Nutritious Food Choices – The Next Step

Nutritious food choices are the next step once you understand the Dietary Guidelines 2010 for Americans. In other words for a healthy life style as free of disease as possible, it’s time to walk the talk by choosing the healthy foods that you eat.

Those healthy choices can be made from the food groups that are available in the correct proportions to create healthy meals, and there are plenty of healthy recipes out there, which leave no reason other than reluctance and choosing not to follow the guidelines not to be healthy.Using the food groups as part of the new choosemyplate, even kids can choose healthy foods and eat healthy.

The way to load up the new food plate during a meal is:

Orange Grains Group – at least half of the grains that you choose should be whole grains.The grains group consists of any foods that are made of wheat, rice, oats, cornmeal, barley or another cereal grain. Other grains are bread, pasta, oatmeal, breakfast cereals, tortillas, and grits. There are two subgroups of grains, whole grains and refined grains.

Purple Proteins Group – eat lean proteins.Foods that are made from meat, poultry, seafood, beans and peas, eggs, processed soy products, nuts, and seeds are considered part of the protein foods group.

Green Vegetables Group – choose different vegetables to acquire different vitamins and minerals.Any vegetable or 100% vegetable juice is a member of the vegetable group. These vegetables may be raw, cooked, fresh, frozen, canned, dried/dehydrated, whole, cut-up or mashed.

Magenta Fruits Group – choose different types of fruits to acquire different vitamins and minerals. Any fruit or 100% fruit juice is considered a fruit group member. These fruits may be fresh, canned, frozen, dried, whole, cut-up or pureed.

Blue Dairy Group – choose calcium rich foods. Any liquid milk product and many foods made from milk are considered part of the milk group. Most of these dairy products should be fat-free or low fat, especially since excess fat in the diet is one of the biggest contributors to being overweight or obese.

Those foods that are made from milk with little to no calcium, such as cream cheese, cream and butter are not part of the dairy group. Foods that retain their calcium content are part of the dairy group. Soy milk that is calcium fortified is part of the dairy group.

The new guidelines are less rigid in many ways than the old food pyramid, and emphasize eating what you want, but in moderation, instead of eliminating foods from the diet. The key is moderation. By following these guidelines it makes it easier to make nutritious food choices.

To see a full list of the food groups for making nutritious food choices from click on the link to choosemyplate.gov/foodgroups

For other information on nutrition and nutritious food choices some great references are:

• Nutrition – Fourth Edition by Paul Insel, Don Ross, Kimberley McMahon, and Melissa Bernstein

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