The Simplest Healthy Eating Tips EVER

Three easy tips to help with making healthy food choices. Seriously. The easiest ever.

Choose things that you could make in your own kitchen.

Could you make margarine? Probably not, unless you happen to be a chemist. Butter? Easy. How about flour? How would you go about bleaching flour? Exactly! Coffee creamer? Read the ingredients. If you need a degree to decipher them, switch to milk or half and half.

Let's talk about sweeteners. With plenty of time, patience and heat, you can make sugar, though it's best to choose the least-processed kinds. Stevia works, too. I grew some in my garden this year, and it's a simple matter of drying and grinding the leaves. (Of course, WE don't make honey, but every rule has an exception.) But how do you make Saccharin? Anybody?

Anytime you have a choice between two or more options, choose the one closest to your home kitchen.

All things in moderation.

I don't think there is very much that can really hurt you (assuming you are healthy and fairly free of allergies) if you practice moderation. Occasional fast food won't kill you, but a daily Big Mac and fries is a terrible decision. A piece of chocolate or a few potato chips are harmless. An occasional soda is fine. Just don't overindulge in anything. Even things that are "good for you" may not be good in huge quantities, like the roasted beets I made the other day. But that's a talk for another day.

The Nature of Proportions

Eat foods in the proportions you would find them in nature. Think about it. If you were a wild woman (not the Kardashian/Hilton/Lohan kind of wild woman, but more like the Ayla/furry bikini kind of wild woman) what would you eat? Lots of leafy greens, root vegetables and other similar foods. Some grains, but those are very difficult to collect in nature, and don't necessarily grow in large fields the way we farm them. Nuts, fruits and legumes in their season.

Easy access to dairy is something new to humans. Remember that momma cow's first job is to feed her calf. We're only supposed to get the leftovers, if any at all. Sweets are very hard to obtain in nature, so use them sparingly and as a treat. Last: which is easier, to catch a fish or kill a deer? Exactly. Eat more fish than red meat.

How simple is that? Ask yourself two questions, and apply those three principles to the answer: Could I make this at home? How much of this sort of thing have I had lately?