Proper nutrition amidst a pandemic can’t be stressed enough. It aids in boosting your immune system, ensuring that you stand a better chance of keeping ailments at bay. At the same time, should you be infected, it enhances your fighting chance.
However, pandemics can take a toll on your quest to maintain healthy nutrition. For instance, during the Covid-19 pandemic, states have implemented measures to curb the spread, including full or partial lockdowns and urging people to stay home. Self-quarantine and more business closures, including restaurants, translates to a shorter supply of food items and fresh produce, a concern that can affect your nutrition efforts.
However, this doesn’t mean that staying healthy during a pandemic is next to impossible. With a few hacks, you can implement practical measures to take good care of your health, including nutrition and physical exercise. Here are a few tips for eating healthy during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Have a Schedule and Stick to It
Developing a nutrition timetable can help you stay on course. This eliminates over/under eating and ensures that you maintain a balanced diet. Observing your portions can easily become less of a priority, especially as you concern yourself with work or family in an unusual routine. With a plan and by leveraging tech innovation with the likes of reminders, you can comfortably take in enough and observe healthy nutrition at all times. Setting a schedule and sticking to it allows you to develop a healthy routine as you endeavor to cope with the new normal, ensuring that you adopt and maintain healthy eating.
Be Strategic
What’s in your pantry? Panic buying, as you seek to ensure that your supply isn’t interrupted, can affect your nutrition. Being strategic, including buying what you need and having a plan to get the most out of your items, is essential. Apart from avoiding overstocking, wasting a lot, and eating too much to avoid more wastage, a plan will help you ensure that your portions are appropriate and that the balance of your nutritional intake isn’t affected.
You can start by consuming ingredients with a shorter shelf life, such as fresh products, and freezing fruits and vegetables to ensure that they don’t end up in the trash can. Stocking frozen items with similar nutritional value as fresh veggies and fruits is convenient; a strategic plan that can help you to avoid wastage and overconsumption while giving you peace of mind as you have enough to last a while.
Proper Food Handling Is Critical
Only safe food is healthy. Thankfully, food safety can be achieved by adopting and maintaining proper handling practices. For instance, while storing, ensure that raw and cooked food are separated and at safe temperatures. While preparing meals, observe proper hygiene, which includes cleaning your hands and utensils. Also, ensure that you use clean and safe water and ingredients. Proper food handling eliminates chances of food contamination and foodborne diseases, ensuring that you are eating healthy.
Observing your portions and ensuring that you use safe ingredients for a healthy diet doesn’t have to be a hassle despite the new normal necessitated by measures to curb Covid-19 spread. With the above tips, you can comfortably maintain healthy eating throughout the pandemic.