If you walk through the supermarket and wonder which foods are healthy or unhealthy, do not feel alone. Good nutrition for humans can be complicated, and there are conflicting messages out there. The tips below will help you learn more about nutrition.

This means sneaking some healthy ingredients into foods in such a way that you don’t notice them. You can do this to ensure that your children get better nutrition, and you can also use it with your own foods to cover up flavors that you do not like. Examples of this stealth approach would be fortifying baked goods and blender drinks with dry milk powder, and sneaking 1/2 cup or so of white beans into your next quick bread, cookie, or cake recipe. Nutrition will become a family affair, but it will not be obvious to them.

When traveling, keeping some healthy snacks, such as protein bars, packed in your bag is a great idea. Regular meals are becoming difficult to find at airports. You may be tied up in security, waiting for your flight or flying on a plane that does not serve meals. Ensure you keep a few of these bars handy in order to stave off hunger until you land, at which point you can consume a balanced meal.

Those convenience foods in your supermarket aisle are to be avoided, because they are usually highly processed and contain unhealthy fats. When you eat a lot of trans fat you can potentially develop heart disease. Trans fats makes the amount of HDL (good cholesterol) in your body decrease and increases LDL (bad cholesterol).

A great rule to remember is to make your plate as colorful as possible when you fill it. Produce with bright colors almost always has a lot of vitamins and minerals compared to its calorie count. Try to eat one of these fruits or vegetables with every meal. Skins contain antioxidant benefits, so eat those too when they are edible.

Have you been attempting to decrease your red meat consumption? Instead of having it as a main dish, use it as a garnish. You can use it to help add flavor and texture to vegetable or grain-based dishes. The Mediterranean and Chinese cultures do just that and have a lower incidence of heart-related disease.

If you love nuts, one of the most nutritious are almonds. These are the healthiest among other nuts because of their ability to lower cholesterol, their richness in protein, and their benefit to your blood cells. They also tend to be less expensive than other types of nuts.

A great nutritional tip is to cut out sugar from your diet and start using an artificial sweetener. Consuming too much sugar has detrimental health effects, such as heart issues that can get serious. Splenda and Stevia are both good artificial sweeteners. After a while, you won’t even grab for the sugar anymore.

You can gain a lot of knowledge about nutrition from blogs, magazines and journals. A great place to start is to learn what types of foods promote health and which types hurt it. Anyone can benefit from a bit of nutritional information while making food choices.


*Consult with a physician before attempting any tips in this blog post.