Jonathan Steedman (00:01.582)

Welcome back to the ByteMe Nutrition podcast food groupies. I've had two weeks off the podcast, which is, don't think I've done that in over two years. I had the flu, the man flu, the serious man flu. And it just wrecked my voice. It sort of like two weeks. I couldn't really sound like myself. I think I, I don't know, maybe it's just in my head. I still feel like I sound a little bit. Anyway, I'm back enough to do today's podcast, which should be pretty straightforward, pretty quick, but I think a very helpful one, because it's a topic that comes up a lot and it's this,

How can I make dinner boxes? And by a dinner box, I mean things like HelloFresh, Dinnerly, you know, there's lots of different ones, ones where the ingredients and the recipe get delivered to you, but you have to cook it, okay? So not like a frozen meal or a pre-prepared meal, you're still preparing it, but all of the ingredients are in packets and you're kind of assembling it, Because they can be a really, really, sorry for that motorbike, they can be a really, really great way to take some of the mental stress out.

to expose you to new foods and new ingredients that you maybe otherwise wouldn't be consuming. And maybe, yeah, you're exploring different tastes and things and you might get a few cool ones to add to the routine. And particularly if the alternative to that dinner box was takeout or something, they can be a really great way to significantly bump the nutrient intake of your diet. So I'm not anti-dinner boxes at all. For the right person, they can be fantastic. I would say though,

particularly if you have a goal of weight loss or even weight management, there's a few little adjustments that I would recommend making to these dinner boxes, make these little tweaks and away you go, right? So the first tip is actually not a tweak. It's just make sure you're checking the nutrition information, right? I believe legally all of them, all of these will need to provide you with that. I don't want you to obsess too much over the numbers. I just want you to see the difference between a recipe that's maybe five to 600 calories per serve

and 1,000 or 1,100 calories per serve, right? Because it's actually not uncommon at all that dinner boxes kind of have everything in between there. And those are obviously quite different energy levels. I don't know what your energy requirements are. Maybe you should be focusing on the 1,100 calorie one, but if you are not a super active person and you're aiming for weight loss, an 1,100 calorie meal is going to be a significant chunk out of your day. And oftentimes I found as well, a lot of the recipes

Jonathan Steedman (02:23.553)

that were on the higher calorie content surprised me. I wasn't expecting them to be that high. So they don't just think it's like, yeah, it's the schnitzel and chips, know, like check, just quickly run your eyes over all of them. You know, that way you may prefer to opt for more of the lower calorie options depending on your goals and who you are and all that kind of stuff, right? But just, what am I trying, four wonders, that's not what I'm trying to say. You know, better to be empowered with the knowledge so you can make that call yourself rather than thinking.

you're eating X amount of calories when you're actually eating Y amount of calories. What you can do as well, either with the lower calorie options or if some of the higher calorie options are particularly delicious, but you are trying to watch your intake, buy separate veggies, whether that be fresh veggies, frozen veggies, pre-packaged salads from Coles, all those sorts of things. Birds Eye have this amazing new range I need to do a post on of, what are they like deli sides, I think they're called, but they're essentially just like herbs and garlic and like.

Broccoli or herbs and garlic and beans and stuff. Yeah, fry them. They're amazing. Anyway Chucking a packet of that on the side or a salad or something and then stretching maybe Hello, fresh meal that was supposed to be two serves and turning into three serves is another really good way to kind of boost I guess stretch your dollar further. Who is that? So Coles all worse. We've ever had that stretch your dollar further We'll allow you to do that, but it also will help kind of just lower the calorie

Total calories of that meal in a pretty easy way plus bumpier fiber your vitamin and mineral and just overall veggie and take up which is sort of always a good thing The next thing I've noticed with these dinner boxes is they love their oils, right? Cooking with oil adding oil partway through topping it off with oil and now Even oils like olive oil or canola oil or sunflower oil. I don't think they'd use avocado

it's too expensive. all of these like oils that are either neutral or positive for our health, they're still high in energy. And so a large portion of those calories is going to come from oil, which is not ideal, right? Oil is not very filling. And so when you like I said earlier, some of those high calorie meals surprised me, it's probably because they're quite high in oil. So they don't look big, like big meals, because they're quite dense.

Jonathan Steedman (04:40.937)

And so often what I found is you can just skip all of the oil steps. Every time it says add oil, you don't really need to. unless you did a blind taste test between one with oil and one without oil, I don't think you'd notice the difference in flavor. You can even go a step further and use like a spray oil. There's spray olive oil, there's spray canola, all those sorts of things, or you can buy a great little glass sprayer. And again, that will help manage your oil intake and not add all of these sort of...

extra calories that sneak in that you don't really notice. And so the last tip I would say is kind of similar to that. Again, what I've noticed with these dinner boxes is they love their mayonaises and their aiolis and their creamy ranch and ranch isn't all that bad actually, but these quite energy dense creamy dressings. Again, they're not good or bad, but just if you're trying to manage your calorie intake and keep it a bit lower, those condiments can make that hard, right? Because they

bump the energy content of that meal up pretty quickly. And so I find swapping it out for something like Nando's Peranase, which is just amazing. If you haven't checked that out, please do. Coleswoolies, you can get it everywhere. It's like a fourth, a quarter, or maybe even a fifth of the calories of regular mayonnaise. But in my mind, it's just as it's got the same kind of creaminess. It's got tons of flavor. And so if a recipe calls for you to say, dip your chips in an aioli, trading that aioli for Peranase,

would significantly reduce the energy intake of that meal without overly impacting the end result. So yeah, look out for those creamy salads, creamy dressings, potentially swap them for the perinades. Look out for the oil, take multiple serves and maybe stretch that into one extra serve by bumping it up with some extra veggies, fresh, frozen, pre-made salads. It doesn't matter. It's all good. And finally, or like the first thing I mentioned, check the nutrition information just.

not to obsess over the numbers, but just so you kind of have a ballpark idea of what you're getting and so you can make decisions accordingly. I hope that helped. If you've got other questions about dinner boxes, you know where to find me. Otherwise, I will chat to you guys next week.