Are you having trouble determining if your favorite foods really are healthy?
Healthy eating can be confusing, and sometimes even frightening due to misleading labels and endless supply of healthy foods on every supermarket shelf.
The choices you make about your health now, if you are between the ages 35 and 50, are crucial. You can make choices today to support your health in the future.
Below, we will be discussing "healthy food" and providing some insight as to whether your diet is providing the nutrients you require.
What Foods Are Healthy?
There are some key principles to healthy eating that have not changed despite the many fads in food.
Healthy foods are those which provide the nutrients your body needs to maintain its well-being, and energy.
A healthy and balanced diet includes protein, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, minerals and plain water.
Fresh Produce
It is important to eat fresh, natural, nutritious foods.
The food industry isn't making much profit from fresh foods. Instead, it's focusing on processed foods.
Large food companies have been vocal in their opposition and lobbied against to public health plans.
For example that banning junk food from schools.
These junk foods, made from crops like corn, wheat, or soybeans, are high-calorie fillers and do not provide the nutrition your body requires.
It can be hard to tell if these junk food items are healthy because they are made from crops.
Labels that make misleading claims only make matters worse.
Read Food Labels
A Nielsen survey found that almost 60% of consumers misunderstand or have difficulty understanding nutrition labels.
Reading food labels is crucial. It is also important to check the serving size.
For example, 160 calories may seem like a lot, but just two cookies could exceed that!
You may be fooled by claims like "zero trans fat", or "all natural" to believe that the product is healthy. However, it can also trick you into believing that the product has lost its nutritional value after processing.
Many packaged foods are also packed with sugar, salt, and saturated fat. These claims can make it easy to forget about all the calories.
How to Stay Healthy!
Healthy eating is one that includes all the nutrients your body requires on a daily basis, without any other nutritional additives.
A healthy, balanced diet includes:
Dark green, red, yellow or orange vegetables, including legumes (beans and peas) and starches
Whole fruits and berries
Whole grains like quinoa, brown rice, millet and buckwheat
Full-fat dairy (in small amounts)
Protein options including lean meats, fish, eggs, seeds and nuts
Healthy oils like olive, flaxseed, coconut and avocado
Barely a quarter of the population eats the recommended amount of vegetables, fruit, dairy and healthy oils. Yet over half of the population is meeting or exceeding the recommended total grains and proteins.
If you must eat grains (and these should be kept to a minimum) it is best to eat whole grains. This includes the kernel, bran, as well as the germ.
Refined grains or processed grains are those that have had the germ and bran removed, which removes the fiber and other important nutrients.
Diet Food Delivery Diets
There are a number of meal replacement home delivered diet programs around, such as Nutrisystem, Jenny Craig, Medifast etc that provide all your meals for you when you're attempting to lose weight.
That's all fine and good if you don't have time to cook for yourself, but this food is mostly processed and not what I would describe as particularly healthy, based on the information provided above.
While some of these programs like Nutrisystem cost relatively little to go on, I believe that if you really want to enjoy good health, you should work on buying fresh produce, prepping and cooking your own meals and as long as you avoid unhealthy snacks, you will naturally lose weight without the need for specialist diet programs.
Summary
Eating fresh foods that come in their natural state is generally the best rule of thumb if you are in any doubt as to what to eat to stay healthy.
Processed foods should be avoided where possible. While it is not always possible to completely cut out all processed food from your diet, you can at least consciously avoid buying packaged foods and food ingredients off the shelf, while making it your mission to buy as much fresh produce as you can.
Health starts with you. Not your doctor or a diet specialist or your neighbor or your hairdresser. You choose what you eat, so make sensible choices!