Healthy Eating

Food Glorious Food!

• Fruit and Vegetables
• Bread, Cereals and Potatoes
• Meat, fish eggs and alternatives
• Milk and Dairy
• Fats and Sugars 
• Salt - eat no more than 6g a day!

These days it’s all too easy to be tempted by less-healthy foods but with a little thought and planning you can enjoy fabulous tasty food that will improve your overall health and wellbeing.

Eating healthily can have fantastic benefits like helping you feel better, sleep better and have more energy to do all the things you enjoy! Eating more of the right foods can also help you to maintain a healthy weight, which in turn can reduce your risk of diabetes, arthritis and high blood pressure.

There are five main groups of food fruit and vegetables, bread, cereals and potatoes, milk and dairy foods, meat, fish and alternatives and fatty and sugary foods.

Fruit and Vegetables

You should aim to eat 5 portions of fruit or vegetables every day. These can be a mixture of fresh, tinned, frozen, cooked, juiced or dried – the choice is yours.

Want to know how much is a portion? Below are a few examples to get you started!

• One piece of medium sized fruit – e.g. orange, apple or banana
• One slice of large fruit – e.g. melon or pineapple
• One handful of grapes or two handfuls of cherries or berry fruits
• One tablespoon of dried fruit
• A serving (about 100g) of vegetables
• A side salad
• A glass of fruit or vegetable juice

Bread, Cereals and Potatoes

This food group contains breads, chapatti, pasta, rice, grains (e.g. maize, millet), cereals (e.g. oats, cornmeal, couscous) and potatoes (including sweet potato, yam and plantain).

Potatoes and grains are healthy and help keep hunger at bay as they are also very filling too. Nutritionists suggest that this food group should make up 47 –50% of your diet.

Wholegrain breads, pasta and brown rice are particularly good choices as they still contain the whole grain, including the bran and the germ. Wholegrain choices are known as unrefined carbohydrates and are higher in fibre, keeping you fuller for longer.

Examples of refined carbohydrates are white rice, white bread sugary cereals and white pasta. These foods have had their high fibre parts (the bran and the germ) removed from the grain. Eating a bowl of porridge for breakfast is the healthiest way to give yourself an energy boost.

Meat, fish, eggs and alternatives

Also contained in this group are poultry, pulses, beans, nuts, seeds, soya products and vegetable protein foods like quorn and seitan. All foods contained in this group are rich in protein, which is why they are all grouped together. Red meat is also one of the best sources of iron for your body.

Nutritionists recommend that protein makes up 10 – 15% of your diet. Eating protein in one or two of your meals per day should give you the protein your body needs. However, it is worth noting that your body is unable to store protein so eating more protein on a few days will not provide your body with its daily requirements!

Milk and Dairy

Milk, cheese, yoghurt and fromage frais all feature in this food group. All these foods are rich in calcium, which is important for growth as it strengthens bones and teeth and helps to maintain your muscles and nerves. The Department of Health recommends that both men and women get 700mg of calcium each day to assist healthy bones. You can achieve this intake through:

• a pint of milk
• two small tubs of yoghurt
• around 80g of hard cheese

You don’t need to eat full fat products either; exactly the same amount of calcium is contained in half fat products, which is good news if you’re watching your calorie intake.

Fats and Sugars

Foods containing high amounts of fats and sugars are often those that are the most tempting, like cakes, biscuits, chocolates and pies! Foods in this group are high in energy and calories so if you eat too many you are likely to put on weight. Sugar also interacts with the plaque on your teeth, causing tooth decay, another reason to keep sugary foods as a special treat!

Fats

High overall fat intake and particularly high saturated fat is linked with raised blood cholesterol. Cutting fat out of your diet completely isn’t really a good idea; fat does have a role to play in a healthy diet particularly in transporting fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K throughout your body. Understanding the difference in fats can help you incorporate more of the healthier fats into your diet and less of the bad!

Saturated fat is generally solid at room temperature and is usually from animal sources (the white fat you can see on red meat and underneath poultry skin. Eating too much saturated fat can increase the amount of cholesterol in the blood, which increases the chance of developing heart disease.

The following all contain a high amount of saturated fat:

• Butter and lard
• Cakes, biscuits and chocolate
• Pies and pastries
• Hard cheese

Trans or hydrogenated fat

Trans fats are formed when liquid vegetable oils are turned into solid fats through a process of hydrogenation. Like saturated fats, trans fats raise the type of cholesterol in the blood that increases the risk of developing heart disease. Some evidence suggests that the effects of these trans fats may be worse than saturated fats.

Trans fats are often found in:

• Biscuits and cakes
• Fast food
• Pastry
• Some margarines

These sorts of foods are usually high in saturated fat, sugar and salt so if you want to improve your wellbeing you should keep these to a minimum.

Unsaturated fat is usually liquid at room temperature and usually comes from vegetable sources. They provide us with the essential fatty acids that the body needs and can actually reduce cholesterol levels making them a healthier choice than the saturated version. Monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats are both included in this group.

Foods high in unsaturated fat are:

• Oily fish
• Avocados
• Nuts and seeds
• Sunflower, rapeseed and olive oil
• Vegetable oils

So how can you cut back your fat intake?

• Choose lean cuts of meat and poultry and trim off any visible fat
• Decanter oil into a pump spray for use in cooking, you will use a lot less!
• Ask for no butter (or spread) on sandwiches – you won’t notice the difference if the filling is moist
• Choose lower fat versions of dairy foods whenever you can as these can hold a lot of fat.
• When choosing foods in the supermarket compare the labels so you can pick those with less total fat or less saturated fat. On a weight-for-weight basis out of crisps, pizza and cheddar cheese, cheddar cheese contain most fat, get reading those labels!
• Grill, bake, poach or steam rather than frying or roasting so you don’t need to add any extra fat
• Cut back on crusts! When making pies just make a lid or a base as less pastry means less fat

Salt – eat no more than 6g a day!

You might think you don’t eat a lot of salt each day, especially if you don’t add it to your food. But without looking at food labels don’t be too sure. Out of a packet of ready salted crisps, a bowl of tinned soup and a ready-made shepherd’s pie, the latter, which may seem the healthiest option, contains most salt.

Adults should eat no more than 6g of salt a day. Children should have even less. Eating too much salt can raise your blood pressure, which can increase the risk of heart disease and stroke.

Three quarters of the salt we eat comes from processed food, such as breakfast cereals, soups, sauces, bread, biscuits and ready meals. With this in mind you could easily be eating too much salt without realising it.

However there are ways that you can reduce the amount of salt that you eat:

• Avoid adding salt to your food when cooking, use herbs, spices and fresh lemon juice to flavour your food instead.
• Don’t add salt to your food at the table. You might not even notice the taste difference and your taste buds will soon adapt.
• Check the nutrition labels when buying food. Most food labels show the amount of sodium per 100g, rather than the salt per serving. You can convert sodium to salt by multiplying the amount of sodium by 2.5g
• 1 gram of sodium = 2.5g salt