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Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Eat smart, work healthy!

by

20140111

Let's face it, many of us who work of­ten feel guilty about pick­ing up fast food at lunch time, or maybe even for break­fast.The calo­ries add up, and the cho­les­terol count doesn't look any bet­ter at the next med­ical check­up. Many large com­pa­nies have in-house cafe­te­rias that pro­vide meals for em­ploy­ees who wish to buy them, but how­ev­er de­li­cious this food may be, it's al­ways a bit scary as we re­al­ly don't have any con­trol over what in­gre­di­ents go in­to prepar­ing these meals.Many work-re­lat­ed meet­ings take place at restau­rants or sites where a meal is pro­vid­ed, and no con­sid­er­a­tion is giv­en to the fat con­tent or prepa­ra­tion style of the food to be served. If you con­sume a few of these meals a year, then it is un­like­ly that it will af­fect your health, but if it be­comes an in­te­gral part of your rou­tine, then you stand to gain weight and it may af­fect your health.

It is not dif­fi­cult to work, eat and be healthy all at the same time; it just takes a lit­tle plan­ning and some time in the kitchen be­fore work the next day. If you plan to eat lunch at your desk, then pack a brown bag lunch with a sal­ad or a fat free sand­wich, on whole grain bread with low-fat may­on­naise, add some let­tuce and toma­toes to the sand­wich and don't for­get fresh fruit.

If you are ar­rang­ing an in-house busi­ness meet­ing that in­cludes a work­ing lunch, you can stress to your cater­er you want a plat­ter of sand­wich­es with roast­ed chick­en, cheese and egg fill­ings.Ask them to pro­vide the condi­ments on the side, and or­der a fresh fruit plat­ter in ad­di­tion to the dessert tray. Pro­vide fresh juices, wa­ter, tea or cof­fee and try to avoid soft drinks for your guests.If you go to a restau­rant for a busi­ness meet­ing you can speak to the chef be­fore­hand and let him or her sug­gest some healthy and de­li­cious menus for your guests.If you do many meet­ings a day, try to sched­ule pow­er break­fast meet­ings at a well-es­tab­lished ho­tel, where you can have a choice of fresh fruit and oth­er break­fast items that are not high in hy­dro­genat­ed fats. Start­ing the day off with a high-pro­tein, low-fat break­fast will fu­el you for a full day ahead.Here are some healthy and tasty al­ter­na­tives to pur­chas­ing lunch.

EGG 'N' PAS­TA SAL­AD

1 tb­sps olive oil

1 onion, chopped

1 tb­sps chopped gar­lic

8 to 10 fresh mush­rooms, cleaned and sliced (or 1 cup tinned mush­rooms)

1 cup cooked brown rice

1 cup grat­ed car­rots

1 cup fresh bread­crumbs

Salt and fresh­ly ground black pep­per

2 tb­sps minced fresh chives

1 tb­sps fresh thyme

1 egg light­ly beat­en

Pep­per sauce to taste.

METHOD

Pre­heat broil­er.

Heat oil in a skil­let, add onions and gar­lic, saut� un­til fra­grant, add mush­rooms, cook for about three min­utes more. Re­move from heat.

In a food proces­sor add rice, car­rots, chives, thyme and saut�ed onion mix­ture.

Pulse food proces­sor un­til mix­ture is of a mealy con­sis­ten­cy.

Trans­fer to bowl.

Add bread­crumbs and mix well.

Sea­son with salt, pep­per and pep­per sauce.

Stir in egg.

Make mix­ture in­to six burg­er pat­ties

Broil on a light­ly greased pan un­til light­ly browned, about five to sev­en min­utes per side.

Serve with whole-wheat buns and a fresh green sal­ad.

�2 Serves four to six

VEG­GIE Burg­ers

2 cups all pur­pose flour

1 tbs bak­ing pow­der

1/4 tsp bak­ing so­da

1/3 cup brown sug­ar

1 egg

2 tb­sps wheat germ

1 tsp ground cin­na­mon

1/2 tsp ground nut­meg

2/3 cup skim milk

1/4 cup low fat yo­gurt

2 tb­sps veg­etable oil

1 tsp vanil­la ex­tract

1/2 cup raisins

1/2 cup chopped wal­nuts

METHOD

Pre­heat oven to 400 de­grees

Grease 12 muf­fin cups.

In a large bowl mix to­geth­er flour, bak­ing pow­der, brown sug­ar, wheat germ, spices and raisins and nuts.

In a small bowl beat­egg with milk, yo­gurt and vanil­la

Add oil and stir.

Add wet in­gre­di­ents to dry in­gre­di­ents and stir to com­bine.

Spoon in­to muf­fin tins and bake for 15 to 20 min­utes un­til done.

�2 Makes 12 muffins


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