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Healthy Eating Plan

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Healthy Eating Plan
Rose Lawson
Axia College
October 3, 2010

The Pyramid Guide is a simple, trustworthy guide to choosing a healthy diet. Its foundation is daily exercise and weight control, since these two related elements strongly influence your chances of staying healthy. The Healthy Eating Pyramid builds from there, showing that you should eat more foods from the bottom part of the pyramid vegetables, whole grains and less from the top red meat, refined grains, sugary drinks, and salt. The food diary provide me with the necessary nutrition data based upon my age, gender, weight and height in terms of developing a health eating plan in the near future. The most practical solution is to create a healthy eating plan and stick to it. A healthy eating plan consists of the amount of nutrients that I should intake on a daily basis. The nutrient in which I should consume is based on a specific calorie intake that is according to a person’s health profile.
There are five food groups that one must take into consideration prior to creating a healthy eating plan. The five food groups consist of grains, vegetables, fruits, milk, and meat and beans. The meat and beans group fall under one category of the food group. Grains consist of brown rice, cereal, bread, and oatmeal. Grains are high in fiber, B vitamins, magnesium, iron, and complex carbohydrates. Vegetables consist of foods such as corn, green beans, potatoes, greens, and cabbage, etc. The nutrients in which vegetables provide include iron, fiber, magnesium, vitamin A, and vitamin C. The next food group on the pyramid is the “fruit group”, which consists of apples, oranges, strawberries, peaches, pears, and other delicious varieties of fruit. Potassium, fiber, and vitamin’s A and C are nutrients in which are provided by fruit. Milk is the food group that consists of milk, cheese, ice cream, and yogurt. Some believe foods in the milk group are also called dairy products because they are high in vitamin D. The milk group along with calcium and protein supplies the nutrient vitamin D.
Based upon my current eating habits documented in the food Diary checkpoint I need to cut back on greasy foods such as fried chicken, burgers, French fries and other food high in fats and intake more calcium, vegetables, fruits and fibers in order to begin eating healthy. Also tips on eating healthy such as eating more whole grains, substitute a whole-grain product for a refined product – such as eating whole-wheat bread instead of white bread or brown rice instead of white rice. It’s important to substitute the whole-grain product for the refined one, rather than adding the whole-grain product.
My nutritional recommendations based on my customized food pyramid results were very interesting as well as informative in terms of eating healthy. It suggested for me to eat more dark green vegetables at least 3 times a week, orange vegetables, dry beans and peas, starchy vegetables and other vegetables. Any vegetable or 100% vegetable juice counts as a member of the vegetable group. Vegetables may be raw or cooked; fresh, frozen, canned, or dried/dehydrated; and may be whole, cut-up, or mashed. · Brown rice or whole-wheat pasta. Try brown rice stuffing in baked green peppers or tomatoes and whole-wheat macaroni in macaroni and cheese.
· Whole grains in mixed dishes, such as barley in vegetable soup or stews and bulgur wheat in casserole or stir-fries.
· Whole grain pilaf with a mixture of barley, wild rice, brown rice, broth and spices. For a special touch, stir in toasted nuts or chopped dried fruit.
· Experiment by substituting whole wheat or oat flour for up to half of the flour in pancake, waffle, muffin or other flour-based recipes. They may need a bit more leavening.
· Whole-grain bread or cracker crumbs in meatloaf.
· Rolled oats or a crushed, unsweetened whole grain cereal as breading for baked chicken, fish, veal cutlets, or eggplant Parmesan.
· Unsweetened, whole grain ready-to-eat cereal as croutons in salad or in place of crackers with soup.
· Freeze leftover cooked brown rice, bulgur, or barley. Heat and serve it later as a quick side dish.
As Snacks:
· Snack on ready-to-eat, whole grain cereals such as toasted oat cereal.
· Add whole-grain flour or oatmeal when making cookies or other baked treats.
· Whole-grain snack chip, such as baked tortilla chips.
· Popcorn, a whole grain, can be a healthy snack with little or no added salt and butter.
There are several ways I can begin to implement living and eating healthy in my daily life that consist of exercising, focus on food, not grams, go with plants, cutting back on America staples, take nature and multivitamins. The first step is to start with daily exercise. A healthy diet is built on a base of regular exercise, which keeps calories in balance and weight in check. Exercise doesn’t have to be in the gym it consists of every day routines such dancing, walking, gardening, and playing basketball. Secondly, I will focus more on food and not grams. The healthy eating pyramid recommendation on dietary fats makes a clear break from the past, when all fats were considered bad. The guidelines now emphasize that intake of trans fats should be as low as possible and that saturated fat should be limited. There is no longer an artificially low cap on fat intake. The latest advice recommends getting between 20 and 35 percent of daily calories from fats and recognizes the potential health benefits of monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. Thirdly, I can go with plants that consist of choosing plenty of vegetables, fruits, whole grains and healthy fats such as olive and canola oil. Fourthly, I can cut back on red meat, refined grains, potatoes, sugary drinks and salty snacks are part of American culture, but they’re also really unhealthy. Go for a plant-based diet rich in non-starchy vegetables, fruits, and whole grains and consume more fish and poultry. Finally, I can take a multivitamins that is a good nutrition insurance policy against deficiencies but is far less important for health than the healthy food patterns. By Choosing a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts and healthy oils, and low in red meat and unhealthy fats is an excellent way in restoring by the nutrition in my body.
The list of various classes of nutrients currently in my diet consists of Carbohydrates that are the major source of energy for the body. They are composed mostly of the elements carbon (C), hydrogen (H), and oxygen (O). Through the bonding of these elements, carbohydrates provide energy for the body in the form of kilocalories. Carbohydrates come in a variety of sizes. The smallest carbohydrates are the simple sugars, also known as monosaccharides and disaccharides, meaning that they are made up of one or two sugar molecules . The best known simple sugar is table sugar, which is also known as sucrose , a disaccharide. Other simple sugars include the monosaccharides glucose and fructose, which are found in fruits, and the disaccharides, which include sucrose, lactose (found in milk), and maltose. Examples of foods high in complex carbohydrates include potatoes, beans, and vegetables. Another type of complex carbohydrate is dietary fiber . However, although fiber is a complex carbohydrate made up of linked sugar molecules, the body cannot break apart the sugar linkages and, unlike other complex carbohydrates, it passes through the body with minimal changes. Although carbohydrates are not considered to be an essential nutrient, the body depends on them as its primary energy source. The body utilizes most carbohydrates to generate glucose, which serves as the basic functional molecule of energy within the cells of the human body (glucose is broken down to ultimately produce adenosine triphosphate, or ATP, the fundamental unit of energy). When the supply of carbohydrates is too low to adequately supply all the energy needs of the body, amino acids from proteins are converted to glucose. However, the typical American individual consumes more than adequate amounts of carbohydrates to prevent this utilization of protein. Proteins is another form of class of nutrients within my eating plans . Proteins are formed by the linking of different combinations of the twenty common amino acids found in food. Of these, ten are essential for the human in the synthesis of body proteins. Protein may be found in a variety of food sources. Proteins from animal sources (meat, poultry, milk, fish) are considered to be of high biological value because they contain all of the essential amino acids. Proteins from plant sources (wheat, corn, rice, and beans) are considered to be of low biological value because an individual plant source does not contain all of the essential amino acids. Therefore, combinations of plant sources must be used to provide these nutrients.

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