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Eating A Variety Of Foods

Going hand-in-hand with my previous step comes the second of the three basics of healthy eating: variety.

One of the places that calorie- or nutrient-restricted diets fail is there insistence on a limited number of types of food or dishes. Fad diets that restrict whole catgories of the USDA food pyramid or limit choices within a grouping are pretty much guaranteed to fail through boredom and also to damage long-term health by ignoring basic body chemistry.

This is also a major failing of, from what I can tell, an enormous number of Americans eating habits (or should that be “a number of enormous Americans eating habits”?), with or without diets. When we are not thinking about or enjoying our food, it is easy to fall into a food rut and eat the same things over and over, day in and day out.

To date, nutritionists have identified some forty-odd nutrients that are essential to good health. Unsuprisingly, these nutrients exist in varying levels in a wide variety of meats, fruits, vegetables, grains and dairy products. Having seen and used the complex computer programs necessary to ensure adequate amounts of each nutrient while still managing caloric intake, I know that it is a daunting task, even for a trained nutritionist.

Therefore, on the advice of many many food and nutrition experts, the way to ensure that we have adequate nutrition without resorting to becoming dietary experts is to simply eat as wide a vaiety of foods as possible. Whatever food guide you use, be it the “old” or “new” USDA food pyramid, the mediterranean plan, etc, the important things to remember are:

• Eat from as many of the food groups as you can afford to every day.
• Vary the foods within a group that you eat

Not only is it important to keep the food groups balanced, but it is equally important to vary the foods you choose from that group. Eating rice every day as your grain/starch food robs you of both the variety available to you and of essential nutrients present in other grains and starches, but not in rice. Shake it up a bit, try something new. Your body, and your taste buds, will thank you.

Next Week: Doing The Balancing Act

Read the rest of this series:

• Part 1 - Scheduling
• Part 2 - Variety
• Part 3 - Moderation
• Part 4 - Being Picky
• Part 5 - Can The Canned Goods
• Part 6 - Get Your Kitchen In Order
• Part 7 - Think Like A Chef
• Part 8 - Technique
• Part 9 - Mise en Place