What is a Healthy diet?

What is a healthy diet?

this is a topic humans have been discussing for decades, but it seems that the general population know very little about what actually constitutes a healthy diet.

Part of the problem is misinformation. Throughout the ages, the government and food production companies have given us nuggets of health advice, which is often changing and often conflicting.

Understandably, most ordinary people get fed up with being told something else is bad for them every other day and adopt the avoidance strategy, saying things like “everything is bad for you these days” and “oh well its too difficult to avoid everything, so I’m going to eat what i want”.

I have been interested in nutrition from a young age and have always sought out information on healthy foods. Recently i started a nutrition course and have been surprised at some of the things I have learned, but although a lot of the content is pretty complicated and scientific it seems to come back to the same few easy principles.

A large variety of fresh, locally sourced, pesticide free, natural produce. Really that does seem very simple. In fact the most sensible and easy to follow advice is “eat the rainbow”. Particularly if you are a person who finds the conflicting health advice difficult to understand and ends up confused and disillusioned.

Perhaps it would help if i explained in a little more detail.

Obviously it is easy to tell you what not to eat. I think those things are fairly obvious, the processed junk, the refined sugar (sweeteners are just as bad) and the empty white carbohydrates, these offer little to no nutritional value and actually will make you more hungry. This also includes the hidden sugars in things like cereals, yogurts and cooked meats. Always check the packets!

Unfortunately this is a lot of what fills the shelves in the supermarkets and often people find it more confusing knowing what TO eat.

Lets start with the Rainbow. Fruits and vegetables are all different colours. Colours often correlate with different nutrients found within them, and whilst telling you each vitamin, mineral and antioxidant contained in each one would take forever, perhaps knowing that the more variety of different coloured fruits and vegetables you eat, the better your health will be.

So am I saying only fruit and vegetables are healthy? No but these are what should constitute the bulk of your diet.

The rest should be made up of slow releasing carbohydrates, a small amount of the right proteins and good fats.

Slow releasing carbohydrates include sweet potato, oats, brown or red rice, quinoa, buckwheat. (no refined white flour or rice, these have little nutritional value)

There is a lot in the media at the moment about diets very high in protein being healthy. This is not actually true. Proteins are important, but in moderation and more foods contain protein than you think (for example quinoa and brown rice).

Good sources of protein are fish, eggs, beans and pulses like lentils and chickpeas. Meat is also ok, in moderation and should always be organic and free range.

Its been a long time since we discovered, despite much contradictory advice, fat does not make you fat. However many people still seem to insist that if they eat everything “low fat” that constitutes a healthy diet. Your body needs fats to function correctly and actually full fat versions usually have more vitamins and minerals because they haven’t been “tampered with”. Good sources of fats include nuts, seeds,  coconut oil, avocado and oily fish.

You might read this and think it sounds boring, but fresh, real food can never be boring as long as its prepared in the right way and often adding flavour from fresh herbs, spices, garlic, ginger and citrus fruits is all a dish needs to come to life!

If in doubt, think about what our ancestors would have eaten. If you can’t read the ingredients, don’t know where its come from or how it was made, don’t eat it! I don’t think cave men would have been eating cocoa pops or doughnuts.. You may as well eat a sweetened piece of cardboard, for all the nutritional value they have!