Healthy Foods to Stock Your Pantry

I'm Dara. I'm a busy mom of three and have a husband who is a vegetarian. For us, eating healthy sometimes is left on the back burner. So, Dara, here we are at your pantry. Tell me a little bit about what you would find in your pantry. Well, this is carb land. This is what my kids like to eat. They like to have cereal for breakfast. They like to have pasta for dinner. OK, so today, we're going to give you a little bit of a pantry makeover, so you can feel good about giving your kids what they want. Well, I want to point out that you have some really healthy items in here already. You have unsweetened applesauce, you have canned tuna and you have canned beans—all great choices. Let's take a look at the crackers.

You want to make sure that each cracker has at least two grams of fiber per serving, and 200 milligrams or less of sodium. I see you have a lot of cereal in here. Cereal can really pack in a lot of hidden added sugar, so you want to look for a cereal that has less than 7 grams of sugar per serving. And the other thing is, you want to make sure it has at least three grams of fiber, also per serving. As an alternative to cereal, if you want to mix it up, I would say, try out some oats or some oatmeal. Pasta was a big choice at dinner, right? Definitely. Pasta really doesn't deserve the bad reputation that it's had. It's a great quick dinner choice. The other thing, too, is try mixing it up. So, quinoa, they cook up really, really quickly. Or farro, that's another great one. Or brown rice. Now you have all the elements of a healthy pantry.