10 - MINUTE MEALS

Healthy eating at home is a great way to stay fit and keep excess fat and sugar out of your diet. Use these time saving tips for your fast easy meals.

If your idea of a home-cooked meal is the Grand Slam breakfast at Denny's, you're not alone! Research shows that:

• Only 52 percent of us use our stoves on a daily basis, compared to nearly 70 percent in 1985.
• People who do cook are more likely to opt for fast easy meals like a frozen dinner (sales of those have increased by 22 percent since 1996) or a one-pot dish than bother making an entire home-cooked meal.
• Americans currently eat 54 billion meals on the go a year--that's nearly twice as many as in 1955, when the restaurant-industry share of the food dollar was 25 percent, compared to today's 46 percent.

But beyond the extra cash, there's a price to pay for all those meals on the go. Restaurant and commercially prepared food is often loaded with saturated fat, excess salt, sugar and MSG. And serving sizes are so truck-stop-huge you wind up eating for two. Become a restaurant regular and by next summer you could be ordering a supersize -- bikini!
If you want to eat healthy and lose weight, healthy cooking by preparing your own lowfat, low-cal fare at home makes the most sense. To minimize your time in the kitchen and supermarket, try delicious recipes and fast easy meals that revolve around three convenience-food categories found in your local grocery:

1. fresh and fresh-prepackaged foods
2. frozen foods and entrees
3. canned and dry, quick-cook packaged foods