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Top Healthy Foods Biography

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A daily regimen of nutritional supplements is not going to have the same impact of eating right. That’s because the benefits of fruits and vegetables don’t come from a single vitamin or an isolated antioxidant.

The health benefits of fruits and vegetables come from numerous vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals working together synergistically. They can’t be broken down into the sum of their parts or replicated in pill form.

Healthy eating tip 5: Eat more healthy carbs and whole grains

Choose healthy carbohydrates and fiber sources, especially whole grains, for long lasting energy. In addition to being delicious and satisfying, whole grains are rich in phytochemicals and antioxidants, which help to protect against coronary heart disease, certain cancers, and diabetes. Studies have shown people who eat more whole grains tend to have a healthier heart.

A quick definition of healthy carbs and unhealthy carbs

Healthy carbs (sometimes known as good carbs) include whole grains, beans, fruits, and vegetables. Healthy carbs are digested slowly, helping you feel full longer and keeping blood sugar and insulin levels stable.

Unhealthy carbs (or bad carbs) are foods such as white flour, refined sugar, and white rice that have been stripped of all bran, fiber, and nutrients. Unhealthy carbs digest quickly and cause spikes in blood sugar levels and energy.

Tips for eating more healthy carbs

Whole Grain Stamp

Include a variety of whole grains in your healthy diet, including whole wheat, brown rice, millet, quinoa, and barley. Experiment with different grains to find your favorites.

Make sure you're really getting whole grains. Be aware that the words stone-ground, multi-grain, 100% wheat, or bran can be deceptive. Look for the words “whole grain” or “100% whole wheat” at the beginning of the ingredient list. In the U.S., Canada, and some other countries, check for the Whole Grain Stamps that distinguish between partial whole grain and 100% whole grain.

Try mixing grains as a first step to switching to whole grains. If whole grains like brown rice and whole wheat pasta don’t sound good at first, start by mixing what you normally use with the whole grains. You can gradually increase the whole grain to 100%.

Avoid: Refined foods such as breads, pastas, and breakfast cereals that are not whole grain.

Healthy eating tip 6: Enjoy healthy fats & avoid unhealthy fats

Good sources of healthy fat are needed to nourish your brain, heart, and cells, as well as your hair, skin, and nails. Foods rich in certain omega-3 fats called EPA and DHA are particularly important and can reduce cardiovascular disease, improve your mood, and help prevent dementia.

Add to your healthy diet:

Monounsaturated fats, from plant oils like canola oil, peanut oil, and olive oil, as well as avocados, nuts (like almonds, hazelnuts, and pecans), and seeds (such as pumpkin, sesame).

Polyunsaturated fats, including Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids, found in fatty fish such as salmon, herring, mackerel, anchovies, sardines, and some cold water fish oil supplements. Other sources of polyunsaturated fats are unheated sunflower, corn, soybean, flaxseed oils, and walnuts.

Reduce or eliminate from your diet:

Saturated fats, found primarily in animal sources including red meat and whole milk dairy products.

Trans fats, found in vegetable shortenings, some margarines, crackers, candies, cookies, snack foods, fried foods, baked goods, and other processed foods made with partially hydrogenated vegetable oils.

What is a healthy daily limit for saturated fat and trans fat?

Experts recommend you limit the amount of saturated fats you eat to less than 7 percent of total daily calories. That means, for example, if you need about 2,000 calories a day, no more than 140 of them should come from saturated fats. That’s about 16 grams of saturated fat a day.

No more than 20 of those calories should come from trans fat. That’s less than 2 grams of trans fat a day. Given the amount of naturally occurring trans fat you probably eat every day, this leaves virtually no room at all for industrially manufactured trans fat.

Source: American Heart Association

Healthy eating tip 7: Put protein in perspective

Protein gives us the energy to get up and go—and keep going. Protein in food is broken down into the 20 amino acids that are the body’s basic building blocks for growth and energy, and essential for maintaining cells, tissues, and organs. While too much protein can be harmful to people with kidney disease, the latest research suggests that most of us need more high-quality protein than the current dietary recommendations. It also suggests that we need more protein as we age to maintain physical function.

How much protein do you need?

Protein needs are based on weight rather than calorie intake. Adults should eat at least 0.8g of protein per kilogram (2.2lb) of body weight per day. A higher intake may help to lower your risk for obesity, osteoporosis, type 2 diabetes, and stroke.

Older adults should aim for 1 to 1.5 grams of protein for each kilogram of weight. This translates to 68 to 102g of protein per day for a person weighing 150 lbs.

Divide your protein intake among meals but aim for 25 to 40g of high-quality protein per meal; less than 15g won’t benefit bone or muscle.

Get plenty of calcium (1,000 to 1,200 mg per day).

Source: Environmental Nutrition

The key to ensuring you eat high-quality protein is to try different types, rather than relying on red meat and whole milk dairy products which are high in saturated fat. Trying different healthy protein sources such as fish, beans, nuts, seeds, peas, tofu, chicken, and soy products will open up new options for healthy mealtimes.

Our intention for this dinner was to put these pizzas on the grill, because we decided we wanted to have a week full of grilling ideas for you- and I'd seen folks grill pizza before. So, I thought- why not? Well, I'll tell you why not. Because I am not good around a grill. The first one I tried burned after only a few minutes. (scroll to the bottom to see). so, rather than ruining all our pizzas, I scrapped the idea quickly, and used the oven instead. I'm MUCH more comfortable around an oven!

Also, for us, Monday is grocery shopping day, so Sunday has been the day we try to eat up our leftover veggies from the week. We usually will throw them all in pasta, stir fry, or make pizza! But without time (or desire) to prepare the dough, we pulled out some ciabatta rolls I had bought last week and never used. They were perfect for some "french bread" pizzas.

We first chopped

Cherry Tomatoes

Shredded carrots

Yellow bell pepper

Broccoli

and red onion

And remember, since this was a "clean out the fridge" type of meal, we didn't have mozzarella or any marinara sauce prepared, so we used olive oil and feta cheese! We also found some parmesan cheese, but just enough for two of the pizzas.

Trying to make your diet healthy overnight isn’t realistic or smart. Changing everything at once usually leads to cheating or giving up on your new eating plan. Make small steps, like adding a salad (full of different color vegetables) to your diet once a day or switching from butter to olive oil when cooking. As your small changes become habit, you can continue to add more healthy choices to your diet.

Every change you make to improve your diet matters. You don’t have to be perfect and you don’t have to completely eliminate foods you enjoy to have a healthy diet. The long term goal is to feel good, have more energy, and reduce the risk of cancer and disease. Don’t let your missteps derail you—every healthy food choice you make counts.

Think of water and exercise as food groups in your diet.

Water. Water helps flush our systems of waste products and toxins, yet many people go through life dehydrated—causing tiredness, low energy, and headaches. It’s common to mistake thirst for hunger, so staying well hydrated will also help you make healthier food choices.

Exercise. Find something active that you like to do and add it to your day, just like you would add healthy greens, blueberries, or salmon. The benefits of lifelong exercise are abundant and regular exercise may even motivate you to make healthy food choices a habit.

Healthy eating tip 2: Moderation is key

Harvard Healthy Eating Plate

People often think of healthy eating as an all or nothing proposition, but a key foundation for any healthy diet is moderation. But what is moderation? How much is a moderate amount? That really depends on you and your overall eating habits. The goal of healthy eating is to develop a diet that you can maintain for life, not just a few weeks or months, or until you've hit your ideal weight. So try to think of moderation in terms of balance. Despite what certain fad diets would have you believe, we all need a balance of carbohydrates, protein, fat, fiber, vitamins, and minerals to sustain a healthy body.

For most of us, moderation or balance means eating less than we do now. More specifically, it means eating far less of the unhealthy stuff (refined sugar, saturated fat, for example) and more of the healthy (such as fresh fruit and vegetables). But it doesn't mean eliminating the foods you love. Eating bacon for breakfast once a week, for example, could be considered moderation if you follow it with a healthy lunch and dinner—but not if you follow it with a box of donuts and a sausage pizza. If you eat 100 calories of chocolate one afternoon, balance it out by deducting 100 calories from your evening meal. If you're still hungry, fill up with an extra serving of fresh vegetables.

Try not to think of certain foods as “off-limits.” When you ban certain foods or food groups, it is natural to want those foods more, and then feel like a failure if you give in to temptation. If you are drawn towards sweet, salty, or unhealthy foods, start by reducing portion sizes and not eating them as often. Later you may find yourself craving them less or thinking of them as only occasional indulgences.

Think smaller portions. Serving sizes have ballooned recently, particularly in restaurants. When dining out, choose a starter instead of an entree, split a dish with a friend, and don't order supersized anything. At home, use smaller plates, think about serving sizes in realistic terms, and start small. If you don't feel satisfied at the end of a meal, try adding more leafy green vegetables or rounding off the meal with fresh fruit. Visual cues can help with portion sizes–your serving of meat, fish, or chicken should be the size of a deck of cards, a slice of bread should be the size of a CD case, and half a cup of mashed potato, rice, or pasta is about the size of a traditional light bulb.

Healthy eating tip 3: It's not just what you eat, it's how you eat

Healthy Eating

Healthy eating is about more than the food on your plate—it is also about how you think about food. Healthy eating habits can be learned and it is important to slow down and think about food as nourishment rather than just something to gulp down in between meetings or on the way to pick up the kids.

Nutrients that are always listed in the panel are: energy (kilojoules), protein, fat (total), saturated fat, carbohydrate (total), sugars and sodium. Additional nutrients such as vitamins and minerals are also listed, usually to support any nutritional claims the product is making.

Let’s take a closer look at this nutrition information panel for cereal bars.

Look for ‘Sugars’ on the Nutrition Information Panel of your product label. ‘Sugars’ is a total of added sugars and naturally occurring sugars.

The Heart Foundation recommends that Australians limit their intake of foods containing high amounts of added sugars. There are many names for added sugars, so look in the ingredients list for: sucrose, glucose, high fructose corn syrup, maltose, dextrose, raw sugar, cane sugar, malt extract and molasses.

Sugars occur naturally in fruit (fructose) and dairy foods (lactose). So while low fat milk may have higher levels of naturally occurring sugar (lactose), you’re also getting the goodness of calcium, protein and other nutrients. Other low fat dairy products and fresh or dried fruit can be higher in naturally occurring sugar and still be nutritious when eaten as part of a balanced diet.

When a product label says ‘No Added Sugar’ the product may contain naturally occurring sugars e.g. lactose (milk sugar) and fructose (fruit sugar), but no additional sugars have been added to the product.

Made up of mostly added sugar or saturated fat, a chocolate bar or soft drink is rightly considered to be a poor food choice because it’s also low in nutrients so all it gives your body is kilojoules with few nutrients.

Foods with the Tick must meet strict levels of kilojoules. As sugar provides kilojoules, this limits the amount of sugar that a Tick product may contain.

In Australia, the latest government recommendations do not specify a daily limit for carbohydrate, sugar or added sugar intake. However for the prevention of heart disease and other chronic disease, it is suggested that all carbohydrate intake be between 45%-65% of your daily energy intake.

What are carbohydrates?

Many people think of rice, potatoes and pasta as 'carbs' but that's only a small part of the huge range of foods know as carbohydrates. All fruit and vegetables, all breads and all cereal products are carbohydrates as well as sugars and sugary foods.

However, every now and then we get a “jolt”. Our bodies need to “tell” us something. We may get a pain or an ache; some indication that something has changed and needs to be addressed.

This can be from aches and pains when we exercise (not the usual “workout” feelings but something different which makes you know that you need to call a halt to your physical activity, at least for the moment) to a sore throat or the sniffles, which your body uses to indicate that it is in “Houston We Have A Problem” mode alerting you to the fact that it is busy dealing with an “unwanted intruder” (and which lets us know that it could use some extra help in the form of medical intervention either from the pharmacy or by a visit to your GP).

My body has recently been telling me that something is not right. It started with some stomach pain…and then ended up with me having to camp in the smallest room and then turned into a sickness bug. It kept me awake and if I did try to eat or drink something my body would very definitely tell me “no”. It is probably a virus I have a raised temperature and generally feel poorly.

My initial reaction was to go to bed on Sunday afternoon to see if that saw off the initial stomach pains. It didn’t. I wondered if it was because I needed to eat something (remembering that I hadn’t eaten very much the day before) and so tried that, but my body quickly decided to expel any food and so I decided to see if sipping apple juice would help. That was equally unsuccessful. What was successful was my body’s attempts to let me know that something wasn’t working properly. It had made that perfectly clear to me. It was telling me what it did and didn’t want.

Our bodies are great for that. It is always amazing when pregnant women get cravings for something they would never dream of eating pre-or-post-pregnancy. Or when you get that feeling that you just “know” that your body is in need of fresh vegetables or a piece of fish or meat.

I am sure that in a few days time my body will start “behaving normally” again. It will let me know when it is ready to resume normal service. I will get my appetite back; food and fluid will be retained and my sleep will return to its usual routine. But for now my body is making me do what it needs me to do. It has made me refocus on just how brilliant my body is and made me review all those occasions when I “override” it. When I push past something that I really should pay attention to, and my brilliant body does it’s very best to do what I am asking of it, even though it is letting me know that “all is not well”.

When I once again firing on all cylinders I am going to try to remember what the past few days have felt like. I will try to remember that my body has the right to say “no”, and that I should listen to it.

So whatever you are doing… take a little time to really concentrate on what your body is telling you… if you do, it will be even more brilliant.

According to a Food Standard’s Agency study, nine out of 10 packed lunches contain foods high in sugar, salt and saturates and fewer than half contain fruit. Here’s how to pack a nutritious lunch for your kids…

Use wholegrain or wholemeal bread, rolls and pitta and try ciabatta, mini baguettes, bagels and raisin or sun dried tomato bread for variety

Pack pasta or rice salads instead of sandwiches from time to time

Cut fat by using less butter, spread or mayo in sandwiches and choose low-fat fillings like lean ham, turkey, chicken, tuna in water, cottage cheese, Edam or banana

Add two portions of fruit – don’t just stick to apples and pears, though. For variety, add grapes, fruit salad, a slice of melon, a small box of raisins or a can of fruit in juice

Include cherry tomatoes, carrot and pepper sticks and add salad to sarnies

In the winter, fill a flask with vegetable, tomato or carrot soup – or even a casserole or stew.

Replace cakes, biscuits and chocolate with scones, fruit bread or low-sugar cereal bars (check the labels)

Swap fizzy drinks for water, unsweetened fruit juice, fruit smoothies, cartons of semi-skimmed milk or unsweetened yogurt drinks.

Healthy Snacks for Children and Teenagers

Fresh fruit – chop it into bite-sized pieces for young children to make it easier to eat or buy packs of ready-prepared fresh fruit slices or chunks

Mini boxes of dried fruit such as raisins or small packs of apricots or mixed fruit

Small packs of chocolate-covered raisins or nuts (avoid giving nuts to young children because of the risk of choking)

Chopped up vegetables such as carrot, celery and pepper sticks and cherry tomatoes with a favourite dip (look for those low in salt and fat if you’re buying ready-made dips)

Fresh popcorn made without salt or sugar

Wholemeal toast with peanut butter and banana or low-fat soft cheese and tomato

Fruit smoothie

Unsweetened yogurt drinks or a pot of low-fat fruit yogurt or fromage frais

High-fibre cereal with semi-skimmed milk

Wholemeal sandwiches filled with lean meat, chicken, tuna in water, cheese or egg and salad.

Small packets of unsalted nuts and seeds – try mixing with dried fruit.

The main appeal of keeping your fat intake low and eating starchy carbohydrate foods instead is that you can enjoy so much more food. You can relish vast quantities of starchy, high fibre foods. Whilst a high-fat snack is over in seconds, you are still munching on an alternative carbo food. It is possible to eat a whole meal for the equivalent calorific value of one packet of crisps!

Red Meat

Use smaller quantities of meat in meals and larger quantities of beans, vegetables or pasta. Use lean cuts of meat or trim off any visible fat.

Poultry

Most of the fat content of chicken is just under the skin, so remove the skin before cooking and the fat comes away with it. Try organic chicken or turkey - the flavour of the meat is different compared with intensively produced birds which can be rather tasteless. You get a better eating experience, the birds get a better life!

Overcoming an eating disorder involves rediscovering who you are beyond your eating habits, weight, and body image. It also involves learning to recognize and deal with your emotions in healthy ways, rather than using food—whether by obsessing about it, avoiding it, or overeating—as a substitute.

Heart disease is a worldwide problem and the leading cause of death among Americans. The good news is that over the years, nutrition experts have come a long way in determining what's good for our hearts. Things like alcohol and fat aren't the evil things doctors once thought they were. The trick is to have the right kinds of fats and to drink alcohol in moderation. There isn't any one magic food that can guarantee a healthy heart, but adding certain foods to your diet on a regular basis can go a long way to helping you to avoid the emergency room or operating table.

We'll get to some specific foods in our top five list, but what most people should know is that a whole-foods approach to eating is the healthiest way to go. By whole-foods, we don't mean the trendy grocery store that puts a dent in your bank account. We're talking food in its most natural state. For example, raw veggies are best, followed by lightly steamed or sautéed. Fresh potatoes with the skin on are loaded with vitamins and nutrients, but potato chips will clog your arteries. Whole grains like oatmeal are great for you, but sugary, processed instant oatmeal packets lack many of the healthful properties of their unprocessed cousin.