By Michael J. Critelli | MakeUsWell Newsletter, 

One of the most common explanations people give for eating poorly is simple: “I don’t have time to eat healthy.”

For many people, that statement feels unquestionably true. Cooking has come to mean planning meals, shopping for ingredients, chopping vegetables, preparing meat or fish, cooking everything, and then cleaning up afterward. 

After a long workday, ordering a pizza, picking up fast food, or microwaving a packaged meal can seem like the only realistic option.

But there is a flaw in the premise: Eating healthy does not require cooking from scratch. It also does not mean investing time and money in eating at a regular restaurant at which a meal can consume an hour, or even at a restaurant popularly called a “fast casual” dining experience. It also does not relegate us to fast-food restaurants or take out restaurants serving highly processed foods with low nutritional value.

The better alternative for many busy people is what might be called “speed-scratch eating”: combining healthy foods that someone else has already washed, chopped, cooked, frozen, canned, or partially prepared.

The supermarket has quietly become much more than a place to buy raw ingredients. It can function as your prep cook.

Consider a rotisserie chicken. In a few minutes, it can become dinner with a bag of frozen vegetables and microwavable brown rice. The remaining chicken can become tomorrow’s salad or lunch.

Frozen vegetables may be one of the most underappreciated convenience foods in America. They are already cleaned and cut. Many can go directly from the freezer into a microwave, skillet, or air fryer. Because they are often frozen soon after harvesting, they can also retain excellent nutritional quality.

Then there are beans, lentils, tuna, sardines and salmon in cans or pouches. They require virtually no preparation. Combine chickpeas with pre-washed greens, tomatoes, olive oil and vinegar and you have a substantial meal in minutes.

The refrigerated and prepared-food sections offer still more possibilities: hard-boiled eggs, grilled chicken, cooked shrimp, hummus, sliced vegetables, fresh salsa, cooked grains and prepared soups. Some supermarkets sell roasted vegetables, grilled fish and other foods that would have taken considerable time to prepare at home.

The important distinction is not simply between processed and unprocessed food.

Virtually all food undergoes some processing. Washing lettuce, freezing peas, roasting a chicken or canning beans are forms of processing. The more useful question is what has been added. A prepared food loaded with added sugar, sodium, refined carbohydrates and unfamiliar additives is different from a package containing frozen broccoli or a container of cooked lentils.

That means speed-scratch eating still requires judgment. Read labels. Watch sauces and dressings, which can turn an otherwise healthy meal into something very different. Compare sodium levels in soups and prepared foods. Look for foods whose ingredient lists resemble what you would use if you had prepared them yourself.

If perfection is not achievable, which it often isn’t, then focus on assembling a reasonably healthy meal.

A supermarket rotisserie chicken may contain more sodium than the chicken you roast yourself. A microwavable package of whole grains may cost more than cooking them from dry ingredients. Prepared vegetables may not be quite as fresh as vegetables you picked that morning.

None of those comparisons matters very much if the realistic alternative is a cheeseburger, fries and a soft drink.

We have probably made healthy eating unnecessarily intimidating by associating it with people who enjoy cooking and have enough time to do it well. That excludes precisely the people who most need convenient alternatives.

The goal should not be to persuade everyone to become a cook. It should be to help people become better assemblers of food.

A healthy dinner can be grilled chicken someone else cooked, vegetables someone else chopped, brown rice someone else prepared, and a sauce you opened from a jar.

That is not cheating. It is using the modern food system intelligently.

For people who believe they do not have time to eat healthy, the answer may not be finding another hour in the day.

It may be learning how to eat healthy in the ten minutes they already have. The battle to eat nutritious meals is won at the margins on those days when you don’t have time to cook or eat at a restaurant at which you can consume healthy options.