Looking to eat healthier in 2025? Start with your kitchen. If your kitchen is stocked with delicious, nutritious choices, you’ll be more likely to enjoy healthy meals and snacks at home and less likely to go out for restaurant meals that are loaded with unhealthy fats and sugars.

These three tips can help you get started.

Organize your shopping.

Having healthy staples on hand is key to nutritious eating. Start by getting organized about purchasing food.

• Make a shopping list before you go to the store or order online. Prioritize healthy foods such as lean meats, low-fat dairy, fruits and vegetables, including canned and frozen vegetables. Healthy dried goods to add to your list include beans, dried red lentils, canned tuna and salmon, nuts and whole-grain cereals and crackers, quinoa, rolled oats and air-popped or fat-free popcorn.

• Keep a shopping list in a spot where everyone in the family can write items on the list. Add healthy staples to the list as you run low. Encourage your children to add healthy snack choices to the list.

• Check your pantry, cupboards, refrigerator and freezer when finalizing your list so that you buy only items you need.

Keep healthy foods front and center.

People tend to eat what’s right in front of them. Set yourself up for success by storing healthy foods where you can see them and by making less-healthy choices harder to access.

• Display fruits such as bananas, apples, oranges and clementines in an attractive bowl in a visible location. That way, when you’re ready for a sweet treat, fruit is the handiest choice. Just be careful to choose only fruits that can be safely stored at room temperature, and don’t leave them out for too long.

• Rearrange your pantry so that healthier foods are most accessible. Your healthy dried goods should be the first foods you see when you open the pantry door.

• Reorganize your refrigerator and freezer, too. Keep healthy foods at eye level near the front for easy access. Examples include fruits, vegetables, lean meats, eggs, hummus, low-fat milk, cottage cheese and yogurt.

• Hide the candy dish and less-healthy snack foods. It’s too easy to grab something from a candy dish every time you walk past it. Store candy in the back of the pantry or on a hard-to-reach cupboard shelf so that you can enjoy it in moderation. Likewise, don’t keep salty and sugary snacks on the counter or an easy-to-reach shelf. Place them out of reach so that you eat them only occasionally.

Set up your kitchen for portion control.

Keeping portions under control can help you better manage your intake of fat, sugar, salt and calories. Set up your kitchen to make controlling portion sizes easy.

• Repackage snacks into small, portion-controlled containers as soon as you bring them home from the store.

• Keep measuring cups, spoons and a small kitchen scale in an easily accessed location so that you can quickly measure portions.

• Switch to smaller plates, bowls and drinking glasses to keep portions at a reasonable size. People tend to eat and drink more when they use larger dishes, so scaling back the size of your dishes can help.

Sources:
Harvard Health Publishing
Martha Stewart
U.S. News Health