A Quick, Healthy Meal Does Exist

Nutrition researchers say that it is possible to throw together a quick, nutritious meal, and they do it too. Their strategies: Lean into canned foods, use frozen ingredients, try nuts or eggs for a quick protein boost, and turn breakfasts into easy dinners.

Here are the quick, healthy dinners nutrition researchers make for themselves. All can be thrown together in 10 minutes or less, they said.

Freezer power

The ingredients for Alice H. Lichtenstein’s go-to quick healthy dinner can all be found in her freezer: Frozen store-bought precooked shrimp and an assortment of frozen vegetables, which come out of the bag already washed and chopped. She drops the shrimp in water and pops the vegetables in the microwave for a few minutes to defrost. She then sautees a little garlic and onion with olive oil in a pan on the stovetop, adds the shrimp and vegetables (typically broccoli, carrots, peas, peppers) and amps up the flavor with curry powder, a Cajun spice mix or a splash of low-sodium soy sauce.

“You can have a stir-fry within 10 minutes," says Lichtenstein, director of the Cardiovascular Nutrition Laboratory at Tufts University.

Shrimp are high in protein but low in calories, and include important nutrients like vitamin B12. Studies have found that a diet high in fruits and vegetables is associated with a lower risk of heart disease and some types of cancer.

Stock up on canned goods

Lichtenstein is also a fan of canned tuna and salmon, which contain beneficial fatty acids such as omega 3 and omega 6 and important nutrients like B vitamins and vitamins A and D. She’ll add olive oil and vinegar or mix the tuna or salmon with a little mayonnaise, curry powder and raisins and serve the fish over prewashed salad greens, cherry tomatoes and chunks of cucumber.

For a vegetarian version of the salad, Lichtenstein will swap the fish for canned beans. To round out the meal and to add some whole grains, she’ll serve the dish with some rye crackers.

“It takes five minutes max and you can adjust the quantities depending on how many people," she says.

Some people do have concerns about mercury in fish. Go for canned “light" tuna including skipjack, which is lower in mercury. This type is considered among the “best choices" by the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency in its fish consumption advice for pregnant and breast-feeding women and young children, who face greater health risks from mercury exposure. Albacore or white tuna generally has higher levels of mercury than canned light but is still listed among the agencies’ “good choices."

Breakfast for dinner

Some typical breakfast foods can easily be tweaked for a satisfying dinner, says Christina A. Roberto, associate professor of health policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, who has two children ages 5 and almost 2. “We don’t have a lot of time and by the end of the day we don’t have a lot of energy," she says of herself and her husband.

Roberto and her family eat oatmeal for dinner at least once a week. She mixes traditional oats with milk and puts it in the microwave for eight minutes. “It gets very fluffy and creamy and delicious," she says. Eating whole grains like oatmeal instead of refined grains can improve cholesterol and prevent blood sugar spikes, studies have found.

Roberto tops the oatmeal with fruit like bananas, strawberries or peaches and a handful of nuts, usually almonds or pecans. The nuts help keep you full, provide protein and the polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats that are associated with a lower risk of heart disease, she notes. She’ll sometimes add a dollop of peanut butter, too, for an extra boost of protein.

Eggs, the quick-cook protein

On the nights when Elizabeth Mayer-Davis, professor of nutrition and medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, gets home from work late, she’ll scramble some eggs and cook them with spinach, chopped red pepper and a little cheese. She’ll have whole wheat toast on the side. “That’s five minutes," she says. Eggs are a good source of protein and contain important nutrients like vitamin D and choline.

There’s been some debate about consuming eggs because of their cholesterol content. But more recent research has found that eating eggs isn’t linked to an increased risk of heart disease, including a study published in 2018 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that found that among people with Type 2 diabetes or prediabetes, those who ate at least 12 eggs a week for three months didn’t have greater metabolic or cardiovascular risk factors than people who ate fewer than two eggs a week.