Meal hacks for building immune boosting meals
1. Start your meal by filling half your plate with vegetable
2. Aim for three different colours each meal
3. Try to rotate your fruits and vegetables with the season- its cheaper to eat seasonally and foods that are in season are going to have higher nutrient content.
4. Use herbs and spices to flavour your food to boost the nutritional value minus the calories
Gut Health
The gut is one of the lines of defence for our immune system. It provides a physical barrier against ingested pathogens, plus it houses trillions of bacteria which also work with us to fight unwanted particles that have entered out body.
By consuming adequate fibre, brightly coloured fruits and vegetable, drinking plenty of water and reducing our alcohol intake, we can help keep our gut healthy.
Probiotics can also play a role in keeping the gut healthy. Both probiotics foods and supplements can hep when the balance of the gut is out by reintroducing beneficial bacteria to repopulate the gut and help re-establish balance and repairing damage to the gut lining.
Pantry essentials for a healthy immune system.
Firstly, it is important to remember that much of the benefit of healthy eating comes when we follow a healthy pattern of eating over the long term. Shorts sprints of healthy eating may not have as big an impact as longer-term patterns.
However, if you want to review your current patterns, and start on some new patterns. Now is a good time.
7 Tips to build up your healthy pantry and fridge
1. When fresh produce is short supply, don’t be afraid to look at frozen and tinned option. Tinned tomatoes can be the base of many great recipes, legumes are a great source of plant-based protein and fibre and frozen vegetables are easy to keep on hand to throw into slow cooked meals, stir fries or even to thrown into smoothies.
2. Choose wholemeal or wholegrain dry ingredients when stocking the pantry to ensure your fibre intake is on track. Items such as brown rice, oats, wholemeal pasta, quinoa and flours are useful to have on hand for main meals and baking.
3. Build up your herbs and spice collection to make sure you always have delicious and healthy flavours on hands. You can also puree fresh herbs and freeze them in ice cubes to use later.
4. Tinned and frozen fish can be easy sources of omega 3 fatty acids which help boost immune function and protein too.
5. Portion out meats to freeze and don’t be afraid to pad out meat-based recipes with legumes to boost the protein content without having to add in more meats.
6. Whey protein powder is a great shelf stable source of protein that you can add to smoothies and baking to bump up the protein content of your snacks. It can also be used
7. If freezing fresh vegetables, make sure to quickly blanch them first in boiling water to help avoid them becoming frost bitten in the freezer
8. Use slow cookers to prepare easy meals in bulk to freeze for later.
It can be a pretty overwhelming listening to a lot of the information passing through social media right now. However, the best thing to do is to stay informed via credible sources, be prepared, but also know that if we all work together, then the situation will be a whole lot better than when we work just for ourselves.
Disclaimer: The above article is merely a guide and is in no way a recommendation or a treatment protocol for any health conditions or diseases. You should always consult with a qualified health care provider before changing your supplement, training or nutritional strategy. Supplementation should not be attempted by pregnant or breastfeeding women, anyone on prescription medication or children under the age of 15 unless advised by your qualified health care provider. The above article has been taken from bodyscience.com.au
