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What are Some Healthy Dinner Ideas?

Malcolm Tatum
Malcolm Tatum
Malcolm Tatum
Malcolm Tatum

As more people begin to wake up to the fact that good health begins with a balanced diet, a number of healthy dinner recipes have begun to circulate around the world. Aimed at providing at least the minimum daily requirement of vitamins and minerals, these healthy dinner ideas are formulated to change eating habits and introduce a wider range of flavors and tastes into the daily diet. Here are some ideas on how to create healthy meals while still getting the nutrition you need.

One of the easiest ways to develop a healthier dinner is to look at some of your favorite foods and change the way you prepare them. For example, if you love chicken there is no reason you can’t still enjoy poultry as part of the meal. Instead of battering and deep frying the chicken pieces, remove the skin and bake the chicken with a topping of various herbs and spices. You still get the nutrition of the meat without the added fats and carbohydrates that come from the breading and grease used to fry the chicken. At the same time, you have the chance to experiment with different spices and come up with topping combinations that satisfy your taste buds and provide inspiration for other healthy dinner ideas.

Cookbooks can often offer many healthy dinner ideas.
Cookbooks can often offer many healthy dinner ideas.

Increasing your intake of vegetables is also important to creating a healthy dinner. Many people assume that the meal must be built around some type of meat. Free yourself from that concept and focus instead on making sure you have protein in your meal. Creating healthy dinner ideas that make use of beans or other sources of vegetable protein will make a nice change while allowing you to cut back on the cholesterol that is often found in different types of meat. A simple meal of pinto beans accompanied by fresh coleslaw and slices of tomatoes will be tasty, colorful and nutritious.

Mozzarella with tomatoes and basil leaves.
Mozzarella with tomatoes and basil leaves.

Healthy dinners don’t necessarily have to involve cooking at all. Tossed salads offer one of the best healthy meal options, since it is possible to add anything you like to the salad. Along with the traditional mix of lettuce, tomatoes, carrots and cucumbers, toss in some slices of apples, a handful of sunflower seeds and a few raisins or dried cranberries. Instead of using a salad dressing that is loaded with saturated fats, make your own olive oil and vinegar dressing, adding a few spices to achieve the effect you want. If you want a lighter salad dressing, pour a single packet of your favorite artificial sweetener over the salad and douse the vegetables and fruits with red wine vinegar. This simple dressing adds both tartness and a sense of the sweet to the salad.

Baked chicken and vegetables are some ideas for a healthy dinner.
Baked chicken and vegetables are some ideas for a healthy dinner.

Stuffed bell peppers are among one of the easiest healthy dinner ideas to prepare. Simply split a large bell pepper into two sections, taking care to remove the seeds and the stem portion. Use baked turkey or chicken that has been shredded to mix in with wild rice and a few herbs and spices of your preference. Fill the cavities of the bell peppers with the combination and top with a small amount of low fat mozzarella cheese. Bake for ten to fifteen minutes and then serve. The bell peppers will be baked but still somewhat firm, while the melted cheese will add body to the meat and rice combination.

Salads are one of the best healthy dinner ideas to prepare.
Salads are one of the best healthy dinner ideas to prepare.

Coming up with healthy dinner ideas usually means making a few changes in the way you prepare food, as well as adding some variety to the foods you include in your diet. There are a number of cookbooks out today that are filled with recipes that are ideal for boosting general nutrition, as well as helping to minimize carbohydrates and cholesterol consumption.

Malcolm Tatum
Malcolm Tatum

After many years in the teleconferencing industry, Michael decided to embrace his passion for trivia, research, and writing by becoming a full-time freelance writer. Since then, he has contributed articles to a variety of print and online publications, including TheHealthBoard, and his work has also appeared in poetry collections, devotional anthologies, and several newspapers. Malcolm’s other interests include collecting vinyl records, minor league baseball, and cycling.

Learn more...
Malcolm Tatum
Malcolm Tatum

After many years in the teleconferencing industry, Michael decided to embrace his passion for trivia, research, and writing by becoming a full-time freelance writer. Since then, he has contributed articles to a variety of print and online publications, including TheHealthBoard, and his work has also appeared in poetry collections, devotional anthologies, and several newspapers. Malcolm’s other interests include collecting vinyl records, minor league baseball, and cycling.

Learn more...

Discussion Comments

umbra21

@irontoenail - The best easy healthy dinner ideas do tend to be fairly simple. My problem with them is that the way to make them taste good is to use the right kind of produce and that's not always possible. Tomatoes, for example, always taste very bland to me if they are bought from a shop. But it can be difficult to keep to using seasonal vegetables when you live somewhere with more extreme seasons and you want to maintain a diverse diet.

irontoenail

@pleonasm - That's definitely not a bad theory, but most of the time if you are making the effort to include vegetables, you might as well try reducing things like carbohydrates and fats at the same time.

I recently moved house to an apartment where my housemates eat very healthy and it's not at all a burden, even though I wasn't sure I was going to like it. We essentially have salads all the time, but just include big chunks of meat or cheese in the salads and use healthy dressing.

It's quick, it's easy and it's surprisingly filling. Although I think I'm going to have to sneak in a pizza every now and then just to make sure I get my weekly pepperoni intake.

pleonasm

From what I can see after having read quite a lot of literature on nutrition, the most important thing you can do is eat a lot of different kinds of vegetables, as often as you can. There are a few things that you should cut out of your diet altogether, or at least reduce, but even that's not as important as increasing the vegetables.

So if you absolutely can't bear to stop eating fried chicken or chocolate cakes or whatever, add a whole bunch of spinach and a medley of winter vegetables or something like that to the meal and you've made it healthier, even if you are still eating the same things as well.

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    • Cookbooks can often offer many healthy dinner ideas.
      By: Vivian Seefeld
      Cookbooks can often offer many healthy dinner ideas.
    • Mozzarella with tomatoes and basil leaves.
      By: Studio Gi
      Mozzarella with tomatoes and basil leaves.
    • Baked chicken and vegetables are some ideas for a healthy dinner.
      By: B. and E. Dudzinscy
      Baked chicken and vegetables are some ideas for a healthy dinner.
    • Salads are one of the best healthy dinner ideas to prepare.
      By: dream79
      Salads are one of the best healthy dinner ideas to prepare.
    • Eggs cooked in light olive oil are a healthy and tasty option for an easy dinner.
      By: ilolab
      Eggs cooked in light olive oil are a healthy and tasty option for an easy dinner.
    • Remove seeds before stuffing red bell peppers.
      By: Fanfo
      Remove seeds before stuffing red bell peppers.
    • A stew made with many vegetables can be a healthy dinner.
      By: vvoe
      A stew made with many vegetables can be a healthy dinner.
    • A whole chicken roasted with herbs and potatoes makes for healthy comfort food.
      By: Andrey Starostin
      A whole chicken roasted with herbs and potatoes makes for healthy comfort food.
    • Soup makes for a healthy dinner.
      By: marysckin
      Soup makes for a healthy dinner.
    • Wild rice has fewer carbohydrates than white rice.
      By: Kondor83
      Wild rice has fewer carbohydrates than white rice.
    • Having a glass of water with dinner is healthier than soda or alcohol.
      By: science photo
      Having a glass of water with dinner is healthier than soda or alcohol.