Thursday 2 August 2007

Cleaning out nutritionally useless foods

In my cupboard I currently have:

- A small bag of green lentils
- A small bag of dried black eyed beans (cow peas)
- Bag of brown rice
- Half a bag of quinoa
- Small bag of azuki beans
- Small bag of bulgur wheat

My question is: given that I'm aiming for between 1200-1400 calories per day, which of these foods would you consider nutritionally useful and which useless? Which would you keep and which would you give away to hungry flatmates?

5 comments:

Sara said...

I'd give away the bulger and the rice if anything (that's what always gets left in my cupboards); the lentils are good for iron, and legumes are definititely nutritionally sound in small quantities - you could make a pate out of them and include other good stuff in that. I'd keep the quinoa as well, since it's a complete protein with all the right amino acids.

JD said...

Thanks for the tips. :-) I think I'll boil use the azuki beans with some sweetner to make a sweet red bean soup or paste. Yum...

Arturo said...

Hi
It seems to me that all of those are healthy foods. I would limit the quantities consumed. I would not know what to prepare with bulger. Legumes are good in smaller quantities since they are calorie dense. Since I'm vegetarian, I eat some legumes daily. Brown rice is very nutritious.
Cheers, Arturo

Robin said...

I'm with Arturo. None of those foods seems nutritionally useless to me. However, I do understand the need to clean out the cupboards.

Be guided by what you need. I struggle to get enough iron so if it were me, I'd hang on to the lentils for sure. Others may have different nutritional gaps. Oh, and don't forget to save things that you like. Even if something is relatively high in calories, if you really enjoy it, eat it at least once in a while.

R

JD said...

Thanks for the comments Sara, Arturo and Robin. My problem with grains like rice and pasta is that they're just too carby for me to eat in small quantities, so I'd rather just cut them out all together until I really get good at CRON and it comes naturally. I think I'm really addicted to carbs because as soon as I eat even a small bite of refined carbs my brain just wants more, more, more!