Build Healthier Habits to Your Menu in 2025

Committing to healthier habits in the new year often starts in the kitchen. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2020-2025 recommend consuming a healthy, balanced diet with protein, grains, vegetables, fruits, dairy and oils. Choose different foods from each group over time to get a variety of nutrients. For example, dark green leafy vegetables like kale provide iron and folate, while orange vegetables like carrots provide vitamin A.

Dietary Guidelines Summary:

• Take a look at your current eating routine. Pick one or two ways that you can switch to
  choices today that are rich in nutrition.
• Start your day with fruit at breakfast. Top cereal with your favorite seasonal fruit, add bananas or chopped apples to pancakes, or mix a spoonful or two of raisins into hot oatmeal.
• Make half your grains whole grains. Replace traditional sandwich bread, try a whole-grain pita, tortillas, or other whole-grain flatbread, sliced breads, or rolls.
• Vary your protein routine, try adding fish or seafood to your diet. Mushrooms, quinoa, and beans are all a good source of protein.

Adding better-for-you recipes to your arsenal is the start of a more nutrition-focused lifestyle, and whether you’re a true home chef or just learning the basics, these dishes can be the gateway to a healthier you.

The New Year is a great time to change up your meal routine. Whether it is the regular dinner or special family weekend meal we all look for a quick solution in a pinch to homemade lunches and satisfying salads, consider these delicious and nutritious ways to enhance your homemade meals with healthier habits in 2023.

Visit Culinary.net to find more health-conscious recipe ideas that follow healthier habits.

Start the Day off Right

How many times have you been told that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. This is the meal that will provide you with the fuel you need to start the day strong and avoid the mid-morning snacks. Unfortunately, it is also the meal that many of us get wrong- choosing sugar packed cereal or unhealthy pancakes or frozen waffles lathered in syrup. Here are a few healthier options:

Visit Dole.com to find more healthy recipes.

Sunrise Pizza

Ingredients

• 2 medium DOLE® Bananas, peeled
• 4 frozen whole wheat waffles
• 1/4 cup honey-flavored nonfat Greek yogurt
• 1 can (11 oz.) DOLE Mandarin Oranges, drained
• 2 teaspoons honey dash ground cinnamon
• DOLE Fresh Raspberries or Blueberries (optional)

Directions

• Thinly slice bananas on diagonal.
• Prepare waffles according to package directions.
• Spread waffles with yogurt. Arrange banana slices on top, overlapping. Arrange mandarin oranges in center of each pizza. Drizzle with honey. Sprinkle with cinnamon. Garnish with raspberries or blueberries, if desired.