Snacking is not a light dinner

| Dinners or snacks? We are late, we arrive tired, hungry, or sometimes without it, but with little courage to prepare some dinner. With an empty stomach and wanting to rest, we open drawers, cabinets and… we end up robbing the refrigerator.

Perhaps it is not that we eat a lot, because we are not very hungry or we try to control amounts so as not to go overboard, but equally, if we value the calories that many of the snack options provide us, we may scare more than one. Is it very difficult to make a healthy and not very energetic dinner in a few minutes?

Pecking is not a light dinner

It is common to arrive at dinner either with little hunger or with little desire to prepare a dish. On these occasions we end up picking a couple of things and voila, nothing, not much. We end dinner with the feeling of having eaten little, or even very little, and many times it is true, we have eaten little, but if we start to count the caloric content we could get quite a few surprises. To be more aware of this, let's put some examples:

• Snack 1: Toast with cheese spread We take some biscote-size toasts, four, not much, and on each one we spread a tablespoon, level tablespoon ... justita, spread cheese. And with that we go to bed. Little thing right? This dinner has around 230 Kcal.
• Snack 2: Four croquettes and a tomato. Today we are going to take care of ourselves, we take a salad tomato, we dress it with a drizzle of oil, not much, a teaspoon and we accompany it with four small croquettes, not very large, about 25 grams per croquette. We are taking with it about 300 Kcal.
• Snack 3: A cheese sandwich. There is no time or desire to cook, we take a slice of bread, no more, we cut a couple of thin slices of cured cheese and we make a mini sandwich, without oil on the bread or anything. He provides us with about 270 Kcal.
• Snack 4: Bread and sausage peaks. Tonight, not even a sandwich, some pickles or some breadsticks, maybe some with seeds, something healthy ... they sell individual bags of 100 g, but we don't even finish it, we only take half, and well, as you have known little, We only take two or three slices of chorizo ​​or some similar sausage. We have not even noticed ... and we have chopped about 320 Kcal.
• Snack 5: Olivitas, peanuts and cheese cubes. Today there is no time or energy to prepare anything ... We chop a few olivitas, not many, seven or eight, a handful of fried peanuts, about 20 grams, and five or six cubes of cheese, type Edam. They seem like three little things, nothing more, but they are about 220-230Kcal.

From snacking ... to dinner

It is true that at the end of the day fatigue takes its toll and it is difficult for us to prepare too many things, but it is also true that today there are many simple foods that we can buy semi-prepared and that with very little preparation we can prepare very healthy dishes and appetizing. We will see two examples of complete dishes.

• Dinner 1: The big complete salad. A few leaves from here, a tomato there, carrots, cucumbers, radishes, olives, a few pieces of chicken or a few pieces of chicken (it could be some leftover roast chicken from the weekend, or the day before, or sauté some pieces in one moment). We can prepare or buy the salad almost done, that is not a problem. Counting good quantities, a whole tomato, about 90 g of lettuce, 100 g of carrot and 100 g of cucumber, 6-8 olives and about 100 g of tofu or 90-100 g of chicken. We have a full dinner for about 230 Kcal. If we want, we can still supplement with a yogurt or fruit without reaching 300 Kcal.
• Dinner 2: Sauteed vegetables with prawns. Once again we have to read labels, we have gone shopping and we have made sure that we are acquiring a "vegetable stir fry", a variety of chopped and frozen vegetables for sautéing, which as an ingredient only contains chopped vegetables, no sauces, or oils , or anything else. We also buy a package of frozen shrimp or in bulk. It is a basic that we have in the freezer to prepare a good meal in a few minutes. The vegetables are put into the pan without defrosting or anything, and in less than 10 minutes they are done, while we defrost the prawns and sauté them too. We have not exceeded the oil, because in fact one tablespoon is enough, you can even do without it. Taking a plate of 250-300 g of vegetables, about 100 g of prawns and a teaspoon of oil, we have about 210 Kcal, a little more if we are more generous with the oil. As in the previous proposal, with less than 300 Kcal we can have a fruit or yogurt-based dish and dessert.

• The fact of eating a small volume of food is not synonymous with taking few calories or making a healthy intake.
• There are foods that in very little volume provide us with a large amount of calories.
• We have the possibility of preparing complete and healthy dinners in a short time and with minimal effort.

Bachelor and Food Science and Technology Diploma in Human Nutrition and Dietetics Advance Medical Consultant Nutritionist