Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 1: tip is to make produce an easy snack. If you
Speaker 1: make grabbing grapes as easy as grabbing potato chips, you
Speaker 1: will probably eat more fruit. Today's tip was inspired by
Speaker 1: a New York Times article about how a nutritionist actually eats.
Speaker 1: According to the article, nutritionist doctor Maya Vadevalou suggests making
Speaker 1: vegetables your lazy snack. In other words, if eating vegetables
Speaker 1: doesn't require a lot of effort, you're probably going to
Speaker 1: eat more vegetables. She suggested that she was often very
Speaker 1: satisfied with a bag of baby carrots on her desk. Now,
Speaker 1: there is a caveat here that people who are drawn
Speaker 1: to the field of nutrition might be more into healthy
Speaker 1: foods than the rest of us. I do not find
Speaker 1: baby carrots to be an exciting snack. But the truth
Speaker 1: is that making produce as easy to eat as possible
Speaker 1: does increase the chances that it can compete with cookies
Speaker 1: or doritos or anything else that you might be trying
Speaker 1: to minimize. As an example, unwashed whole bell peppers are
Speaker 1: no match for a can of chips, but cut up
Speaker 1: bell pepper sticks that you can easily dip into hummus
Speaker 1: have a fighting chance in that battle. So if you
Speaker 1: buy peppers at the grocery store, go ahead and wash
Speaker 1: them and remove the seeds and pith and cut them
Speaker 1: into snackable sticks. Store them in a storage container in
Speaker 1: the fridge that is easily visible. I'm talking maybe even
Speaker 1: a single size container with an individual serving size container
Speaker 1: of hummus stacked on top. You want the veggies to
Speaker 1: be a very easy snack with some produce. You don't
Speaker 1: even want to hide it away in the fridge. I
Speaker 1: know that grapes keep longer in the produce drawer, but
Speaker 1: the goal is not for them to last a long time.
Speaker 1: It's for people to eat them quickly. So I try
Speaker 1: to buy really enticing looking grapes and then put them
Speaker 1: in a bowl on the counter. Likewise, if I cut
Speaker 1: up more than enough strawberries for dinner and leave the
Speaker 1: extras in a bowl on the counter, people tend to
Speaker 1: eat them as they pass through the kitchen at night.
Speaker 1: Now we do risk people not eating all of them
Speaker 1: and the leftovers turning a little bit on appealing, but
Speaker 1: I can tell you that someone hunting for a late
Speaker 1: night snack is unlikely to pull a container out of
Speaker 1: the fridge, wash everything, cut off the tops, and then
Speaker 1: eat them. We want to make this an even fight package.
Speaker 1: Snack food has intrinsic appeal, but a lot of the
Speaker 1: time we eat traditional snack foods simply because it's the
Speaker 1: easiest thing to do. If you make produce an easy
Speaker 1: snack as well, then you won't need to rely on
Speaker 1: willpower to reach for a banana instead of the cookies.
Speaker 1: The banana is right there in front of you in
Speaker 1: the fruit bowl, which makes it much more easy to grab.
Speaker 1: In the meantime. This is Laura. Thanks for listening, and
Speaker 1: here's to making the most of our time. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback,
Speaker 1: you can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
Speaker 1: Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts
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Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.