Can you imagine a life without food? Food is a big part of our culture and is vital for life, but used inappropriately it can have devastating effects on the body. Many years ago not enough food was our biggest issue, a few years ago food was readily available but our activity was high enough to keep things in check. Now days the scales have tipped leading to readily available, high energy dense foods in line with a reduction in our need to move leading to obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, and so on.

Unfortunately with a rampaging food industry spurned on by the industrial and technological revolutions, today we live in world where there is too many options, and the lines between what is healthy eating and what is not are often blurred.

Here are five steps to healthy eating. A pocket guide to ensuring you have vitality and the appropriate nutrients for a long and healthy life.

1. Reduce fat intake to less than 50-60 grams per day and choose meals that contain less than 10 grams of fat Fat has rightly gained bad press in the past twenty years. The message is getting through that it is the amount and type of fat that your consume that is important. Unsaturated fats (predominately plant based) are good, saturated fats (animal based) are the type of fat that goes hard on your plate and hard in your arteries. Low fat eating is essential for healthy living.
2. Aim for 5-9 serves of fruit and veggies each day Fruit and veggies deliver two of the most important factors for health – anti-oxidants and dietary fibre. Anti-oxidants neutralize free radicals that damage cells which in turn can lead to cancer and are linked to heart disease, diabetes and even skin problems. No person can escape free radicals as these are produced by the body in many processes. Both soluble and insoluble fibres protect the bowels, keep you regular, and may even lower cholesterol. As well as delivering carbohydrate and the essential vitamins and minerals, these are your power play for healthy eating. Make vegetables the main component of at least two of your meals, and snacking on fruit is an easy way of achieving the recommended serves.
3. Look at your portion sizes – do you need two plates each time you eat and how big are your plates? This has been the hidden component of the obesity epidemic. Whilst the focus has weighed heavily on dietary fat and more recently over consumption of refined carbohydrates, portion sizes have been chipping away at our health over the decades. This is one of the reasons why people who think they are eating healthy still put on weight. Sure you can eat all the right stuff, but if you have too much of it then it has to go somewhere!
4. Reduce the energy density of the foods you are eating. Aim for less than 12kJ/g Welcome to the new player in healthy eating – energy density (ED). This simply refers to the amount of energy per gram the food delivers and is a great guide as to whether a food could be contributing to your bulge. World leading obesity expert Dr. Garry Egger calls this the 'end-game' of weight management. Because manufacturers have to list ingredient measures such as kilojoules on packets, this is a fool proof measure of the fattening capabilities of foods. Whilst universal cut-off points are yet to be agreed on, Dr. Egger believes around 12kJ/g is the starting point of high energy dense foods and below 7kJ/grams are low. Low is best.
5. Choose your energy wisely – go Lower GI Professor Jenny Brand-Miller and her team at the University of Sydney have been working away at the many health benefits of eating low GI carbohydrates. GI is a rating of the amount of glucose entered into the blood stream over a 2 hour period after consuming a meal. Consider substituting low GI foods for high GI foods as this will give your body the best opportunity to burn the energy before it's stored as fat, reduce strain on the pancreas, and fight against fatigue and hunger. Low GI foods are rated below 55 by the team of experts at www.glycemicindex.com.

For more information on diet and nutrition go to www.lifestylemedicine.net.au.

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