Whole Meals and Why you need them
We’ve probably all see this before
And in recent years some of you may have seen this
Both of these focus on giving you a visual of the daily intake (for nutritional value purposes) you should have of the varying food groups. That is good and all, but that isn’t my only reason for encouraging you to eat a “whole meal”. Google didn’t give me a definition for this phrase that felt right, so i’ll make up my own for the purposes of where this is going.
Whole Meal /ˈhəʊlˌmiːl/ ADJECTIVE- a meal inclusive of all food groups independent of one another; not a casserole
Have you ever eaten a sandwich that has bread (carb), meat (protein), cheese (dairy) some lettuce, tomatoes, and even onion (fruit/vegetable) and afterwards still felt like you needed something else to eat? You covered all your major food groups, but something is missing. Maybe some potato chips? It is my opinion that the desire to consume more is because a sandwich is NOT a “whole meal”. Now if you had a sautéed chicken breast, rice, green beans or asparagus (my favorite), how likely do you feel that you would need more food? I don’t mean that sweet hankering for ice cream or a cookie, but substantiating food.
Why I personally stay away from casseroles or any dish that mix all your ingredients into one dish
Eating is very much an emotional/mental act. Don’t think so? Explain stress eating or even people who can’t eat under stress. Does your body really need more or less food in the absence or presence of stress? Yes, you can survive but are your hormones triggering your brain to think otherwise? I say that to say, when you eat all of your food groups TOGETHER in a shepherd’s pie, nachos (My favorite) or whatever other type of casserole you enjoy, you aren’t giving your body the opportunity to individually identify that you have consumed enough of the varying food groups and it is way more difficult to control how much you’re actually eating. Thus, making it difficult to control your caloric intake.
Ex. You ate your mushroom chicken casserole and you realize that you would like more meat. Aside from picking the chicken out of the casserole, you have to eat more casserole just to get more meat. You ate all these additional calories just to get more meat, which is all you really wanted!
CHALLENGE: Try eating your foods separately for a week. What differences did you notice?
