Does Your Kitchen Promote Healthy Eating?

When hungry, thirsty, or even just bored we often take a trip to the kitchen. Depending on how our kitchen is laid out, we may reach for a pop and a counter top cookie. OR, if we organize our kitchen in a way that promotes healthy eating, we can make it more likely that we’ll reach for water and an apple (honeycrisps are my favourite).

Understanding how our subconscious thinks can help guide us toward designing a health-promoting kitchen. For instance, as discussed in my blog, How Your Brain Secretely Sabotages Your Intention to Eat Healthier, our brain is constantly scanning the environment, searching for high-calorie foods. How can we apply this information in a real-world setting, like our own kitchen?

Is Your Kitchen Making it Harder for You to Eat a Healthy Diet?

When you walk into your kitchen, what do you see? A bag of chips on the counter, a package of oreos, or a jar of cookies?

If so, your kitchen may actually be making it harder for you to make consistent healthy choices.

Having snacks, like chips and cookies, so easily available and within our sight constantly tests our will power. When challenged like this over and over again throughout the day, we are likely to eventually “give in” to temptation. Will power is a finite resource. Will power is not reliable. Relying on willpower alone is bound to fail. What we want to do is create an environment that actually limits how often we need to use our will power.

Creating a kitchen environment that works for you and promotes healthy eating can go a long way in improving your overall health.

Here are a few tips on how to do that.

Be Aware of What’s Visible

Our brain wants what our brain sees and our brain wants convenience. Keeping the bags of chips or other sweets and snacks stashed away in a cupboard adds a small barrier. Even though it’s only a minor inconvenience to open the cupboard and grab the chips, it can make you think twice if you really want it, or if you’re just bored.

If your chips are behind a cupborad, and you have a bowl of fruit on the counter, you may be more likely to grab a banana or apple. Have lots of fruits visible and keep the supply strong!

If you leave junk food out in the open, you may be more likely to partake in mindless snacking.

Keep it Tidy, Keep it Organized

A tidy kitchen is a more relaxed environment. It’s normal to feel a little anxious or stressed out over a cluttered kitchen (or any room for that matter). Keep it tidy and organized by putting stuff away after you’re done using it and remove things that you don’t actually use.

Decide where things belong. Every tool in the kitchen should have a home, whether it’s a specific drawer, cabinet, or designated countertop space. If something has a specified place in the kitchen, it’ll be a lot easier to put it back where it belongs and you’ll know exactly where to find it.

Keep counter tops clear of clutter. This will make it easier when you need to pull out a cutting board and slice an apple or prepare your meal. Not having enough space to have everything set out can be stressful when you’re trying to prepare a meal.

Bonus tip: get a cutting board that doesn’t slide on your counter top. Bonus if it has rubber points on the bottom. It can be frustrating (and dangerous) trying to slice your apple or steak with a cutting board that’s too flimsy and sliding all over the counter.

Plan Ahead

Eliminate as much guess work for the week as you can. Decide what you’ll be eating each night and write it down on a calendar.

This doesn’t have to be an elaborate 3-course meal. It can be as simple as choosing what main proteins you will have each night of the week, with ideas for sides and fruits or vegetables. You can even pencil in a night for eating out!

Write down your plan and leave it somewhere you will see it. This makes you more likely to stick to the plan. You won’t have to second-guess or make too many extra decisions throughout the week.

While writing down your plan, you can make a list of things you’ll need to prepare each meal leaving you with a near-complete grocery list for the week. You’ll be more efficient at the grocery store and won’t have to worry about deciding on dinners while you’re shopping.

Ask yourself, if making healthy choices were easy, what would that look like for me? It likely involves relying less on will power and more on making the healthy option, the easier one.

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