Quick and Easy Real Food

Boholistically awesome food that has traditional origins doesn’t have to be a complicated all day event. Many very practical recipes and even combinations can be created quickly, easily, and healthily. If you are a single parent, a student, or just a simple gal, you’ll love the recipes that will allow you to eat well, prepare food fast, and still have some time to relax.

Fast Food?

The point of having quick & easy recipes is to allow mothers to focus on the important things in life.  Maybe you’ve worked all day and are in need of sustenance, but still want time to sit down and actually have a conversation with your husband and/or children.  Or maybe you you’ve been out all day visiting with friends and going to play dates.  Either way, Boholistic ladies can’t always be expected to have a giant home cooked meal on the table.  Not every day at least!

However, the battle isn’t waged at home as we looking at our pantry or computer for Quick & Easy nutritious options.  The battle occurs on the way home from your activity.  The temptation with “fast food” is to remove all preparation and just grab food wherever possible.  Why is McDonald’s or Burger King so popular?  It’s easy, fast, and worry free . . . or is it?  Let’s look at some stats for our typical fast food restaurant:

Whopper Jr. – Burger King

870 Calories = 44%

57 Sugar = 230%

Chicken Sandwich – Chick-fil-A

440 Calories = 22%

5 Sugar = 20%

Regular Roast Beef Sandwich – Arby’s

360 Calories = 18%

6 Sugar = 24%
The percentages are based on a 2,000 calorie diet and the 25 sugar recommendation given by the American Heart Association.  You can find more calorie information about Burger King, Chick-fil-A, and Arby’s products on their websites (accessed August 2013).

Real Food, Real Nutrition

Eating a Whopper Jr. that accounts for almost half of a woman’s needed calories for the day is a nutritional loss.  The human body is capable of converting most things that our bodies eat into energy, but energy is not our only nutritional need.  Our goal should be to eat the most nutritionally dense foods possible each and every day.  When we spend half of our food needs on a nutritionally empty hamburger and hamburger bun, we starve our body of the nutritional possibilities for that meal.  Our easy, fast, and worry free meal doesn’t count as a time gain but rather as a lost opportunity for adequate nutrition.

The New Fast

Fast is not shirking.  Fast is not using money to avoid inconvenience.  Fast and easy in real food simply means faster than a meal that has a long time for preparation and cooking.  Keeping our standards high and our stomach’s expectant, we must find satisfaction in meals that have fewer ingredients, have elements that have been prepared in advance, or combining supermarket (farmer’s market) finds to create a plethora of small appetizers that when combined create a meal.

The new fast means deciding ahead to skip the drive throughs and instead heading home with a plan for nutrition and delicious health.