Hello, I'm Kate Freeman, and this is The Daily Dollar. Transform your eating habits and achieve long-term wellbeing with ALA Health. ALA Health is a mobile app that combines micro-learning with meal planning into a seamless user experience that teaches you how to eat well for the rest of your life, one habit at a time. Download it now from the App Store, it's free!
On this episode of The Daily Dollar, we're digging into the archives to bring you some of my old episodes. With over 300 odd episodes, there is lots to go back and explore. This week, I'm sharing with you five of my favourites. It's dollop time.
Hey, hey, my name's Kate. I'm a registered nutritionist, and after 20 years in the field of nutrition, I'm tired of seeing people stressed about eating and confused about where to start. And so, I'm changing the conversation. You deserve to feel confident in your food choices and empower to maximize your health.
Every weekday will dollop an episode into your feed, covering everything from busting nutrition myths, practical food ideas, my thoughts on trending topics, and habits for a healthy life. My promise to you, it will always be sustainable, realistic, restriction-free, and strictly no-woo. Only good science translated into easy, everyday advice. Let's do this.
Welcome back to the podcast, everyone. My name's Kate Freeman. I'm a registered nutritionist, and I'm the founder of the Healthy Eating Hub, an online programme, and a healthy eating clinic, a nutrition and dietetics practice here in the beautiful city of Canberra. And today's episode is the second last episode of our current season.
Tomorrow is the last episode. I just want to say a huge big thank you to The Daily Dollar in Crowd. There's a nice collection of people who have pledged a monthly amount over the last couple of months to help bring the podcast back after we had to shut it down with some COVID lockdowns earlier in the year. And they have just been incredible in their support.
It's meant so much to me. I couldn't have done it without them. And then combining that support from the In Crowd with sponsorship from the Capital Chemists has just meant that we got to finish out the year with the Daily Podcast. I committed at the beginning of this year to do a Daily Podcast Monday to Friday for the whole year.
We did have about six weeks off with the lockdown where I had to stop the podcast, but otherwise we're back and running and we were able to finish off the last 12 weeks. And I just want to say a huge big thank you to everybody in the In Crowd who supported the pharmacists at the Capital Chemists who have done the guest episodes with me and the team there. It's been amazing. I'm so, so grateful.
And I hope you guys have enjoyed the show. But I've got one more topic for you before I leave you tomorrow with my closing episode. And it is all around healthy kitchen tools because I am a huge believer in the power of building skills. And I believe that healthy eating is a skill.
And just like any skill, whether it's learning a musical instrument or playing a sport, anything is that you have to learn it, practice it and then make it part of your life. And so I believe that healthy eating is the same kind of skill. It's learning the knowledge about food. It's then learning shopping and cooking skills.
It's food prep skills. It's organizational skills. It's decision making skills. All of these little facets come together to make a healthy eater.
A lot of the problem with being consistent and healthy eating is that people are lacking skills in all of these areas. They're either lacking knowledge or they don't really know what healthy eating is. They're constantly questioning themselves. Should I eat this?
Have I eaten too much bread today? Is this a good kind of yogurt? They're just not even sure what healthy eating is. They're confused.
Or they might know what healthy eating is, but they don't have good organizational skills. So planning their meals feels too hard. They shop on a whim. They frequently don't have healthy food available in their home.
Or they lack cooking skills. They don't know how to cook chicken breasts so that it doesn't dry out or it's not raw. Or they're afraid of cooking fish because they've never cooked it before and they don't know how to make it taste good. Or they're afraid of it being overcooked or undercooked.
Or they're not a fan of touching raw raw food because it's sensory-wise. They're just not used to it and so they shy away from cooking. And these might sound like really little trivial things. But if there's multiple areas where you're lacking skills around this, healthy eating can become really difficult.
And you might know information about food, but you're not actually putting it into practice. And I've said so many times over my career that healthy eating is more than just knowing nutrition information. You've got to know the information. You've got to be willing to make positive changes.
But without the skills, you'll be left feeling pretty frustrated and somewhat bored. And you'll sort of have to outsource that to pre-prepared meals or pre-made meal plans of food that might not be really what you want to eat or a meal plan that doesn't quite suit you. And so if you can build the skills of healthy eating into your life, then you'll be able to translate nutrition information into a meal on your plate that suits you and your family three times a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year. And the thing that's important to remember is, yes, you do need shopping skills, food prep skills, cooking skills, food decision skills, nutrition information, good education around this.
But you don't need to be a master chef and you don't even need to like cooking. You just need to acknowledge the fact that you need to do it and you need the ability to create somewhat tasty and enjoyable food without too much fuss. Otherwise, you'll easily default back to tasty, convenient foods that's less nutritious because you're tired of the plain chicken and boiled broccoli on the meal plan that your personal trainer gave you and think, oh well, I don't know what else to do. So you just go back to your old habits.
And so the truth is, right, the cornerstone of healthy eating is regular consumption of fresh whole foods, and these foods usually require some kind of preparation and cooking. So if you can build the skills to get these delicious, nutritious whole foods into you regularly, then you will be doing well. So I have got 12, what I believe to be essential kitchen items to help you eat well long term. So number one is sharp knives.
You've got to chop those fruit and veggies. And one of my pet hates is chopping things. Fruit veggies are meat with a blunt knife. Oh, it's actually angry because it's so difficult.
When you have chopped something with a sharp knife compared to a blunt knife, it's like a dream and we should have a prayer. A sharp knife is amazing and feels so good. And it will just help you easily chop, dice, slice, prepare your fresh food for cooking or eating really, really easy. In fact, it's safer.
You're less likely to hurt yourself. So invest in a really good set of knives and sharpen them often. Number two is a really good quality nonstick pan. I think this is a great addition to the health conscious kitchen.
It means you only need to add a little bit of oil, if any, to your cooking pans are really easy to wash up at the end. And I reckon anything that makes washing up. This little bit quicker is a good thing in my book because some people actually shy away from cooking and preparing themselves a healthy meal because they don't want to do the cleanup. Right.
So thinking about that, I don't have a particular brand or anything that I would recommend, but just a really nice nonstick pan is good. Number three is a couple of chopping boards. Right. It's good to have a few because what if you go to chop something and then the only chopping board you have is dirty.
That's a barrier because you might look at that and be like, I don't want to wash that. Right. We all do that. I do that.
I have multiple chopping boards. So I always have one free to just quickly pull out and chop so that if I am feeling lazy about washing a dirty one, it doesn't deter me from chopping the fruit and vegetables that I need to chop. It's also important that you don't chop meat and veggies on the same surface, particularly if your veggies are being served raw. And so the best way to avoid that kind of cross contamination is to have separate vegetable board and meat board.
Yeah. I know some people who color code their chopping boards. The fourth tool is a food processor and or blender. So I really like making things from scratch personally.
It saves me lots of money. It also means that I can control what's in it. A food processor helps me make pestos, mayonnaise, marinades, pureed veggies and fruit. Crush nuts.
Amazing. So I reckon a really good quality food processor or blender in your kitchen is worth its weight in gold. Number five is kitchen scales. Now, this might be a little bit controversial, but I actually think that particularly if someone is wanting to lose weight, sometimes being having good awareness over your portions is really helpful.
I don't believe that you have to meticulously weight everything every time you eat because that starts to tip into some disordered eating behaviors. However, weighing out a portion of meat or chicken or weighing out a portion of rice or pasta is not just sorted eating. If you have particular goals in mind and particularly if you're using this portion to ensure that you're eating enough food, when I make recommendations for people to lose weight, it's often encouraging them to eat more than they think they should for weight loss because I'm into getting people to eat as much as they can and still get weight loss results so that they're not being restrictive. They can be consistent because they're eating plenty of good food.
And so I recommend a set of kitchen scales to ensure that they're often eating the full portion and not being super restrictive, right? Because I'm never going to recommend someone just count out four almonds or have a tiny portion, you know, 80 grams of meat or something like that. I'm often recommending decent sized portions and kitchen scales are a great way to ensure that you're eating the full amount of food so that you're feeling nice and satisfied. But you're also, you know, getting your portions right so that you can achieve the results that you want.
Not to mention that kitchen scales help you bake really well when you're a bit more precise with your ingredients because some recipes do call for that preciseness. Number six is measuring cups, not just for baking, measuring cups are another easy and reliable way to monitor your portion sizes. You can keep one in the cereal box. I like to use a measuring cup to serve up pasta and rice for different meals that I'm making.
It just means that I know exactly how much I'm eating. Number seven is a zester. I have this really cool zester that I got for Christmas from my mum years and years ago. It's super easy to use and I can add the flavor of fresh lemon, orange or lime zest, parses, marinade, pestos, rubs, couscous and all sorts of things without fuss.
It's called I've got a microplane zester grader is the brand. It's amazing. I love it. Number eight is a salad spinner.
So washing your fruits and vegetables is always a good idea, especially salad vegetables that you intend on eating raw. And a salad spinner is great for spinning your lettuce dry after you've given it a nice rinse and it stops you from serving up a really soggy waterlogged salad. You need a good quality spinner that's not got too many bits, you know, moving parts. Number nine is reusable containers.
And so one of the things I find with healthy eating is using the power of leftovers to minimize your food preparation throughout the week. And so reusable containers really help store and prepare, store pre-prepared food for you during the week. Makes meal planning and organization easier because you mean that you've got some meals ready to go and you plan them around the busy times in your week. So you can store all sorts of food in reusable containers, freeze them, keep them in the fridge, reheat them, easy piecing.
Get some nice good quality ones that you can use for using years. Number 10 is a steamer. One of the best basic veggies is to steam them. It's really quick.
It helps maximize most of the nutrition. It's easy to make them al dente, a little bit crunchy. Still, if you like them all that it's certainly nicer to eat them steams than boiled with an inch of their life. Although my husband, he loves boiled mushy vegetables.
It's how he was brought up and he just loves them. But I know a lot of people, including myself, who was brought up with boiled mushy vegetables and I hate them. Yuck, I want al dente, lovely, steamed, par cooked veggies and steaming is definitely the way to go. Number 11 is a wok.
I have an authentic wok that Brad bought me years and years ago that seasoned really well seasoned. And you don't use soap to wash it so it stays really well seasoned. You just rinse it out. And it's awesome.
I really love it. And I do all sorts of things in there from obviously stir fries to curries. It gets really nice and hot. Yeah, lots of flavor.
It's amazing. I love my wok. I use it regularly. Anyway, last thing, number 12, an debatable right?
But it's our espresso machine. I don't think it's essential. It's not essential, but I wanted to include it because I really love coffee. We have an amazing espresso machine.
I think it's a ransilio, an Italian one, my husband. I started off making espresso and buying a coffee machine for myself like when we were early married and I was into making it. And then I don't know what happened, but Brad just took over and now he's the coffee maker in the family. And he just makes the best coffees on our espresso machine.
I get one first thing in the morning. And the cool thing is that our son, Cardo, who's 11, has learned how to make espresso and froth the milk. And he makes them for us occasionally, too. And he does a really good job.
And he's like, when I'm all enough, I'm going to get a job as a barista. I was like, buddy, you're going to be awesome at that. So anyway, I love my coffee. That's it.
So they are my 12 kitchen tools and items that I reckon help keep me eating healthy day-to-day week-to-week. What are the things that you like to include and think that are essential to you making healthy food choices? I'd love to know. The Daily Dollar Podcast is proudly brought to you by Ayla Health.
Build food confidence and learn how to choose foods that are right for you and your body. Download the app today and build habits that last. As always, you can find out more about our chat in the show notes. You can also join the conversation over in the Ayla Health community group on Facebook.
We'd love to see you there. If you've got a topic you'd love to hear us chat about on the Daily Dollar, please let us know. Email us at hello at aylahealth.com.au or you can send us a message on Instagram. Until next time.