for different people because our bodies are you guessed it... different. If you are eating potato and not experiencing weight loss, then keep on eating em'. You could use them to gain healthy weight as well. A lot of this stuff also depends on serving sizes, timing, and your lifestyle. I also used potatoes to help me gain healthy mass I should say, when I was lifting more weights so it can be done, you don't have to lift weights to gain healthy mass either. Just eat the right amount of nutrients you need for healthy weight gain and it should happen. The trick in all of this is finding what works for our own body. You may want to add in some protein to your diet if you don't consume much, or haven't already, it does help a lot with gaining good size.


Here is a link, although it doesn't state a bunch of scientific gobaltygoop like a lot of sites do, I would trust this reputable site personally as I have used it many times before to help me with information about healthy living. This is just what I found on the first page of searching. I've definitely seen more about potatoes aiding weight loss in my past research too. I would look some more up but I am a bit busy, and I know if you look around yourself, you will be able to find sources that claim potato can aid in weight loss, and weight gain too.

http://www.livestrong.com/article/20494 ... ng-weight/





To say it's hard to justify eating potato just because it has all the calories that soda has, and because other vegetables have much less calories seems farfetched to me. You can have potato and cauliflower, and get the best out of both worlds. Comparing soda to a potato also does not compute with me. Food is so much more about calories, and potatoes have em that's for sure, but not all calories are made the same, and potato also have nutrients which assist in losing calories after being consumed as well. All soda or candy is, is bad sugars and bad fats for the most part, and sometimes caffeine.

If anything, I would say avoid or eat nuts and fresh fruit in moderation if you can.

If you do eat fruit, remember to eat in moderation. In any case, if you're looking to get to a healthy body fat percentage, I would say stick to lean meats and rice.

I agree that a healthy diet largely depends on the individual. I am trying to gain weight, whereas most people are trying to lose it. My inclination is to try to eat basically what our previous generations used to eat. My theory is that we evolved to be able to use that type of food. Granted, our forbearers usually did more labor than we do. I also try to compensate for that by regular aerobic exercise. I avoid soft drinks and candy, although I do indulge in ice cream.

I think most people think of potatoes as a way to gain weight because of the high starch content. Doesn't that change to sugar when we eat them? By the way I do eat the peels. That is another reason to microwave them. Baking makes the peels harder, and less palatable for me.

Have you tried worchestersire sauce? The most popular brand here in the US (Lee and Perrins) is relatively low in sodium compared to standard soy sauce, for example.

I love soups, but generally just buy the lowest sodium soups instead of making my own. Home made is better tasting and better for you, but I don't bother, since it is just for myself. I usually eat a lot of soup in the colder months, but not during the hotter ones.