At-Home Healthy Diet!

As our generous donors continue to support front line caregivers at Harborview and Evergreen Medical Centers and the Ballard Food Bank, we have reached over 14,000 servings of fruit. For more info on donating fruit visit the Market Fresh Fruit – Healthy Office Snacks GoFundMe page.

Now that Americans are eating most meals at home, might our diets actually improve?

These excerpts from TIME magazine show positive signs.

Researchers are just beginning to study how people are feeding themselves during the pandemic, and while there is no robust data yet, the shifts are obvious. “People are eating almost every meal at home, which is a huge change,” says Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and dean of the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science. By necessity, Americans are cooking more; web traffic to cooking and recipe websites is surging. In an April survey of about 1,000 American adults, by the food and beverage communications firm HUNTER, about half said they were cooking and baking more now than before the pandemic, and 38% were ordering less takeout and delivery.

It’s possible that a shift toward home cooking, if it persists, could eventually lead to reductions in chronic diet-related illnesses, like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypertension and obesity. Eating a healthy diet is linked to a longer life, and “one of the biggest predictors of eating a healthy diet is eating at home,” Mozaffarian says. His new research published in April in the Journal of Nutrition found that Americans get about 21% of their calories from restaurants—and most of that food is of poor nutritional quality. “Restaurant foods tend to be fairly unhealthy,” he says; there’s a lot of variation depending on the restaurant and what you order, but typical menu offerings at large chains, for example, are high in sodium, calories, saturated fat and sugar. Cooking puts you in control of the ingredients that end up in your meal.

As things begin to return to normal, here's what's in this week's deliveries:

- Zee Fire yellow nectarines

- Honeybell pears from NZ

- Green grapes

- Valencia oranges

- "Crimson Delight" apples

- WAXF top grade

- Rainforest Alliance certified bananas