Fresh ingredients are best, no matter what type of meals you plan. Healthy Mason Jars© meals are best consumed within two to three days. This makes it so you only need to prepare the meals that you will need for just a few days at a time. Or you can certainly put a jar or two together on a daily basis, too – the choice is yours.

Food as Medicine

I for one believe in the medicinal power of food. While achieving overall wellness can be as individually complex as individuals are unique, you certainly aren’t hurting yourself by using healthy foods as your source of fuel.

Cellular Superfoods

Some foods are recognized by the scientific community as Superfoods. Superfoods carry particular benefits to cleansing and healing your body on a cellular level. Cellular Superfoods contain natural ingredients like minerals, vitamins, and flavonoids. Flavonoids help your body’s cells’ natural processes for cleansing, detoxifying, renewal, and restoration over time.

Each recipe in this collection uses several Cellular Superfoods, simply prepared, so you can feel good about what you are eating and how it will make you feel. Even if you are not currently engaged in a detoxifying regimen, you will start to feel the benefits of a cleaner diet (meaning, your food intake).

For those of you who are also counting calories or tracking other nutrient values, each recipe provides you with flavorful options and the information you need to help monitor those variables.

What is in a healthy meal plan?

Nutrition basics for meal planning

The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services put together science-based dietary guidelines and recommendations for how to eat for good health. They update the information every five years or so. Their guidelines are created with the intention of educating people about finding balance in what they eat, advocating for eating fresh nutrient dense food, helping Americans understand daily nutritional requirements, portion control variables, and the impact that every bite you take has on your health and ability to help prevent many chronic diseases. They are high level guidelines to follow. Every person should also feel free to take into account their personal tastes, cultural affiliations, individual health goals, stage in life, any special dietary needs, and overall preferences.

If you have strict nutritional dietary guidelines that you must follow, planning a health-supported meal plan should be conducted by a registered dietitian, nutritionist, or other health professional. Familiarity with daily requirements as they pertain to medical needs is a science.

Nutrient values are provided for you

Healthy Mason Jars© meals can be an easy way to start adding fresh foods back into your day or improve your nutritional intake. They are individual meals that can be added into your existing weekly menu plans and be easily tracked in fitness apps and meal point calculators if you use them.

Each meal has the nutrient values already calculated for:

• Calories
• Protein
• Carbohydrates
• Fat
• Saturated Fat
• Trans Fat
• Cholesterol
• Sodium
• Sugars
• Fiber

Not everyone needs or wants to count calories or track their meals, and that is okay! Healthy Mason Jars© recipes are also simply enjoyable just as they are. Maybe you just want to incorporate lower calorie – yet filling – meals into your day. Or maybe you are looking for a way to consume more vegetables and fresh foods. 

When you purchase your copy of the Healthy Mason Jars© meals recipe book, and register your email address with us, you will receive a free fillable meal planning tool and printable shopping list to go along with it.

Putting together healthy meals

In general, the U.S. Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion also supports starting simple and making small changes to your daily routine. The steps and guidelines they put together include:

1. Determine your target daily calorie intake. The number of calories you need per day for your personal health goals is a foundational piece of information that many healthy lifestyle apps calculate for you. You can investigate further on the MyPlate.gov website. The Healthy Mason Jars© meal collection includes a recipe index by calorie count if you prefer to select your meals that way.
2. Experts recommend becoming familiar with the nutrition labels if you need to include packaged foods into your menu. The key pieces of information on a nutrition label include the serving size, calories per serving, and percent of daily values (a nutrient amount shown as a percentage of calories per serving). A value of five percent or less is low. Choosing foods that are low in added sugars, saturated fat, and sodium is beneficial. A value of 20 percent or more is high. Looking for healthy nutrients like fiber and vitamins that are represented as a higher number also makes a good choice. Many fresh foods don’t come with a nutrition label on them. This makes meal planning with the Healthy Mason Jars© recipe book helpful.
3. Choose a variety of healthy foods. Include more whole fruits, whole grains, vegetables, proteins, oils, and low-fat or fat-free dairy. Within each of those food lists are considerations that should be made for portions and amounts per meal. Healthy Mason Jars© meals use a variety of fresh ingredients taken from several food categories, all within a portion controlled 

Nutrient Density

Nutrient dense describes foods that are high in nutrients but relatively low in calories. These foods contain vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients without having too much saturated fat, added sugar, and sodium. An added benefit of eating nutrient dense foods is they take longer for your body to digest. This makes you feel fuller longer. This helps you feel less hungry so you don’t need to consume as many calories.

Some of the top nutrient dense foods used in our current recipes include:

• Leafy greens, like spinach and arugula
• Broccoli, cauliflower and other cruciferous veggies like cabbage or Brussels sprouts
• Red, yellow, green and orange bell peppers
• Carrots
• Garlic
• Parsley, cilantro, and other herbs
• Berries
• Beets
• Eggs
• Lentils
• Tomatoes
• Seeds
• Sweet potatoes
• Black beans
• Yogurt
• Avocado

Food trackers and Weight Watchers™ points

Many digital fitness and wellness trackers also include a food or meal tracking component that keeps track of daily calorie goals and counts. They may also track amounts of other nutrients to help you adhere to your fitness goals. If you use the Weight Watchers™ daily point tracking, the nutrient values for each Healthy Mason Jars© meal are provided for you. This makes entering the meals into an app as easy as looking at a nutrition label. 

Each meal has the nutrient values already calculated for calories, protein, carbohydrates, fat, saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol, sodium, sugars, and fiber.

Overview of special diets | Keto, Paleo, Pegan, Vegan, Raw

A ketogenic, or Keto diet, is a high-fat, higher protein, low carbohydrate dietary therapy designed to put your body in ketosis. Ketosis is a metabolic state where your body burns stored fat for energy instead of glucose, or immediately available blood sugar. 

The Paleo diet is based on a concept that we should eat foods presumed to have been eaten by early humans, to avoid modern processed foods from entering the digestive system. Meals typically consist of lean meats, fish, fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds.

The Pegan diet principle focuses on consuming nutrient-rich foods. Approximately 75 percent of meals are plant-based, with the remaining 25 percent coming from meats, eggs, and healthy fats.

A Vegan diet is based on eating a wide variety of plant-based foods such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds. No animal products or byproducts are ingested when following a vegan diet. A raw foods diet is similar, but nothing is cooked (even meats). The intended benefit of a raw foods diet is to eat food that is as close to its original state as possible.

Just as there is no one-size-fits-all approach to wellness, there is not necessarily a single nutrition plan that will work consistently best for everyone. Healthy Mason Jars© meals are intended to plug into your existing plans, or help start your transition to a new path for exploring what small healthier lifestyle changes can do for you.

Healthy Eating Tips

If you opt to use a store-bought salad dressing with any of our recipes, store it in a separate container. Dip just the tines of a fork in the dressing. Then mix well with just the top layer of food you intend to take a bite from instead of pouring the dressing on the salad.

Eat slowly. It takes about 20 minutes for the chemicals in your body to register that there’s food to be digested.

Sip a hot tea after your meal to aid digestion. Or try sipping a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar and the juice of half of a lemon in some hot water.

If you are counting calories, prepare a protein shake or a high protein snack to eat in between meals. Doing that will help you stay full, feel satisfied, and keep your daily calorie count down.

How to make healthy food taste good

Don’t overcook vegetables. No one wants to eat soggy, tasteless vegetables! Cooking them too long can also diminish their ability to hold vitamins and minerals in their cell structure,. This makes it so they cannot transfer to you when you eat them.

Invest in good quality spices and use them generously to flavor your food. Spice combinations add bountiful flavor to your food. Several of them provide healthful benefits as well.