The Healthy Eating Plate
In our family we really like the concept of the Healthy Eating Plate to give us guidelines for the relative proportions of different types of foods that we aim to consume within each meal, and also across our the course of our day.
The idea is that we think of our plate being divided into sections that give us the balance of nutrition that we need for our bodies to operate optimally.
Approximately one half of our plate, or our daily consumption, should be vegetables and fruit. We are thinking primarily vegetables here, and we are thinking in terms of variety and colour. Think of all the different colours representing all the different vitamins and minerals our bodies need to perform well and stay healthy.
To give us sustained energy throughout the day, we want around one quarter of our plate to be complex carbohydrates, that release energy slowly and consistently and make sure we are fit and able to perform the activities we want to take part in during our day. If we think of carbohydrates in terms of energy, we can see why it is important that we consume them as part of our overall diet. The important thing is to get the proportion right, and to only consume what we will actually use, otherwise the unused energy will effectively be stored somewhere in our body that we don’t want it to be. We also need to make sure we choose carbohydrates that release slowly, so things like brown rice, gluten free oats, quinoa, for example.
The remaining quarter of our plate is comprised of protein, plus a little bit of healthy fat. Protein is an important building block for our body’s structure, think bones, muscles, cartilage, skin and blood. Hair and nails are mostly made of protein. The body uses protein to build and repair tissues and to make enzymes, hormones, and other body chemicals.
Again, the key is to get the proportion right. The guideline for a portion, is approximately the amount of protein that you can hold in the palm of your hand. Here we are thinking about high quality meat and fish, organic/wild where possible, and plant-based sources of protein like legumes, nuts, chickpeas, lentils.
Healthy fats provide nutrients to help with growth, brain development, skin health, and digestion. Some foods are fat soluble, so we actually need healthy fats to help break them down. With fat, a little goes a long way, so we are thinking of the fat we get from oily fish and nuts and seeds, and from drizzles of cold pressed seed and nut oils, as well as extra virgin olive oil.
The thing we like about this concept is that it is a guideline and can be thought of in terms of trying your best to get the good stuff in. It also means you don’t necessarily need to give up things that you love, you maybe just need to review the proportion they make up of your overall diet, and to choose healthier versions of them most of the time e.g. wholegrain, organic etc as much as you can manage. For a healthy diet to be sustainable, it needs to be realistic and enjoyable, and we find by sticking to this concept as much as we can, we really enjoy our food.
