Healthful (and Plentiful) Foodz

Lucky Cynic

(TL;DR parts underlined)

Hey there guys, you are all probably well aware of what the usual eating habits of geeks are. Well, things for me have been shaping up. I am really trying hard to eat more nature foods rather than highly processed shit that we are all too familiar with. I have given up nearly all forms of soda as a regular beverage. Now its usually water or OJ. I have also given up the Ramen Soups which I have always been wary of and replaced them with cans of Chili which is always a good little pick me up. Thing is I am looking for something to replace some of my morning and mid-day snacks and have a few niches that need to be filled with at least healthier food. Only fault, my wallet is light and need to be sure that while the food is healthy, it also will not kill my money.

So for the time being I have oodles of bottles of water and Pop tarts in my school locker. I normally drink 2 bottles of water a day and have maybe 2 or 3 pairs of pop tarts. I am looking for something that has zero prepare time, is fairly cheap, filling, and will be okay at room temperature. Low sugar would also be good.

Now, school is different from home and at home I would like variety and more leaning towards health. These things should take maybe less than 10min to prepare with minimal culinary skills, great taste, good health benefits with not a lot of chemical and preservative additives. If it is natural, even better, any ideas?

For now, I have built my own menu of Chorizo w/ Eggs, Raisin Bran cereal, and oatmeal for breakfast. Chili, some steak and veggies, sometimes tuna too and usually anything else just lying around the house for the afternoon and dinner time. Anyways, any suggestions?

deadonthestreet

Apples are an easy to carry, healthy and filling snack.

Omnicron9999

Canned or prepared anything will usually have tons of preservatives and additives. As you mentioned, canned chili and pop-tarts = not very good for you.

You specifcally asked for breakfast/snacks. Cereal, not the high sugar, kids nonsense, but a good wholesome cereal with low fat milk is a good choice. Fresh fruit and vegetables are always a good choice. Whole grain toast, even with a bit of butter (not alot), or a tiny bit of real fruit preserve, is also good.

You can also make your own granola/trail mix/GORP, receipes are all over the internet. Healthy, and easy to make. If you can watch it, check out the Good Eats episode about energy bars. You should be able to check it out on the foodnetwork.com website.

Lucky Cynic

Just to note: The chili thing, yeah it isnt the best either but it is a replacement until something better is found.

Sarcastro

I loved my dehydrator before it died. Dried fruit and homemade jerky made great snacks. I don't even think I really ate meals at that point, I simply consumed the days worth of food in 'snack' form.

Man, I just realized I have to get me another one of those - it was awesome.

4M3THYST

Sarcastro wrote: »

I loved my dehydrator before it died. Dried fruit and homemade jerky made great snacks. I don't even think I really ate meals at that point, I simply consumed the days worth of food in 'snack' form.

Man, I just realized I have to get me another one of those - it was awesome.

Use dehydrators with caution. Although you may be eating healthier foods (fruit vs pop tarts)... there is the possibility of eating double to quadruple your ordinary calories when everything you eat is dried. For example: an medium sized apple, when sliced up fresh is about 1 cup worth of food, and around 50 calories. However, when dried it can shrink to just 1/4 is original size.... Is a 1/4 cup of dried apple chips going to satisfy the emptiness in your tummy? Most likely not. So you eat around 1 cup of them to feel satisfied, and end up ingesting 200 calories of the dried material, when if you'd just eaten a fresh apple in the first place it wouldv'e only been 50. Like I said, this was only an example, and 200 calories still makes for a decent snack... but when you get into things like meat products such as jerky, and higher calorie ingredients you could do more damage than good. It's only a suggestion though.

Page-

Apples, bananas and oranges are good, as well as grapes. You can take a bunch of grapes and stick it in a plastic baggy for safety and freshness. Personally I like to snack on crunchy things, so I go for nuts. They can be expensive, however. Almonds are my fav, and they're very, very good for you, but are one of the fattier nuts, so I hear. I eat raw, unsalted ones, but they get stale if you leave them out for too long.

Instead of getting bottles of water you should just get a bottle and put water in it, either from a Brita or from the tap (if your city has good water and you don't mind the taste of unfiltered). Where I live the water is very good, so I bring a 1.5 liter bottle of tap water to work with me every day and drink the hell out of it. Which reminds me of something. I've heard that often when you feel hungry you're in some way thirsty, so drinking more could help curb snack cravings.

For quick, somewhat healthy eats at home I go for salads and cheese and tomato or cucumber sandwiches, with a little bit of mayo and some salt and pepper to taste. You can even eat them open-face to save on bread and cut down a little on carbs. Salads are easy and fast, and if you get a decent variety of dressings going, or make your own, then they offer variety. If you feel up to it you can add some fruit to a vegetable salad, things like apples, cantaloupe, oranges and strawberries are very good with vinegarettes. You can also put cheese or nuts in to add protein. Avoid slathering on thick, creamy dressings as they're full up with fat and preservatives most of the time.

Kyougu

Ever since I started eating healthier, and trying to eat meals, I become addicted to tuna salad.

Just get a can of tuna, a bit of low fat mayonaise, some onions and jalapenos, and mix. If I'm really hungry, I'll add a boiled egg. Then I add a bit of chili powder a half a lemon for a tangy taste, and eat with 5 crackers. Makes a filling lunch, and its relatively inexpensive.

Also, a boiled egg goes great with a regular salad and low fat italian dressing.

4M3THYST

Kyougu wrote: »

Ever since I started eating healthier, and trying to eat meals, I become addicted to tuna salad.

Just get a can of tuna, a bit of low fat mayonaise, some onions and jalapenos, and mix. If I'm really hungry, I'll add a boiled egg. Then I add a bit of chili powder a half a lemon for a tangy taste, and eat with 5 crackers. Makes a filling lunch, and its relatively inexpensive.

Also, a boiled egg goes great with a regular salad and low fat italian dressing.

Oh, this reminds me. When I used to be into serious camping and hiking a few years back, we would make boiled eggs to take on the trail. They're relatively decent to eat at room temp, and they travel/store well. They're a nice change over regular snack foods, and lend alot of protein to your diet. If you boil them up the night before keep them in the fridge until you have to leave for school. Leave the shell on until you're ready to eat. Then just peel and enjoy! Be sure to eat them within 24 hours of removing from the fridge! If you find you like them, you could make a whole batch of them once a week and store them in the fridge. Boiled, and with the shells left on: they'll keep (refrigerated) for around a week. Then you can just grab them when you need them.

Szechuanosaurus

Darkest_3|i+3 wrote: »

Just to note: The chili thing, yeah it isnt the best either but it is a replacement until something better is found.

The better alternative is to make your own chilli. Brown some minced beef and onions in some olive oil, add a sprinkling of chilli powder and fry some more, and a can of chopped tomatoes and some tomato paste (check the ingredients to make sure they don't contain sugar, some do but there's no need for them to), sprinkle in a beef stock cube, stir and simmer for about 30 minutes and then dump in a drained can of kidney beans (again, make sure that they are preserved with nothing more than salt water - you can even get ones that don't contain salt but they are a bit pricier. Just don't add too much extra salt and your cool), simmer for another 10-15 minutes, season to taste and you're good to go.

Does that take too long? Then make a big pot of it on Sunday, bag it up into individual portions, freeze some for later, take a bag out the night before you want to eat it and stick it in the fridge overnight to defrost. Odds are this will actually work out cheaper than buying cans and will be tastier and healthier to boot.


For quick meals, stir fry. Heat up some oil in a wok, toss in some chopped chicken, Ginger and chilli pepper, fry for a couple of minutes, sprinkle over some Chinese 5 spices and fry for another minute, add some chopped red peppers and fry for another minute, add a couple of spoons of soy sauce and honey, dump in a bag of straight to wok noodles and some chopped salad onions, fry for another minute or so and serve. Shouldn't take more than 10 minutes. If you're a dirty health-nut, skip on the honey I guess.


TBH, you can probably spare more than 10 minutes for preparing dinner, when it gets right down to it. 15-20 minutes is plenty of time to make a whole host of meals.

Jimmy King

Darkest_3|i+3 wrote: »

Just to note: The chili thing, yeah it isnt the best either but it is a replacement until something better is found.

As has already been suggested, make your own chili. It doesn't take long at all and tastes far better than any canned chili. If you absolutely have to go the canned chili route I have found the Hormel stuff to be by far the healthiest that is available to me locally. Honestly, if it didn't have like 10 years worth of sodium it would actually be pretty decent.

Pheezer

If you're going to eat something from a can, canned tuna is actually good for you, so you might want to switch over to that though. I believe it's albacore that has the highest mercury content, so avoid that, but generally, if you're not eating three cans a day, you're not going to be putting yourself at risk.

If you have a blender or a food processor, make hummus and have that on toasted pita. It's also good on cold pitas. It's also fine on regular toast. It's extremely healthy for you, takes no skill to put together and keeps just fine, given that it's pretty much ground up beans. Also, dirt fucking cheap. I can post a detailed guide to making really good hummus if you're interested. If you don't have a blender or food processor, it's a great deal more difficult, but not impossible with a mashed potato smasher.

Shazkar Shadowstorm

This thread is win. Next year I'm off of the meal plan. Ohhh boy.

But albacore is tasty!

Pheezer

Shazkar Shadowstorm wrote: »

This thread is win. Next year I'm off of the meal plan. Ohhh boy.

But albacore is tasty!

I honestly can't taste the difference. I've tried every brand of tuna in the grocery store by now, and I've yet to be able to discern one or the other to be significantly better. I do find that chunked is easier for me to deal with in meal prep than flaked, but that's a very minor preference.

Really, tuna will get old quickly if you eat a lot of it just on its own. Cook it. Season it. Add it to things. I like to do a wasabi + tobiko paste, and use that to make tuna salad with a tiny bit of lemon oil and some diced green onions. If you spend about $.50 more when you're shopping for pasta, you can get stuff that isn't 90% flour, and actually get 8-11 grams of protein in a serving, and a good amount of your daily fiber intake too. So get some GOOD pasta, boil it up, and toss it in the fridge. Make that tuna salad I described. Toss some of the pasta, some of the tuna salad into some tupperware. Voila, instant lunch that costs nothing, took no skill, tastes great and is good food for you to be eating. You don't even need to heat it up, it actually tastes good cold.

ViolentChemistry

About that ten minutes thing, if you keep your kitchen clean it's convenient and vaguely even fun to study while you cook. It also opens up the possibility of actual pasta, which is dirt-cheap and can feed you for a couple days if you just make a bunch all at once.

themightypuck

Get a pound of grassfed beef at trader joes. Get a bag of stirfry veggies from trader joes. In one pan brown the beef. In a larger pan or wok put in some olive oil and start frying the veggies. Throw in that hot chili oil. Toss in the meat. Stir around a bit and cook to taste. Takes almost no time, is tasty, and (in my opinion) is healthy and filling.