Healthy Eating Facts - Slow Food Versus Fast Food

Another point of view in the attempt to keep your perfect health is the slow food concept. It is known very well that some fast food can be harmful to our health. Despite its practicality and economic values, fast food in some extend should be responsible for many health impairment, like high cholesterol, high blood pressure, obesity and heart diseases. These findings are backed up by endless research and studies, since the development of food processing which is still on the go.

Consuming fast food has become a tradition in this super busy modern world. Home cooking becomes a waste of time, impractical and is left to older people who ought to do this during their good old time. At the end of the day people may forget that home cooking is actually much more beneficial to our health. Fortunately there are lots of people who are still concern about the importance of home cooking or slow cooking. Those are the people who concern about the health of their families.

Thanks to Carlo Petrini, an Italian, who start the war against fast food in 1986 through an organization called The Slow Food Movement. As its slogan is Clean, Safe and Healthy, his very aim is to re-encourage people to cook at home and serve home made healthy dishes to their families.

This Slow Food Movement at this moment has become a global organization with specific missions in each and every country over the world. One of its missions is to promote healthy local food of every country using natural food stuff and avoid the usage of preservatives or chemical substances.

I think that most of the families are still do the cooking at home, and dine out once in a while. And I also believe that the incidence of high blood pressure is quite low in these types of families, unless not all of the family members eat at home. The role of a housewife and mother become extremely important. She is the one that should be able to gather the whole family at the dining table to enjoy homemade healthy cooking, which she prepared with love and care.

#1 - Preparing home made dishes is actually not an easy task. It needs the knowledge of healthy food ingredients and effort to buy and select the ingredients in traditional markets or directly from the farmer. Here are some directions on how to prepare healthy food at home as recommended by the Slow Food Movement:

#2 - Set fresh ingredients as first priority. Buy them in traditional markets or directly from farmers. Traditional markets are the shortest distribution channel of fresh food. Our body needs fresh food ingredients that are just or recently harvested. Vegetables cannot be stored overnight since the stalls are usually not equipped with freezers to keep them fresh.

#3 - On the other hand, there is a great possibility that vegetables sold in supermarkets has been kept for quite a long time, even for a week. This will decrease the nutrition value of the vegetable. This also counts for fresh meat and fish.

#4 - When buying fresh ingredients in traditional markets you should be aware about the usage of dangerous and illegal preservatives like formalin and the usage of prohibited food colorings

#5 - Replace the usage of instant spices and mono sodium glutamate (MSG) with the fresh ones like shallots, garlic, onions, celery, ginger, white pepper and sesame oil.

#6 - You can prepare your homemade "instant spices" by freezing your blended spices in an ice tray or put it in a food grade plastic bag. You can then use it as needed and keep the rest in the freezer.

Well, I may conclude that this slow food concept is a good tradition. Enjoying home made cooking, like I do, is really a good contribution to health. The choosing of what to eat and what ingredients are needed is fully at your discretion. Other benefits are that you may save a lot of bucks when cooking at home and at the same time avoid the temptation of bad food outside. Isn't it?