It’s Worth The Trip! Peach Cobbler

When it comes to eating to promote health, some may think that enjoying a sweet treat from time to time is off limits. This is not the case. Building a healthy eating pattern means your diet should be mostly made up with a variety of nutrient-dense foods in order to promote optimal nourishment of your body while fitting into your lifestyle. However, there is more to life than just nourishing the body.

For a diet to be considered a healthy eating pattern it should also nourish your mind and spirit. Your diet should achieve balance in your lifestyle while aiming to maintain optimal metabolic health, weight, and performance. This means, that within reason and overall caloric balance, sweet treats can be enjoyed.

In fact, you would be hard pressed to find any licensed medical professional or registered dietitian to advise the general public that all sweet treats are off limits. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans doesn’t ban sweets.

The guidance is to limit them as described above.

As a means to keep your nutritional goals on track, ideally sweet treats should be made at home. This is because the quality of the ingredients can be controlled, along with decreasing the amount of additives and preservatives. In addition, you have the control of changing up ingredients from unhealthy fats to healthy fats, refined flour to whole grain flour, and using less sugar. This, in a sense allows you to even make your sweet treats have a higher nutritional quality. Also, if you make it at home, you will be more mindful of what you are eating and better plan for it. Just remember, portion control should still be practiced and the calories need to be figured into your overall daily caloric requirements when consuming sweets.

Give this recipe for peach cobbler a try. Don’t let the avocado scare you off.

(Serves 8)