Better Is Better: Jamie Oliver knows that if you want to lose weight, you must learn to cook

I don't watch much TV. In fact, we had the cable cut at our house a few years back to avoid the temptation. But when I'm away in a hotel room, I often have the "boob tube" on in the background as a novelty. Such was the case yesterday, and I'm glad of it. I stumbled upon a great interview with one of my favorite chefs, Jamie Oliver.

He made a very interesting point about how the troubled economy could mean a worsening of the obesity epidemic in the West. For the first time in history, a large portion of the population is going to have to deal with a recession without the knowledge and skills to cook with creativity on a shoestring budget. This means the cheapest options are going to be 99 cent burgers from the fast food chains and boxes of processed garbage at the supermarket.

Then today I read an article in the Globe and Mail about how the profits are soaring for the processed food industry due to the squeeze on household finances. I really like the way the article finished:

Still, some health experts are growing concerned about the larger shift to commercially processed food, with its high levels of preservatives, nitrates and saturated fats.

As soon as you're into the porcessed foods you're asking for health problems," said Christine Lydon, a British Columbia-based nutrition expert and author of the upcoming book Ten Years Thinner.

Ms. Lydon recommends avoiding anything that "comes out of a can" and is loaded with sodium, or has been "ground up and mixed with cornmeal into a meat-like product."

Although she admits it is getting "harder to eat well and eat cheap," Ms Lydon points out that simple carbohydrates such as macaroni, white bread and breakfast cereals are an inefficient way to eat.

"White Carbohydrates set up a vicious cycle: You never feel full. These are nutrient-poor, calorie-rich foods that are going to leave people hungry. If you're not getting adequate amounts of amino acids, essential fatty acids and anti-oxidants, it leads to an inflammatory status that promotes diabetes, heart disease and cholesterol.

"Everything can be tied back to how your process foods."

For once, a nutrition "expert" seems to have a clue! Apart from the bit about saturated fat, which I feel has an important role in the diet, the rest makes good solid sense. But she mentions the fact that it is getting hard to eat healthily on the cheap. And that ties back into what Jamie Oliver is saying.

Our grandmothers knew how to feed a family for a week on chicken bones and a bag of root vegetables. Many people today can't even make a proper boiled egg. How did we lose these essential skills? I was one of the lucky ones I guess. My mother is a great cook and took pains to make sure I was imbibed with the same passion.

Along with watching her and absorbing her tricks, I rely on a few essential resources to come up with healthy and affordable meals for my family. I own two of Jamie's books which I turn to often: Cook with Jamie: My Guide to Making You a Better Cook and Jamie's Kitchen. Of course, the staple of my cookbook library is the classic Joy of Cooking. But whenever anyone asks me to recommend a great cookbook as a starting point for learning to cook healthy meals, I always go with Gourmet Nutrition.

Last week, my wife was away working. I made an amazing bison stew, modified from a Gourmet Nutrition recipe. It was so good that my daughter and I ate it for supper every night throughout the week! My daughter couldn't get enough of it. By the way, my wife would never put up with having the same thing for dinner all week, which is why I made it while she was away...

That highly nutritious dish fed the two of us for a week and ended up costing a fraction of what a week of fast food would have set us back. And it tasted a thousand times better!

Want to maintain a healthy weight and optimize your health in the process? Learn to cook!

Cheers,
Adam

PS - If you have any great recipes for healthy meals, or if you have stories about your own cooking exploits or foibles, drop a few lines in the comments below.

Comments

Here is a modified recipe I found from somewhere, I like it for breakfast:

- chicken, cut into pieces
- apple, cored and cut into pieces
- ginger, shredded
- cinnamon, powdered
- sultanas, raisins, goji berries or dried cranberries

**depending on whether one wants to make this into a fat based meal or a carb based meal dictates the next ingredients:

carb based:
- oats or pre-cooked rice
- use water to cook it

fat based:
- nuts (walnuts, macadamias, pumpkin seeds or almonds)
- use oil (coconut, olive or camellia) to cook

1. Cook chicken (in water for carb based, in oil for fat based)

2. add apple, ginger, dried fruit (and oats for carb based, and nuts for fat based)

3. cook until warm (or until oats are ready)

4. Eat and enjoy

P.s Coach, where's the email!!?? Need to get a move on things, no?

Posted by: Damien | January 13, 2009 at 01:08 AM

Also would love to hear your stew recipe.... I been trying to make a decent stew but never turns out quite right.

I have been eating more beef lately and I want something decent to do with it!

As for cooking, I never got taught and well I'm pretty crap and following recipes... I just try stuff out, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

Actually most of the stuff I make is very ordinary and generally only edible to myself hahaha!

(although the above recipe is pretty good)

Posted by: Damien | January 13, 2009 at 01:11 AM