….Fast food

Fast food – Easily prepare processed food served at a snack bar or restaurant as a quick meal or to be taken away.

This might be a bit misleading. Why do you not get healthy fast food. I mean real healthy food. Low carb, sugar, gluten, soya free and at the same time delicious and not costing you the price of a small property. Most restaurants claims to have a banting (low carb) breakfast but will offer baked beans or pork sausage (with nasty fillers). Others do go out of their way to add menu items that will be acceptable. But lets face it, you will struggle to find a real fast food franchise that will cater for a low carb lifestyle (mmmmm, I really need to do more market research).

Yes, everybody gets those days where they just want to pick up a quick meal on the way home especially after a very hectic day at the office. I know we do miss it. Some days we will end up buy take away meals (mainly grilled fish), and for the next few days we do suffer the consequences. It is really sad to think that in these modern times we cannot take the time to focus on our health. Afterall without it we will not have much of a future.

Our household is like any other typical South African household. Both me and hubby work full time, with little M attending crèche daily. We get up early, rush to get ready and avoid the unavoidable Gauteng traffic. Most mornings we don’t eat breakfast just because there is no time. I use to think (before low carb) that it was a very bad thing. I mean, we all know the saying “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day”. So what did we have for breakfast before? Sugar loaded cereals and on top of that maybe a muffin, apple and coffee. Before we got to more we will be hungry again and 10 am you want some rusks or biscuits with your coffee/ tea.

Lunch would be something similar. You will head down to the cafeteria or nearest fast food outlet and just order something small, you know, as you are trying to eat healthy. By 2 pm you just want to take a nap and cannot be bothered what is said in your meeting. On your way home, you will convince yourself that you are to tired to cook and buy another fast food meal (quick and easy – right?). If you do cook something it must be quick, so you will end up making pasta (only takes 12 minutes to cook) or something similar to limit the time in the kitchen. Yes, we use to do this. And still seemed shocked when we picked up weight, felt tired all the time and hubby had to start blood pressure and cholesterol medication.

I found this image below very informative, and even though the cooked meals are not 100% LCHF, its shows that its cheaper and healthier to enjoy home cooked meals. People tend to ask us how we afford the new lifestyle. Easy – we don’t waste money on unhealthy fast foods and stock up on the basics.

Today, we do things different and we do enjoy fast food! But, our own, home made, low carb, healthy fast food. Don’t get me wrong, we still go out to restuarants, but we try and limit it or order the best choice available. Sadly, this is mainly salads or the very same steak with no basting and warm veggies (creamed spinach and butternut). I found this list of Banting restaurants (LCHF eat out) in South Africa, and I think we will give them a try. I will report back each time we tried a new place.

So we all want to have a few “fast food” meals. Something that you can grab on the go and still enjoy. So we have some suggestions. These are all home made fast food meals, all to be cooked within 15 – 30 minutes. So no reason to stop at the nearest take out drive through.

Breakfast – The most important meal of the day, right? We hardly eat breakfast, just because I am not hungry in the mornings. I prefer to only eat 2 meals a day, my first around 11:00 am and my second around 18:30 pm. When we do eat breakfast we prefer something quick and easy. My kitchen appliances comes in very handy for this. We make egg muffins (egg-muffins) in my mini cupcake maker. It is so easy and they are ready within a few minutes. Another favourite is boiled eggs (using my egg boiler), it is so versatile as you can eat them as a snack or add them to a salad. Boiled eggs with dill mayo is my personal favourite.

Lunch – This might seem like the tricky one. From experience, most work colleagues will head to the vending machine or down to the tuck shop to grab something to eat. Everything available  (even though I work on a farm, yes) is loaded with sugar, carbs and all kind of nasties. I prefer to pack my own lunch. I try and keep it exciting so that we don’t get bored with the same salad everyday. Some days we skip lunch, but on average we will have a very quick and tasty lunch. I prefer to just heat up my left overs from last night. Other days we will make a nice green salad with left over protein or extra fried bacon. If I do go out to buy something quick for lunch, I will stick to a small tub double fat plain yogurt (ok, maybe not anymore as I can now make my own yogurt), maybe some berries or just a piece of grilled chicken (no, not KFC).

Supper – This is where our freezer meals come in handy. I do enjoy meal prep (had no choice in the matter to be honest) and always make sure I have a variety of freezer meals, from lasagna to chicken ala king to burgers, ready to be heated and enjoyed. But you can cook from scratch with fresh ingredients in 30 minutes. Cauli-rice and zoodles only take a few minutes to cook and goes perfect with most protein. If you are really lazy you can make a quick pesto with zoodles for a light summer meal.

For Christmas I got a pressure cooker (pc). At first I was very intimidated but soon realized this will make my life so much easier. Our first meal we cooked in the pc was a beef curry. It wasn’t to bad, just added to much water. Last weekend we tried a chicken ala king – amazing! So now I can cook an entire meal, including veggies in under 30 minutes.

We know how hard it can be to try and still fit into society and follow a LCHF lifestyle. Believe me, some days I really question my decision, not because I feel it is to hard, or not worth it, just because I can get so demotivated by having to explain why I make the choices I do, and then we still get criticized. Luckily, more people start to realize that they need to change their habits and it is so great for me to have some close friends asking for advise. Our main goal is to share the ups and downs (yes, believe it or not) of this lifestyle with you, you can decide whether it is worth it or not.

So lets be honest, fast food is junk food, and I think the image below sums it up perfectly. There is no Junk Food. Only Junk, and food. Its not always easy, but just ask yourself is it worth it. So lets all start enjoying healthy, whole, nutrition and fast food. NO JUNK!

Reference

Banting restaurants