4 Shares

If you want to keep your nutrition in balance, it’s not a pyramid that you should be basing your meal choices on, but a square. In this episode, Jen shares why the pyramid isn’t balanced and breaks down the foods and the portions that you should be eating to maintain good health.

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SHOWNOTES

As a naturopath I see the food pyramid as square – yes square!

So, what is the food pyramid? The first food pyramid was first published in Sweden in 1974. This was developed further in 1992 by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and was called the “Food Guide Pyramid” or “Eating Right Pyramid” and Australia followed suit.

It was updated again in 2005 to “MyPyramid” and was then replaced by “MyPlate” in 2011. But it’s still not balanced.

The food square

When it comes to eating and choosing the right portions, imaging your plate is a square.

Water

As you can see the first point on the square is water. The reason this is the first part is because your body is 70% is made up of water. Bottom line is that you need 33ml of water per kilo per day just to operate. That’s not taking into consideration high amounts of exercise, dry environments or hot temperatures where you are sweating. Water is a top priority – it really is.

Fruits and vegetables

Most people think they should have five to seven servings of fruit and vegetables, but statistically we need nine servings or 4.5 cups. Sadly, many people don’t get anywhere near that many servings.

When it comes to your fruits and vegetables you want to be choosing different colours and also focusing on those that have high fibre to ensure you are giving your body what it needs to work properly.

Protein

The next point is protein. Protein is the building blocks of our lives and it’s really important in our diet.

Get your protein from:

If you are a meat eater get grass fed (you want it close to nature)
Lentil and legumes
Nuts and seeds
Dairy (if you have a sensitivity to dairy and gluten this can be a symptom of low enzymes – I’ll talk more to this in another episode)

Carbohydrates

In episode 4 I talked at length about no bum glue! If you haven’t listened to that episode – go back and listen to it. Again, we want your carbohydrates as close to nature as possible so have the brown breads, brown rice and brown pasta.

Fats

The last points is the essential fatty acids. Bottom line, we’ve got saturated fats that come from meat and dairy and we’ve got fats that come from Omega 3 (fish and flaxseed oil), 6 (avocado, nuts and seeds) and 9 (olive oil, nuts and seeds). The Omega 3, 6 and 9 are the good fats.

We’re meant to be having 4:1 good fat to saturated fat but in the western diet its reversed at 10:1 saturated fat to good fat.

So, the Healthy Life Hacks I want to leave you with today are:

Get your 33ml per kilo per day or water in
Go for grass fed protein or organic if vego/vegan – make sure you’re having the right portions
NO BUM GLUE! It’s not negotiable
Start eating the good oils – and enough of them

Are you looking for more great resources? Get a free copy of my Feed Your Body ebook here and be sure to explore my blog while you are there.

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