2017-18 Best Healthy Recipe Blogs
Dietspotlight Picks - Top Healthy Recipe Blogs in the Nation
In the United States, there are at least fifty major fast-food chain restaurants serving many customers every day. While some of them do strive to offer healthy options, many of these restaurants serve unhealthy foods that barely have any nutritional value. Some of these restaurants make billions of dollars per year serving unhealthy meals as a convenience for people who don’t want to cook at home.
Most people in America have a vague understanding of health and nutrition, but they know that fast food isn’t necessarily healthy. However, a recent survey showed that at around 44% of Americans eat fast food at least once a week, and an additional 33% admit to eating fast food at least once a month. This makes up more than three-fourths of the population, not including the 3% who admit to eating fast food every single day. [1]
Here are our top healthy recipe picks:
Ideally, people should be eating healthy, home-cooked meals every day. However, this can be challenging for several reasons. Some people may claim that they just don’t have the time to cook at home, others see home cooking as overly expensive, and still, others may argue that they don’t know how to cook.
Healthy recipe blogs offer a convenient way for people to find healthy meal ideas, tips for quicker meal preparation, and step-by-step cooking instructions, and they have become an integral part of the food revolution that is taking place across the country.
Healthy recipe blogs deserve way more credit than they typically receive. Eating right is necessary to good health, preventing diseases, and even maintaining happiness. It is especially crucial for children, growing, active teens and older men and women.
According to one survey, 35% of children and minors in America eat fast food every day. These eating habits can significantly threaten a child’s health and interfere with healthy development and functioning.
Children who frequently eat unhealthy meals are at higher risk of developing diseases like obesity, type 2 diabetes, and fatty liver disease. In fact, around 17% of American children and minors under the age of 19 are classified as obese. [2]
This trend in unhealthy eating is not only detrimental to a child’s well-being and overall health, but it also serves as a poor model for their future adult habits. Children who grow up eating fast food and other unhealthy meals may continue these habits well into adulthood.
Healthy recipe blogs are helping to reverse this issue by showing adults, adolescents, and even children how to make healthy meals at home. This encourages people to stay away from fast food, and it also helps them to stay away from fried foods as well, another primary culprit behind the obesity epidemic in America. These blogs are showing people the best food options as well as the most natural and most delicious ways to prepare them. [3]
Because the people working as healthy recipe bloggers are so important to the healthy eating revolution in America, we have decided to recognize several healthy recipe blogs that have gone above and beyond.
Here are the healthy recipe blogs we think stand out in 2017.
Pies and Plots
Pies and Plots is a recipe website run by Laura Dembowski, a professional writer, fashionista, and baker. A denizen of Southeastern Michigan, Dembowski's home-style cooking emphasizes creative, tasty dishes that leave you wanting more. Her website features a wide variety of recipes she’s collected and created herself, including baked goods, drinks, snacks, and savory dishes.
Big Bears Wife
Angie Barrett runs Big Bear’s Wife, a website that features Southern recipes cultivated from Barrett’s culinary experiences and from her grandmother’s recipe boxes. Determined to become a better housewife, Barrett started cooking when she got married, wanting her family to move away from frozen foods and takeout to healthy, smarter choices. Her cooking style emphasizes farm to table meals and her recipes promote a balance of deliciousness and health.
Cookin Canuck
A former resident of Canada, Dara Michalski is a writer, recipe developer, and photographer. Spurred on by the desire to lose weight and become healthier, Michalski developed a catalogue of recipes that are dedicated to moderation eating. Easy, innovative, and delicious, Michalski wants to make it clear: healthy does not mean boring. Her recipes combine Canadian, American, Jamaican and Malaysian influences.
Garlic & Zest
Garlic & Zest, LLC provides a wide variety of recipe options, including appetizers, breakfasts, beverages, condiments, desserts, entrees, salads, sides, and even vegan and vegetarian dishes. These recipes emphasize delicious, gourmet meals that make use of fresh, seasonal ingredients--and, most importantly of all--are easy to make.
Nikki Dinki Cooking
Nikki Dinki’s recipes practice a culinary style called “meat on the side.” This means her recipes focus primarily on veggies, finding unique ways to make them the real star of a plate. Growing up as a picky eater, Dinki struggled to eat vegetables; but when she realized she didn’t want to live like that anymore, she found creative ways to prepare healthy foods, and now she wants to share those tasty meals with the world.
The Kitchen Whisperer
Lori Monte is the woman behind The Kitchen Whisperer. Coming from a big family that struggled financially, Monte grew up watching her mother learn to cook creatively. That life-changing experience taught her how to respect ingredients, how to cook with all senses, and most importantly of all, how to be patient. And although she loves bacon, Monte’s website features a large variety of bacon-free recipes that include gluten-free options and diabetic friendly foods.
$5 Dinners
Developed by Erin Chase, $5 Dollar Dinners aims to do exactly what it says: provide healthy, delicious meals for just five dollars. With recipes designed to save you money, Chase wants her fans to have that extra cash to spend on other wellness activities that often fall by the wayside. Born of couponing and the creative challenge of coming up with cheap, tasty meals, $5 Dollar Dinners provides a large collection of recipes, eCourses, and meal plans.
The Creative Bite
Growing up on farmstead, Danielle Green’s cooking reflects a rural lifestyle: using what’s on hand to make fresh, delicious meals. Green’s love of cooking started with her grandma, who inspired her to always be doing something creative; later, when she became a general manager for a small restaurant, that passion truly bloomed, and now she updates The Creative Bite with recipes that feature bold flavors and innovative dishes.
Cook Nourish Bliss
Ashley Jennings started her road to cooking when she decided enough was enough: she was tired of cooking poorly and wanted to improve. On Cook Nourish Bliss, Jennings prefers recipes that are healthy, approachable, and flavorful. Her website offers meal planning and she encourages others to begin the cooking journey, too.
Averie Cooks
Averie Sunshine began blogging in 2009 as a way to share recipes. Before long she published two cookbooks, and has since been featured as a contributing author in several others. Her recipes focus on the average consumer living a fast-paced life, and feature easy, healthy meals that are prepared in under 30 minutes.