Here is a different take on preparing healthy meals for you and your family.

Our bodies are complex organic machines which can more than comfortably handle fats, carbohydrates, protein and anything else you might once have thought to be “unhealthy”, as long as we don’t continually barrage our bodies with heavily processed foods containing ingredients which act as toxins in our bodies.

It is only in very recent times that doctors have started to learn of this research and start to encourage their patients to more healthy meals containing much less of this one core ingredient, which is eaten by almost everyone, every day, without even realizing it.

So what is this critical ingredient?

Sugar – more specifically, Fructose which makes up approximately half of sugar as we know it.

Sugar is in basic terms 50% Glucose and 50% Fructose, and while Glucose is fine, the Fructose is now known to be a toxin in our systems.

So, while we have been diligently preparing what we have believed to be nutritionally balanced and healthy meals for our families, what we have been quite oblivious to is that sugar is contained in just about every processed food and condiment we place in front of our families daily.

Take Tomato and BBQ sauce – Eaten almost daily. These sauces contain more sugar than a can of soft drink, and that is way more than we need or our bodies can handle.

The challenge of creating healthy meals which contain minimal sugar but still taste great.

As mentioned in the title of this article, there are five core food groups we can turn to as a great starting points for creating delicious healthy meals the whole family will love. There are some basic foods you will also need to avoid if you are to create meals which are truly healthy, particularly for our kids.

Good foods which have no or low Fructose are:

• Full fat dairy products:

Milk, cream, cheeses, yoghurt and butter all contain Lactose, a form of sugar which we have no trouble metabolizing and is not “bad” for us. Just don’t add flavourings (eg; flavoured milk or yoghurt) as the flavourings contain Fructose.

• All meats:

Lamb, Pork, Beef, and all Game meats are fine as are Fish, Chicken Turkey, and Game birds. None contain fructose, and while lean is good, don’t panic about removing all the fat, as our bodies are comfortable with “managing” these types of fats.

• Vegetables:

Most vegetables are low in Fructose and are great natural sources of natural vitamins and minerals and go perfectly with the foods mentioned above. Vegetables are a great healthy snack when eaten raw as well, so start encouraging your kids to eat vegetable “snacks” instead of heading straight to the pantry.

• Eggs:

Eggs are a great source of protein and despite what we may have been told, are a healthy ingredient in any form.

• Water:

No surprise here, but all too often our kids head straight for juices or sweet fizzy drinks which are loaded with sugar, so try changing to drinking water or milk with your meals.

So in a nutshell, the best and most healthy meals will contain some or all of the foods groups noted above. A good basic rule to work to is “if it tastes sweet, it most likely contains sugar, so avoid it if you can”.