"Copyright © 2008 Harvard University. For more information about The Healthy Eating Pyramid, please see The Nutrition Source, Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health, http://www.thenutritionsource.org, and Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy, by Walter C. Willett, M.D. and Patrick J. Skerrett (2005), Free Press/Simon & Schuster Inc. "
The FDA food pyramid in both it’s old and new incarnations does not improve health, in fact in many ways it’s downright bad for your health. Fortunately there is an alternative. The Harvard Medical School a few years back created the Healthy Eating Pyramid, and this is what you should use as a general guide for how you eat. The image above is taken with permission from the site devoted to it at: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/pyramid/index.html. I encourage all of you to go there and print out a pdf version that you can put in your kitchen.
In the following I’ll explain the breakdown of eating healthy. In the coming weeks I shall write more detailed posts about the specifics, but basically the most important point is espoused by Michael Pollan’s mantra “eat food, not too much, mostly plants.”
First off, the easiest way to eating healthy is eating more food from the source. This could mean eating more raw fruits and veggies, but even cutting out processed food from your diet has enormousness benefits. This is because in general the more steps in the process of getting the food from the farm to you depletes nutrients. Presently we are not able to add all the thousands of health components that are lost in the process. Partly, because sciences is unaware of all of them. Nutritional science is still in it’s infancy and everyday we are discovering new phytonutrients with benefits to the body. Not only does this processing deplete valuable nutrients they also often add industrial chemicals and products, for which are unnatural and may even be detrimental to your health.
While it’s true obesity is on the rise, and is now an epidemic. The solution is not radical restriction, but modest calorie control. This is made considerably easier on a plant based diet. Vegetables often have a low calorie density. Your body doesn’t measure full by how much calories you ate, but rather how much volume you’ve ingested. Thus eating a plant based diet has two immediate benefits they are; one, you naturally lower the amount of calories you take , and two, you get a variety of nutrients and phytonutrients to keep your body functioning.
When it comes to specific types of food that should be eaten, the main thing to keep in mind is variety. Selecting foods with a variety of different colors will ensure you get many different types of vitamins and nutrients. We often break food into different groups. The main food groups that you should be getting most of your calories are:
Whole Grains
Vegetables and Fruits
Healthy Fats
Nuts, Seeds, Beans, and Tofu
Fish, Poultry, and Eggs
Dairy
Whole Grains: The important point is that these are Whole Grains not just Grains. This means choosing whole wheat bread as opposed to white bread, as well as brown rice rather than white rice. The process of refining the grains results in them losing a large amount of their nutrients (basically this is again less-processed=good). Some good sources are brown rice, oats, and whole wheat.
Vegetables and Fruits: This is where the body gets most of it’s raw materials in the form of vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients that it uses to keep you healthy. Again variety is the key here. The fresher the better retention of nutrients, that said frozen also is an excellent alternative since the freezing process keeps the nutrients from deteriorating.
Healthy Fats: I just put a post [here's the link] about some of the different types of fat and why the fat from fish oil tablets is actually healthy for you. Other great sources of good fats are Olive Oil and Canola Oil. Avocados also loaded with heart healthy fat. Nuts and Seeds also contain good fats.
Nuts, Seeds, Beans, and Tofu: As well as having good fats nuts and seed also have a lot of protein to keep your energy level up. Combined with many whole grains beans and lentils make a complete protein (that is they supply essential amino acids that the body can not produce on its own). Tofu is actually a complete protein by itself, as is one of the main reasons it’s a staple of many vegetarian diets. Less known though is that hemp seed is actually a complete source of protein as well and excellent source of many types of nutrients.
Fish, Poultry, and Eggs: These provide the body with valuable sources of nutrients difficult to find on a plant diet alone. B12 for example is found in most types of meat and is essential for living. However the amount of meat need to supply the body is really minimal. The healthiest cultures (the ones that often have the longest lifespan) do in fact eat meat, but their secret is that they use it as a condiment. They often use a little meat when cooking vegetables to impart the flavor, but the vegetable is still the main meal.
Dairy: If your going to eat dairy it’s better to eat it in the forms that have bacteria cultures. These bacteria often have health boosting effects and are thus called probiotics. Yogurt and aged cheeses are a few sources. If the product has been pasteurized then you lose all the benefits, since pasteurizing kills all bacteria including the good ones. Eating a lot of probiotics helps keep food poisoning at bay. If you have a healthy amount of healthy bacteria in your gut, it prevents bad bacteria from moving in since there’s no room or is kept back by the good bacteria.
Other foods that weren’t on these categories should be used sparingly. The trick is not to cut yourself off completely from eating red meat, sugar, or salt, it’s to not have our diets based on these. Basically everything in moderation. When you switch from a top heavy diet on the pyramid to one in line with what was said above, you find that you crave sugary and processed foods less often.
Bottom line: The above should be used as a general guide for eating healthy, and the Healthy Eating Pyramid serves as a great visual representation of how to accomplish this. If your just starting out moving from a processed based food diet to a healthier alternative, remember to take it slow, and gradually start adding more of the good and less of the not-so-good.
