Junk Food Doesn't Have
To Be a Nutrition Disaster

Once you’ve been eating healthy for a relatively long time, the cravings for bad food often disappear.

But if you’re feeling sad because your relationship just ended or stressed because your business isn’t doing well, you might want to drown your sorrows with pizza or cookies or potato chips.

Also, when you’re just starting a healthy eating program, those cravings can be alive and fresh.

Junk Food Substitutes

So, here are some suggestions to get you over the hurdle of emotional or habit-based junk food eating.

When the candy urge strikes, try something in this list. But don’t go overboard; these foods are still very sweet, but they CAN take the edge off:

• organic raisins
• organic dates or other dried fruit
• organic dates stuffed with an almond or walnut half
• fresh fruit (the best choice)

If it’s chocolate you’re craving, go for organic dark vegan chocolate. There’s a lovely book by David Wolfe and Shazzie entitled Naked Chocolate that has loads of information about chocolate—history, health benefits, recipes and delicious-looking photos. There’s controversy in the raw-food community about chocolate—that it’s still high fat and so not healthy—but when you gotta’ have it, raw organic chocolate is the way to go. A recipe I love in this book is Chocolate del Diablo—raw hot chocolate with a definite kick.

Maybe the kids (or you) are really wanting cookies. There are some tasty live food bars, such as the Vanilla Nut Goodee made by Hallelujah Acres. You could also try a low-fat granola bar. Just read the label; make sure it’s not loaded with sugar and chemicals whose names you can’t pronounce.

When you’re hanging out, maybe watching a movie on TV and you get a hankering for potato chips and dip, consider low-fat brown rice crackers or rice chips or pretzels dipped into hummus or home-made guacamole. Add some celery and carrot sticks to really increase the nutritional punch.

A healthy substitute for regular delivered pizza might be a whole grain crust (buy one from the health food market) or whole wheat pitas covered with tomato sauce and fresh veggies. You can even add some vegan parmesan if you want that flavor. There are raw food recipes for raw pizzas, but you have to prepare well ahead of time by dehydrating the crust, and pizza is often a spur-of-the-moment kind of junk food.

You may want a beverage to counteract the salty taste of the chips. Instead of a junk food drink like a soft drink, consider some plain fruit juice diluted half-and-half with fizzy water. It’ll feel like a soft drink in your mouth.

And for dessert? Instead of ice cream, try sorbet or frozen grapes. Keep frozen bananas in your freezer and put them through a Champion juicer for a tasty soft-serve type of ice cream treat. Add your favorite healthy toppings.

I hope these suggestions are helpful to you. Stock up your pantry and refrigerator with some of these foods so you don’t have to feel deprived when the junk-food urge strikes. If you do sometimes slip off the healthy-eating path and eat regular junk food, don’t beat yourself up about it. Just enjoy it (but not too much... just don't feel guilty) and get back on the path.