Healthy eating is an essential part of leaving a healthy lifestyle. Your body requires a well-balanced diet every day in order to maintain the adequate amounts of vitamins, nutrients and minerals needed to maintain a healthy weight and body as well as protect you from certain diseases.
"To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art"La -Rochefoucauld (French Writer)
A nutrient is anything in food that:
•Provides energy
•Helps your body "burn" another nutrient to provide energy
•Helps build or repair tissue
Making healthy choices can sometimes be hard, but there are easy changes you can make to eat better. To help prevent heart disease, stroke, and perhaps other diseases, you should eat mainly:
Fruit: Adults should eat between 1½ to 2 cups of fruit every day. Fruit is great for a snack, side item or dessert (like one small banana, one large orange, and ¼ cup of dried apricots or peaches).
Vegetables: Adults should eat 2½ to 3 cups of vegetables per day. Try to pick a variety of colours when selecting veggies at the store. Eat more dark green veggies (such as broccoli, kale, spinach, and other dark leafy greens); orange veggies (like sweet potatoes or carrots); and beans and peas.
Protein: Adults should eat 5 to 6 ounces of protein per day. Choose lean meat, poultry, and fish. Mix up your protein sources with more beans, peas, nuts, and seeds, as well as eggs. Fish is a great option. Broil, bake, steam, or grill it. Fish and shellfish contain a type of fat called omega-3 fatty acids — it's good for you! Research suggests that eating omega-3 fatty acids lowers your chances of dying from heart disease. Fish that naturally contain more oil (such as salmon, trout, herring, mackerel, anchovies, and sardines) have more omega-3 fatty acids than lean fish (such as cod, haddock, and catfish).
Grains: Adults should eat 5 to 7 ounces of grains per day. Choose whole grains like whole wheat bread and pasta, brown rice, oatmeal and whole wheat cereal instead of refined (white) grains whenever possible. One ounce is about one slice of bread, 1 cup of breakfast cereal, or ½ cup of cooked rice or pasta. Eat at least 3 ounces of whole-grain cereals, bread, crackers, rice, or pasta every day. Eat whole-wheat bread instead of white bread or brown rice instead of white rice.
Dairy: Adults should eat less than 3 servings of low-fat dairy (milk, yoghurt, cheese) per day. Fat-free or low-fat versions of milk, cheese, yoghurt, and other milk products.
You can avoid unhealthy foods by limiting:
•Saturated fat (Saturated fat is the main dietary cause of high blood cholesterol. It is found mostly in foods from animals and some plants.)
•Trans fat (The amount of trans fat content in foods is printed on the Nutrition Facts label. Keep trans fat intake to less than 1 percent of total calories. For example, if you need 2,000 calories a day, you should consume less than 2 grams of trans fat.)
•Cholesterol
•Sodium. Limit salt. Eat less than 2,300 mg of sodium (about 1 teaspoon of salt) each day. If you are older than age 51, or if you are African-American (at any age), or if you have hypertension, diabetes, or chronic kidney disease, you should eat less than 1,500 mg of sodium each day. Most of the salt we eat each day actually comes from processed foods rather than salt that we add to foods that we cook. Cut back on frozen dinners, pizza, packaged mixes, canned soups or broths, and salad dressings — these often have a lot of sodium. Make sure to check the sodium content on the Nutrition Facts label when buying food.
•Added sugars. Since sugars contribute calories with few, if any, nutrients, look for foods and beverages low in added sugars. Read the ingredient list and make sure that added sugars are not one of the first few ingredients. Some names for added sugars include sucrose, glucose, high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, maple syrup, and fructose.
•To stay at a healthy weight, you need to balance the calories you eat with the calories you use up (burn). To lose weight, you need to burn more calories than you eat. A healthy diet and physical activity can help you control your weight.
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