Following the food pyramid is a good place to start and maybe it’s
a good place to end for some people. If you take all the food
somebody eats at the end of the week and then add them all up
and how much variety there was, you will find that there really
wasn’t that much variety.
People generally have a dozen foods they like to eat and they will
end up eating the same foods day after day for most of their life
and that is where you run into problems. You get stuck in a rut
and fail to incorporate a vast variety into your diet and fail to get
the nutritional balance that you should be getting.
If you know nothing about food but incorporate a lot of variety of
fresh fruit and vegetables, cereals, dairy, protein sources, small
amount of “good” fats, and legumes and nuts into your diet the
chances of your missing out on the right nutrients essential for
good health are lowered.
When it comes to fresh fruit and vegetables, some people like to
use a diet out there called the Rainbow diet. It’s based on all the
different colors of fruits and vegetables. So I will take purple
grapes and onions and garlic and sprinkle some lettuce and if we
have fresh strawberries I will add those to cantaloupe and really
your imagination is your only limitation. Just basically add all
your favorite fruits and vegetables and season it to taste. Mix it
all up and you have an incorporation of all of that variety. You
get all of the vitamins and the nutrients and the minerals that
you need in just one meal instead of just ingesting one kind of
food.
My point is the more variety you can get in your diet the greater
the possibility that if you are lacking in something that you are
going to get it. I am an advocate of getting variety in your diet. It
all comes down to looking at your budget and having some
knowledge of getting what you need and looking at the food
labels.
With just a little bit of knowledge of how to read food labels and
what you need you can make the right choices with the money
that you have to work with.
Even the restaurants and the fast food chains are starting to offer
more nutritious choices, likes salads. Subway is one that has
really jumped on the bandwagon. You know the one with Jared
standing there saying this deep fat fried sandwich contains 45
plus grams of fat and compare it to the subway sandwich.
I saw an interview where they were talking with the producer of
Sesame Street and they were talking about the Cookie Monster
and how it was presented inadvertently to get kids to eat more
junk food and more cookies. Now they have repositioned that
whole program to where they are starting to teach kids more
about nutrition. I am hoping that one of the things that is
happening is that there is increased awareness about nutrition
and the obesity epidemic. Some people are just succumbing to
obesity and the things that come with it like cancer and heart
disease and diabetes. It’s good to see some positive changes
taking place.
