Best Kitchen Tools for Healthy Eating – WTOP

Meal prep tools to help you cook and eat better If you find that you’re spending more time in the…

Meal prep tools to help you cook and eat better

If you find that you’re spending more time in the kitchen attempting to create meals and snacks that are healthier for you than years past, you’re among friends. According to the Food Industry Association, consumer health and well-being rose to the top of the list of important eating factors for consumers with only taste, price and convenience ranking above it.

Surveys have also found that 35% of consumers state that they’re not only eating healthier now than before the pandemic, but this healthy eating approach is also here to stay. Thank goodness we have found at least one upside to this long pandemic.

To help improve your culinary wizardry in the kitchen without attending a fancy schmancy cooking class, I reached out to my registered dietitian nutritionist colleagues for go-to meal prep tools that help them effortlessly create healthy foods in a snap. Let’s start with my favorite.

Vegetable chopper

My veggie chopper is older than my kids. As an RDN, I’m a loud ambassador for eating more produce. But truth be told, I dislike chopping veggies almost as much as flossing my teeth, which I disgruntledly do at least daily.

This handy, dandy tool allows me to place the raw veggie on a guillotine-like surface, press the top down and watch the pieces dislodge into the collecting container under the blade. Presto: uniform pieces of veggies prepped in a nano second.

Kitchen scissors

Amy Gorin, a plant-based RDN in Stamford, Connecticut, also shares my disdain for slicing and dicing, so she uses her kitchen scissors to snip her clean, leafy greens such as kale, spinach and lettuce, as well as herbs, such as chives, parsley and cilantro, instead of chopping.

She enjoys this tool so much that she has a couple of pairs of kitchen scissors on hand so that a clean pair is always ready-to-snip.

Grater

As a kitchen standard, a grater helps spread a dusting of flavor from hard cheeses, such as Parmigiano Reggiano and Asiago, over pasta, soups and salads, without overloading the foods with tons of fat and sodium.

“Grated cheese adds umami to the dish so there is no need for salt to season and also provides macro and micronutrients, such as protein and calcium, to the dish,” says Leslie Bonci, a sports dietitian for the Kansas City Chiefs and owner of Active Eating Advice.

Measuring spoons and cups

When it comes to …….

Source: https://wtop.com/news/2021/11/best-kitchen-tools-for-healthy-eating/