Best Healthy Dinner Ideas: Foods and Cooking Techniques

The healthy dinner ideas are the mingling of healthy foods and cooking techniques of these foods. Dinner is the last meal of the day. So we should not ignore the dinner foods under any circumstances.

As the last meal of the day, dinner has its purpose in our body. The purpose of dinner is not only to satisfy our appetite, it plays a vital role in physiological functions in our body.

As we know the importance of dinner in our daily life, we should not have our dinner with only delicious foods for filling up our empty stomach. We need to have a healthy dinner satisfying our stomach and providing proper nutrition to our body. 

Healthy Dinner Ideas Ensure Your Health

Our health is dependent on healthy dinner. We can ensure our good health by having healthy dinner foods. We can avoid various health issues as these help us to provide proper nutrition.

Healthy foods are the first condition of healthy dinner ideas. The nutrition quality of foods depends on how we are consuming these. Usually, we cook foods and consume cooked foods. So, the cooking technique is the other condition that ensures our healthy dinner.

However, before going to discuss elaborately about the best healthy dinner ideas we should know what we understand by the term healthy dinner.

What Does Healthy Dinner Mean?

We can consider a healthy meal or dinner providing balanced nutrients and it should contain a minimal amount of processed food. 

But the point is that, this nutrition is very individual. As everybody is different, our needs are not the same. So we can say having a well-balanced food that is required for our body can be considered as healthy dinner.

How can we be sure that we are having a healthy dinner? According to dietitians and Nutritionists, our dinner should be around 500-550 calories. It should contain a good amount of fiber and protein as well as some healthy fat. Our dinner should include at least three food groups, and it should be limited in saturated fats and simple sugars.^[1]

Do We Need More Effort For A Best Healthy Dinner?

For preparing healthy dinner we do not need to take any extra effort. If we are conscious and careful about the foods, we can have a healthy dinner with less effort. 

We need to know the proper quantity of foods as per our body requirements to have a healthy dinner. For instance, if our dinner contains grilled chicken or beef or fish, steamed vegetables, and any types of grain such as pasta, rice, etc; we can say we are having a healthy dinner. 

Our dinner plate should contain ¼ protein, ¼ grain, and ½ vegetables. We also can have a glass of milk to fulfill our calcium needs. Now think, is it really difficult to make a healthy dinner?

The Way We Can Have a Healthy Dinner: Foods Ideas

We just need to follow a few tricks to have a healthy dinner. First of all, we have to pay attention to the food elements. 

As the required food elements of our dinner are grain, vegetables, and protein; so we have to make sure of the availability of the elements on our dinner plate. Here are some tricks to make our dinner healthy.

1. Vegetables and Fruits

The nutrition value of foods and vegetables is immense. So, we have to choose fruits and vegetables for our dinner.

Sometimes, we get bored when we have to eat vegetables daily. And our dinner may get a bit monotonous. There are a few tips for you while you are feeling bored with the vegetables. I follow these.

• You might not like vegetables because you haven’t found the variety fitting your taste. So try to get various types of vegetables to have a variety. You can visit the local market and investigate new flavors. You can also go to the manager at your local grocery store. These veggie pros are happy to share buying tips and preparation ideas that can vegetables taste better. Many grocery stores provide recipe cards with new ideas for cooking. 
• Change the Cooking Method: Sometimes it becomes difficult to enjoy vegetables when they are boiled. So, try to change the cooking method. You can cook vegetables in butter, olive oil or wine to get a better taste. You can use chicken broth.
• Use your Favorite Spices: You can use your favorite spices to make it tastier
• Add with Your Favorite Dishes. If you don’t like vegetables at all you can add these with your favorite dishes. You can add chopped vegetables like broccoli, carrot, or others into small pieces with animal protein recipes. In this way, you will find a different taste. 

Whole Grains

Whole grain is more nutritious than refined grains. So try to use whole grains to prepare your meal.

Use Lean Protein

Protein is a very important food element for us. But we should not take high protein food daily. We need to choose lean protein such as lean beef, pork, and chicken for our dinner.

Dairy Food

Try to have a cup of fat-free milk. Fat-free milk provides the same amount of calcium and other nutrients as whole milk provides. At the same time fat-free milk provides low calories. Low–fat yogurt can be included.

So, these are a few tricks you can use to make your dinner healthy. You can get a positive result to have a healthy dinner following the tricks.

Cooking Techniques

You already know food choice is not the only key to have a healthy dinner. You also need to follow the cooking technique ensuring the quality of nutrition. You need to use some techniques or strategies in cooking to prepare a healthy dinner. So let’s see what the techniques are:

Cook with Less Oil

We usually use extra-virgin olive oil or canola oil for cooking. It contains 120 calories per tablespoon.  So try to use less amount of oil in your cooking. If you use nonstick or enamel-coated pans and skillet you can cook with less amount of oil.

Try to Avoid Deep Frying

To avoid deep-frying you can choose an oven. Oven-fried meat like chicken provides fewer calories and less saturated fat than traditional fried chicken. 

Try to reduce the quantity of Salt

As per the USDA recommendation we need to limit sodium consumption less than 2300 mg per day. It is a little bit difficult for us. So we can replace some of the added salt with lime and chopped fresh herbs. It is better to use black pepper, oregano, or thyme. The flavor of these is amazing. 

Use Good Fats

The taste of butter is really good. But butter provides seven times more saturated fat than oil. So try to use oil in place of butter.

Use White Substance of Egg

Egg yolk provides 54 calories and 5 grams of fat where the white part provides 16 calories and 0 grams fat. I hope you now understand what part of the egg you need to use.

You can follow the cooking tips for the preparation of a healthy dinner. All these tricks are easy to follow. You can ensure your healthy dinner with less effort. 

Mistakes at dinner

You can find a better result following healthy food choices and cooking techniques. With all our effort, sometimes we do some mistakes unknowingly.  

These mistakes at dinner drag us in trouble. These mistakes may harm our health. So, we must be aware of these. We also need to avoid all these for our health. Here are these: 

Overeating

Overeat may cause various troubles in our body. So try to listen to your body’s feedback about how full you are. Our bodies are pretty good at telling us how much to eat, we just need to listen a little closer.

Grazing in front of the TV

Many of us do this mistake at our dinner time. What we do? We eat snacks in place of complete dinner while we are watching TV. As we are unmindful, we do not keep concentration on what we are eating and the effect of taking such snacks.

Restaurant Dinner

Restaurant dinner provides higher calories, fats, and sugar. So it’s better to avoid going out to eat more than once a week.

So we have to be careful about the mistakes that we usually do. Healthy foods or healthy cooking techniques may turn into fruitless effort if we continuously do the mistakes day after day. We should avoid these habits consciously.

Conclusion

I would like to remind you to follow the proper ways to have a healthy dinner. Healthy dinner is very important to all. We must not forget dinner maintains our body while we are sleeping as it is the last meal. We do not have any other choice excluding healthy dinner.

It is not difficult for us to follow the best healthy dinner ideas to keep us full, fit, and healthy. As long as we are leading a healthy life we can easily handle all the obstacles of life and can get a peaceful life. So, we must ensure our dinner healthy to make our life smooth and lively.

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Reference:

1. http://www.self.com