by Gordon Hamilton

Created on: December 21, 2008

There is far more to being a healthy cook than being an accomplished cook, or even an excellent cook. It is probably actually fair to say that a great many of the world's top chefs would not or could not lay claim to being a healthy cook. It is my perception that in order to be classed as a healthy cook, it is imperative that one fulfils each of three essential requirements: he or she must have a better than average knowledge of what indeed constitutes healthy or unhealthy cooking, they must cook only with healthy ingredients where at all possible and the methods which they use in their cooking must be deemed to be healthy.

The knowledge part of healthy cooking begins with that most useful attribute, common sense. Most of us know that deep fried foods are unhealthy, junk foods from fast food chains are generally unhealthy and overly elaborate pastries and cakes are unhealthy. It goes without saying that such cooking methods and dishes could never be incorporated in to a healthy diet. How many cooks know, however, which are the healthiest vegetables, how even the healthiest of salads can be spoiled as such by the application of even a little inappropriate dressing, or even the surprisingly high calorific value of certain otherwise healthy nuts and avocadoes? This is but one small example of where a little knowledge in cooking - as with so many other aspects of life - can be a dangerous thing.

So how do we acquire said knowledge to help us become a healthy cook? Well, there is no quick fix, here. We have to read books and/or websites on the subject. We can watch TV cookery programmes and pick up tips from them. We can read newspapers and magazines. We can ask friends and family for tips and advice. There are so many ways in which we can learn this skill but they all bottle down to one thing in the end and that is experience.

Buying fresh vegetables and lean meat with which to cook is of strictly limited benefit if we then cook them in a jar of processed, supermarket bought sauce. This substance will almost certainly be high both in calories and in artificial colours and preservatives. In a situation such as this, the healthy cook would prepare their own sauce to go with the meat and vegetables if they required it. One such way to make a basic sauce is simply by simmering down some skinned, de-seeded and chopped fresh tomatoes in to a paste, to which the likes of garlic and fresh herbs can be added.

Healthy cooking methods are of course required if we are to consider ourselves a healthy cook. If we use the example of the lean meat from above once again, frying it in saturated fat is going to nullify the health benefits of and not do much to justify the expense of buying it in the first instance. The healthy cook would know that it should be grilled, or cooked in a sauce such as above and never consider a less beneficial alternative.

I hope it can therefore be seen that being a healthy cook is an all-encompassing process and means a lot more than simply cooking with vegetables and brown rice. It is a practise which blends a variety of talents and skills to form a bigger, overall picture, and requires patience, time and effort.

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