Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.
Hippocrates
The age-old expression “you are what you eat” couldn’t be more true. While you won’t literally transform into the pasta or packet of chips that you’re munching on, your dietary choices will play a significant role in your health and energy levels.
On top of that, the calories that are contained in the foods that you are eating and their macronutrient composition will also determine how much weight you lose or gain, so it's definitely in your interest to learn about the five food groups and begin making smart nutrition decisions that will leave you looking and feeling better.
Join us as we look into how protein, fats, carbs, dairy, fruit and vegetables can be comprised to make up a healthy and balanced diet that will allow you to operate at 100%!
🍚 Carbohydrates
One of the three main nutrients necessary to consume on a regular basis, carbohydrates appear as one of the main food groups in the Eatwell Guide. Despite this, carbohydrates have received a bad rap in recent years.
Low-carb diets focus on cutting down or completely removing this food group from our diets, but this often means that our bodies become sluggish, and we end up having very little energy throughout the day.
Carbohydrates are essential in helping our bodies to function and release energy efficiently. As the Eatwell Guide outlines, this group includes foods such as bread, pasta, potatoes, rice, and cereals.
The guide also says to ‘choose wholegrain or higher feber versions with less added fat, salt and sugar’.
The simplest forms of carbohydrates are those that our body can easily break down into energy. These are simple sugars such as glucose and fructose.
This is why you might often see marathon runners, and other athletes use these simple sugars to fuel their bodies before a workout.
Complex carbs are those that take the body a little longer to break down and use as energy. This also means that they are a slower burning fuel for our bodies, giving longer-lasting energy throughout the day.
Simple carbohydrates
- Contains one or two types of sugar
- Terms: Monosaccharides and disaccharides
- Quickly broken down and absorbed in the body
- Examples: Fructose (found in fruits), Galactose (found in milk)
Complex carbohydrates
- Contains three or more types of sugar
- Term: Polysaccharides
- Has a slower digestion rate than simple carbohydrates
- Examples: Starch (found in potatoes), Cellulose (found in nuts)
So, make sure to incorporate plenty of carbs in your diet if you are engaging in workouts or leading an active lifestyle. This means avoiding refined foods where possible, which include white bread, white rice and pasta and, instead, choosing wholegrain versions that are less processed and release energy more slowly.
🥚Protein
The second of the three, what we call macronutrients, is protein. This nutrient, again, is often misunderstood. The Eatwell Guide highlights a mixture of options in this food group that provides different sources of protein, including fish, eggs, beans and pulses, and meat.
Eatwell Guide
The Guide advises to ‘eat more beans and pulses, two portions of sustainably sourced fish per week, one of which is oily’ and ‘eat less red and processed meat.’
Alternatively, as research has developed in the last 10 years outlining the dangers of consuming too much meat and fish, there are huge health benefits to eating plant-based sources of protein, which can prevent serious illnesses, such as heart disease and stroke.
The egg industry has also been warned against using the words ‘healthy’ or ‘nutritious’ when advertising in recent years, and this is due to the high cholesterol content found in them.
Therefore, nutritionists are stressing that, despite counter-beliefs, the best source of protein comes from beans, pulses, seeds, and green, leafy vegetables, including spinach, broccoli, and peas.
In order to arrive at a number for how much protein you should be incorporating into your diet, you will need to consider your activity level as well as your age. The recommended dietary allowance is 0.36 grams per pound of body weight.
So, let's say you weigh 150 pounds, and then you’d want to consume about 54 grams of protein daily. This information is available in the macronutrient breakdown on the back of any food packaging you find on shelves!
If you work on your feet, live an active lifestyle or are an athlete, then your protein goals are going to be a little north of this figure, likely between 0.5 to 0.9 grams per pound of body weight.
The best way of hitting this figure is to opt for lean protein sources that minimize saturated fat intake. Skinless poultry, fish, and lean cuts of meat with trimmed fat are going to make excellent choices that will help you get there! You can also add various legumes, nuts, and seeds to your meals for plant-based proteins.
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🧈 Fats
The final nutrient out of the three macronutrients and necessary for healthy living is fat. The Eatwell Guide has a very small section that could be labeled as fats but it only focuses on oils and spreads and advises to use these ‘in small amounts’.
This advice is valid when it comes to refined oils and saturated fats such as cheese, butter, and meat but information around fat is often confusing and misrepresented, too.
There are two main types of fats found in the food we eat. These are: saturated fats and unsaturated fats.
Fats are an essential part of a healthy diet because they are a source of essential fatty acids, which the body cannot make on its own. They also help the body to absorb vitamin A, vitamin E and vitamin B. However, the intake of too much fat or the wrong type of fats can be unhealthy for the body.
On the other hand, deficiency of the essential fatty acids found in fats will result in increased susceptibility to infections, poor wound healing and decreased growth.
Saturated fat composition of 10% or less.
🍓🥕Fruit and Vegetables
Fruit and vegetables are a food group that you’re going to want to add to your diet in volume. This is because they are dense in nutrients while containing very few calories. This means that it is very easy to fill yourself while keeping to a set number of calories, making it an excellent dietary choice!
This is the food group that should be eaten in equal measure to carbohydrates. The general advice is to consume five portions of fruit and vegetables per day, but the more you eat, especially in place of unhealthy sugary or salty snacks, the better your overall general health will be.
This is because the food group contains the most diverse source of vitamins and minerals, and sticking to a diet rich in fruit and vegetables will help the body thrive.
Fruits and vegetables also keep the immune system strong, helping to protect the body from illness and disease.
This is because the food group contains the most diverse source of vitamins and minerals, and sticking to a diet rich in fruit and vegetables will help the body thrive.
Fruits and vegetables also keep the immune system strong, helping to protect the body from illness and disease. What is even more enticing about introducing more fruit and vegetables to your diet is that they can substantially reduce your risk of various health conditions.
Making just a small dietary adjustment and having the five servings daily over the long run can lower your risk of heart disease and stroke by up to 13%. Some examples of how you can introduce more of this food group into your diet would be adding vegetables to morning eggs, blending spinach into smoothies, or replacing pasta with spiralized zucchini noodles.
🧀 Dairy
This food group and the consumption of dairy products have become more and more debated. Dairy is a separate food group due to the body’s need for calcium, a nutrient for healthy teeth and bones.
Dairy is rich in calcium and is still considered by many as the best source of this nutrient.
However, recent research has found that although these products contain calcium, they can also contain high amounts of saturated fat. Dairy is also the cause of many intolerances and allergies. Consuming large quantities of dairy-based foods, including milk, cheese, and yoghurt, can be harmful to our bodies and overall health in the long term. There is also an ethical debate surrounding dairy farms.
Instead, dairy can be replaced by plant-based alternatives that are even richer in calcium but without the negative impact.
Foods such as soy or nut-based milk, seeds, beans and pulses, as well as vegetables including kale and okra, all contain enough calcium to avoid dairy altogether.
It is not always easy to understand what our bodies need but having a basic knowledge of the food groups provides a starting point about health and general well-being.
Some clever ways that you can introduce dairy into your diet without the expense of consuming too many calories in the process are opting for low-fat yogurt, cottage cheese, and fortified plant-based alternatives.
By choosing to add these choices to your basket, you’ll have an easier time meeting your daily calcium requirements and having a well-balanced diet without the expense of unnecessary calories! You can find out about good nutrition courses online here.
Maintaining a Healthy and Balanced Diet
Equipped with the knowledge of what exactly constitutes a healthy and balanced diet, you’ll find yourself in a better position to lead the healthy life you want for yourself. This knowledge can be used in a number of ways that will allow you to better fuel your body with what it needs for you to narrow the gap between your current and desired self.
You’ll find yourself being able to eyeball your portions and arrive at more accurate estimates or even just being more continuous as to the amount of calories you are consuming in your meals.
You should find yourself with more confidence, knowing that you are equipped with the knowledge you need to take steps in the direction of whatever health goals you have set yourself. Now, it’s just a matter of taking accountability and having the discipline to make your healthy choices a habit in the long term.
If you want to learn more about food and nutrition, why not find a tutor with Superprof? Take a cooking course in your favorite cuisine or just learn the basics. Whatever you want to learn, Superprof has the right tutor. Countless students and athletes have found a great Superprof nutritionist near them; you can too!
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