Eating Well in School

Food

When in school, time, money and convenience are three of the main determinants of what we eat. While we would all love to eat like kings and queens, sometimes fast food is the easiest answer. But this impacts your wallet and expands your waistline.

The sooner you realize that eating healthy is one of the most important and simple things you can do, the longer and better, you will live.

Time magazine came out with 10 foods that pack quite a punch. So here are the ten, as well as one example of a simple or hard food tip that you can prepare that will taste good, impress and keep you fit.

Tomatoes

Tomatoes are a great addition to salads and meals; they are perfect both raw and cooked and for the gentlemen out there, they go a long way in reducing the risk of prostate cancer. And for the pizza lovers out there, the benefits increase when cooked and sprinkled with olive oil.

A favorite meal is chicken parmigiana, here is the simple recipe.

Ingredients:
Boneless Chicken breast
Tomato Sauce
Oregano
Mozzarella cheese
Romano or Parmesan cheese
Bread Crumbs (Or Toast)

Instructions:
Warm oven at 350 degrees.
Whip out a frying pan, add a dash of virgin olive oil and let frying pan warm up for a couple of minutes.
Take chicken and brown sufficiently at medium heat.
Once done, bread the chicken (or toast the bread, crunch it up and use that instead).
Take a casserole dish, put in chicken, cover with generous portion of tomato sauce and grate mozzarella cheese on top. Then take Romano or Parmesan cheese and sprinkle over the sauce.
Cover, put in oven for 30-45 minutes.

This will be more than enough to satisfy your hunger, impress people and will not hurt your wallet as much as eating out. For added effect, 15 minutes before you decide to take the chicken out of the oven, take a French baguette, cut in half (the way you would if you were to make a submarine) and add garlic butter. Wrap in aluminum foil, toss in oven.

Take both out and enjoy…

Spinach

Unless you have Popeye DNA, chances are that you will not like spinach. But there are two ways that spinach can be made palatable.

Loaded with iron and folate (a B vitamin), a cup of spinach only has 41 calories and 0 grams of fat.

All this is nice and dandy, but how can it be eaten?

Raw spinach makes for a great salad. Seriously, all you have to do is take it, wash it, drain it, and then cut the excess stems.

At this point, take the juice of a lemon or lime, add some oil and vinegar and you have a great, healthy salad. Sprinkle some salt and pepper and you will see that it tastes decent.

Another alternative is to have it cooked. Take some spinach and combine it in chicken broth. The chicken broth will take over the taste but at least you will have combined some spinach in your diet, even though it is healthier raw…

Nuts

Nuts contain vitamin E, fend off heart disease and cancer and are quite tasty. They are fairly heavy in fat though, so eat them by the handful and not the bowlful. A perfect snack to make class go by faster when time seems to stand still.

Broccoli

Very much like spinach, broccoli is not the most appreciated vegetable out there. But it is rather healthy as you can imagine. Broccoli helps defend against cancer and is most healthy when cooked light and chewed hard.

It is great raw with a light dressing and as a steamed side order with sausages, chicken or steak.

Oats

Oats help reduce cholesterol. They can be eaten raw in granola or cooked. If you are trying to lose weight and you find that you eat often, oats are good as they make you feel full even if you can eat a horse.

Salmon

Most fish are healthy and salmon ranks at the top. Salmon can be poached, grilled or eaten raw.

Sushi

Since this is a guide for business students and sushi is omnipresent in business, we will take a look at some of the basic definitions. Once you dive into the world of sushi, you will never leave. Sushi is delicious but can get pricey. Increasingly though, you can find lower priced alternatives.

Sushi is indeed an acquired taste, but once you catch on, it will become a good friend at business settings – from cocktails to lunches – and dates or parties. No amount of text can do justice to sushi, but for the sake of this guide, sushi is the term that encompasses sashimi, sushi and maki.

Sashimi is raw slices of fish – no rice, no vegetables. These pieces may be served alone, or with ginger, wasabe and soya sauce.

Sushi is the most traditional and accessible form: slices of raw fish over vinegared rice.

Finally, makis rolls are stuffed with fish, vegetables, seaweed, rice as well as tempura.

The most worthwhile piece of advice is to try sushi with an open mind – and mouth.

Garlic

Ironically, what makes your breath stink is exactly what makes garlic so darn good for you. Garlic is one of the best natural products to protect your heart. Garlic also has antibacterial benefits. Mince it, smash it, grate it, or slice it the way Paul Sorvino did in Goodfellas. Do not just toss in a clove whole; otherwise you will not have released its powerful health agents.

Green Tea

Who cannot use a good coffee on the way to class? Well if you wish to avoid tumors from developing, go with green tea. The Chinese drink green tea as much as Westerners drink coffee, and guess what? The rate of stomach ulcers and liver cancer is much lower in China than in North America.

Blueberries

And you thought what tastes good has to be bad for you. Apparently, blueberries fight off E.coli bacteria from "adhering to the bladder wall." Blueberries also combat heart disease and cancer, so have them with your cereal and take a handful to class.

Wine

Surely wine deserves a section to itself.