Grilled food tastes delicious but did you know that it is also good for your health? If you want to purchase a new grill, you should be aware of what the benefits of a grill are.
This is just what we’re discussing in this article! So, keep on reading!
Key Takeaways
- Food cooked on a grill provide some health benefits.
- Cooking food on a grill requires less oil and even less time.
- Grilled vegetables taste better than raw vegetables and also retain vitamins.
- Grilled meat retains riboflavin and thiamine, which are important for a healthy diet.
Health benefits of grilling
Cooking your food on the grill can provide some health benefits because of the characteristics of this type of cooking: it doesn’t require much oil, it exploits heat and vapor, and you can cook food quite quickly. So, let’s analyze the main benefits one by one.
1. less fat, More Health
When you cook on the grill, you end up eating less oil because of a couple of factors:
- You don’t need to immerse the food in the oil (like it happens with fried food) or add much oil to your food.
- The excess oil falls off the grates.
What drips off the grates also exceeds meat fats, for example. This all contributes to having less fat in the food you eat (oil is basically vegetable fat and nothing more).
Having a diet rich in fat is dangerous for the health of your health and circulating system.
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2. Vegetables retain more vitamins
You’ve probably already heard that the best way of eating vegetables is eating them raw. However, not all vegetables taste good when they’re raw.
Grilling is the cooking method that allows your vegetables to retain the highest amount of vitamins and minerals.
3. Meat retains nutrients
When you cook meat on a grill, you’re exposing it to sudden high temperatures. This fact makes the meat retain riboflavin and thiamine.
They are both nutrients that play an important role in a healthy diet and have many health benefits.
4. Use less butter
Just like you don’t need oil to cook on a grill, you also need less butter.
Just like oil, butter is essentially fat, even though it is more harmful to your health than oil because it is animal-originated (animal fat is more harmful than vegetable fat, even though you want to reduce your intake of both types of fat).
5. You can cook outside
Grills are usually portable. They are usually meant to be used outside (grilling makes a lot of smoke), but there are models with a smoke-collecting system that you can use inside.
However, one of the best things about grilling is just the fact that it allows you to cook outside.
6. Versatility
Grilling isn’t only versatile because you can cook inside or outside, but also because you can cook any kind of food on it: you can burn bread for sandwiches, you can cook meat, vegetables, and more.
As you’ve learned in this article, grilling isn’t only an excuse to throw a party and share a meal with your friends and family; it is also a way of providing healthy food for them.
7. An Oppurtunity for Socializing
Grilling is done outdoors, which means it can be a social event to have fun with your family and friends.
You can call over your friends and their family; kids can play, and adults can have a great time reminiscing old memories.
Having a grill gives you a reason to host more family get-togethers and helps you create good memories.
8. Reduced Sodium Intake
Sodium is a foe to your health, and we often end up consuming a lot of sodium, especially when we eat packaged food.
Sodium can lead to premature aging and can cause health issues.
When you grill your own food, you can control the amount of sodium you consume, and also, grilling brings out the natural flavor of the food, so you end up using less salt anyway. 1
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by u/KindlyYogurt4 in AskCulinary
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Tips On How To Grill Healthy Food
Using a grill alone can work to some extent only, but by combining it with these tips, you can enjoy the health benefits to a larger extent:
Marination is Essential
Before grilling your meat, make sure you marinate and let the meat soak in the flavor of your favorite seasoning.
Marinating not only improves the taste of the food but is also proven to eliminate 99% of the chemicals that the meat may have.
Buying Lean Meat
If you are health conscious, then you should replace your standard meat with lean meat. So switch to buying lean meat cuts such as chicken, pork, or fish.
Buy the leanest meat available to cook burger patties. Lastly, look for the 93/7 mark on the meat package, as this means the meat has only 7% fat in it.
Avoid Charcoal Grill
Sure, charcoal grill adds amazing smoky flavor to your meat, but charcoal infuses harmful chemicals in your food which is not good if consumed frequently.
Switch to gas grills instead, as they are healthier and even more convenient.
Grill More Vegetables
Grill vegetables retain more nutrients and even taste better.
So to improve your health and to add more nutrients to your food, add grilled vegetables to your meaty recipes. This will improve the taste and also improve your health.
Use a Meat Thermometer
To make sure you are not harming yourself by eating undercooked for or losing too much nutrients by overcooking food, it is essential to keep a meat thermometer handy.
You can use a meat thermometer to check the meat’s internal temperature and determine when its time to turn off the grill. This ensures you are benefiting from your food in the best way.
Control the Flames
When excess fat dips into the fire source, flare-ups occur, and this can lead to the formation of PAHs in your food.
Uncontrolled flame can also ruin the taste of your food and cause the meat skin to burn. So make sure you have a water bottle handy to avoid flare-ups.
Food Safety & Hygiene
Maintaining food safety and hygiene is very important while grilling food.
Combining two or more types of meat and using raw and cooked meat together can lead to contamination and food poisoning.
Make sure you keep the raw and cooked meat separated, and use different knives and cutting boards.
Also, cook only one type of meat at a time, and make sure to clean your grill properly before and after cooking your food.
Reduce Beef Consumption
According to research done by National Cancer Institute in Maryland in 2017, it was found that consuming too much meat causes many health problems, including stroke, cancer, liver diseases, heart diseases, etc. Switch beef with white meat such as poultry and fish instead. 2
Wrapping Up
Grilling has so many health benefits than any other form of cooking, so you should definitely consume grill food more, especially if you are health conscious.
Also, to enjoy the benefits of a grill to the maximum, make sure you follow the tips we shared in the above article.
FAQ’s
Is eating grilled food good for health?
Yes, grilling is one of the healthy ways of consuming food because this method helps your food retain nutrients and vitamins to a great extent.
What are the different types of grill?
There are mainly five different types of grills. A gas or propane grill, charcoal grill, pellet grill, and flat surface grill.
Which is the healthiest type of grill?
Gas grills are safer and healthier than any other type of grill. And in addition to that, they are also convenient to operate.
Shefali Jain is a Content Editor & Writer at National Planning Cycles.
After completing her graduation in hospitality, Shefali decided to follow her passion and started writing. Shefali has been writing for two years now and contributes to our website as a skilled editor and content writer with strong research skills. Writing product and service reviews, biographies, and book reviews are some of her key areas, among many others in which she specializes.
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