Keeping your family both happy and healthy can be a difficult task. Especially with cold winter months keeping us indoors, there are so many reasons to lay around the house and eat unhealthy snacks and big, heavy meals. Whether your New Year’s resolution was to eat healthier or you simply want to coax your family into a healthier lifestyle, there are several ways to make your kitchen a more health-conscious room in your home. After all, healthy living and healthy eating start in the kitchen.
Healthy Eating Starts in the Kitchen: 6 Ways to Make Your Kitchen More Health-Conscious
Get Organized
First, organize your kitchen. Households in the U.S. have 300,000 things in them — on average. Go through your cabinets and pantry and rid of old, expired, and unhealthy snacks no one in your home has an interest in eating. Neatly reorganize your dry foods, such as boxes of pasta, unopened sauces, and cans of soup. Utilizing drawers or storage containers may come in handy, too.
Reorganizing your fridge is a good idea as well. The top shelf of your fridge should hold snacks, leftovers, grab-and-go foods, and drinks. The shelves underneath should be organized based on food type. Keep all of your raw meats together to avoid cross-contamination, and keep fruits and veggies together, too. Condiments should be kept on the door. Clean each shelf and drawer in your fridge and properly organize your groceries. Keeping healthy foods in your fridge is especially important when people in your home go to grab a refrigerated snack.
Install Open Shelves
Holding yourself accountable for the foods you bring into your home is important when it comes to making a lifestyle change. Consider installing open shelves in your kitchen. Keep healthy options visible by placing them atop the shelves, as you’ll be more drawn to use them when you go to plan a meal.
Consider growing a small herb garden on a shelf near a window, too. You may even want to purchase all-new spices that are visually appealing, such as spices held in glass bottles with labels. Line up your spices, and look forward to grown herbs you can use while cooking in the future. Plus, using spices is much healthier than using marinades, dressings, and heavy sauces while preparing meals.
Display Healthy Snack Options
Similar to utilizing open shelves, display healthy snack options in your kitchen. Keep fresh fruit, such as oranges, apples, and bananas, in a decorative bowl on the kitchen counter. Instead of a cookie jar, place a jar of granola bars, trail mix, and other healthy grab-and-go snacks on the kitchen island so kids can easily get a healthy snack.
With approximately 400 million entrepreneurs worldwide, there are surely local farmers and supermarkets looking to sell homegrown vegetables and fruits near you. Purchase from local vendors like these and proudly display the healthy foods you’ve brought home for your family to enjoy. By keeping healthy foods in the open, you’re encouraging everyone in your home to eat those first. A health-conscious kitchen is stocked full of healthy options!
Invest in New Appliances
There are new kitchen appliances being introduced to us quite often. Juicers, vegetable peelers, and steaming baskets allow for easy preparation and consumption of fruits and veggies. Air Fryers allow for would-be fried foods to be enjoyed in a healthier alternative. Instant Pots allow for meals to slow-cook all day, minimizing time spent preparing food, which is especially helpful for busy parents who want to provide healthy but filling meals for their families. Cutting boards sorted by color can also be helpful to avoid cross-contamination of different food groups, such as veggies and raw meats.
What appliance or appliances interest you? Consider investing in some new, high-tech kitchen appliances that can help you prepare healthy meals for your family efficiently and conveniently. When cooking is easier, spending time in the kitchen preparing meals won’t feel like a chore. Many of these items are small and can easily be stored, too.
Add a Convenient Bar Cart
Of course, a kitchen remodel can make your kitchen all the more functional and visually appealing. In fact, 10.2 million kitchens and 14.2 million bathrooms are remodeled by homeowners annually. However, the costs can be quite high when it comes to a remodel. Instead, consider adding a small fixture, such as a bar cart, to your kitchen to make the room more functional when it comes to preparing meals for your family.
Bar carts can be handy for a few reasons. Not only are they mobile, but you can keep dry ingredients you don’t use very often in them. Utilizing a bar cart can especially be helpful if you don’t have a lot of counter space when you are meal prepping. Pull it out when you need it, then wheel it into a storage area to increase the space in your kitchen again when you’re done.
Repaint and Redecorate
Preparing healthy meals in your kitchen requires time to be spent in the room, and if it’s not visually appealing to you, this can feel like a chore. Consider taking the time to repaint your kitchen a warm, inviting color. Add some wall decor that inspires you and your family to live a healthier lifestyle. A new theme to your kitchen may be long overdue. Adding some healthy recipes and inspiration to your fridge can be motivational as well.
Healthy eating starts in the kitchen. To maintain a healthy lifestyle in your home that your entire family can jump on, consider making some changes and investing in new additions to your kitchen. Utilize these ideas as well as arrangements, fixtures, and appliances that make meal preparation convenient for you as well as motivate your entire family to eat healthily.
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