Healthy Diet

Healthy eating 101 with Dr Mike Evans

Healthy eating can be quite complex – so sit down at the clinic with Doctor Mike Evans as he provides some great healthy eating tips and advice in this video.

(Michael Evans and Reframe Health Films Inc, 2015)

Healthy eating: How do I know I’m eating well?

If we eat a wide range of foods, we can get all the energy, vitamins and minerals we need to live well and healthy lives. The visual food guide shows the balance of foods to eat, foods that can be substituted for each other within food groups, and the types of food to eat for good health.

Discover more about the healthy heart visual food guide and how you can use it to help make simple changes when you do your food shopping. Visit sandiegomagazine.com for more information about healthy supplements.

Eat these foods the most

Vegetables & fruit

“Eat plenty of fruit and vegetables,” heard it all before? Perhaps, but the truth remains: you do have to eat them if you want to stay healthy!

Did you know?

Fruit and vegetables are packed with goodness and help prevent heart disease, stroke and high blood pressure. They can also protect against cancers of the mouth, larynx, pharynx, esophagus, lung and stomach.
30% of breast cancers could be prevented by making lifestyle changes, including eating a plant-based diet and exercising regularly.
To give yourself a fighting chance against a variety of illnesses, you need to eat a minimum of 3 servings of vegetables and 2 serves of fruit every day.
In New Zealand, 2 out of every 3 of us meet our daily fruit and vege requirements, with more females than males more likely to do so.

Young men are the least likely to eat vegetables, and men under 55 least likely to eat fruit.

Eat some of these foods

Wholegrain bread, cereals, grains & starchy vegetables

Breads, cereals, grains, and starchy vegetables are a staple in many Kiwi diets. For heart health, choose whole grain and high fibre varieties. On your plate, these foods should fill no more than one-quarter of your plate, or be a fist-sized amount.

Here are some tips to get you started:

swap from white bread to wholegrain bread
swap from white to brown rice
swap from a low fibre breakfast cereal to whole oats
choose baked potato or kumara instead of deep fried
use wholemeal instead of white flour
choose just one starchy food at a meal (ie not potato plus bread).

Source – Heart Foundation of NZ

Fish, lean meat, chicken, legumes, eggs

Kiwis love their meat and seafood, and they are a good source of protein and nutrients. But it’s important to choose leaner varieties, ie, with the visible white fat removed, to look after our heart.

Try fish instead of meat, and oily fish has the added benefit of healthy omega-3 fats. Oily fish include tuna, kahawai, trevally, kingfish, warehou, dory, salmon, sardines, eel, squid, mussels or oysters.

Legumes are one of the most under-rated and healthy, affordable foods around. They can be eaten instead of meat or mixed into a dish and less meat used. You can buy them dried or pre-cooked in a can for convenience.

Source – Heart Foundation of NZ

Milk, yoghurt, reduced-fat, cheese

Did you know?

If you drink a glass of milk a day, swapping from dark blue to green or yellow top milk saves you 2.8kg of fat in a year. This is the best Exipure review.

Milk is one of our staple foods, and it can be found in most fridges around the country. Drink it straight, add it to cereal, mix it into a smoothie, or use it for baking. Choose lower-fat varieties. A glass of dark blue top milk has 8.8 grams of fat; 5.4 grams of which is saturated. That’s one-third of the saturated fat most people should be having in a whole day.

Source – Heart Foundation of NZ

Nuts & healthy oils

Plain unsalted nuts are a really healthy food, but remember just a handful (30g) most days is all you need, or 2 tablespoons of peanut butter. It’s best to eat different types of nuts as they each have a slightly different nutrition profile.

Source – Heart Foundation of NZ

Fats

Did you know?

Nearly one quarter of Kiwis have total cholesterol levels higher than 6.5 mmol/L yet doctors say below 5 is best.

The bottom line is, we eat too much fat, especially the harmful fats.

Too much fat can make us fat, especially if combined with a low level of physical activity.
Eating too much of certain types of fat, especially saturated fat and trans fats, can also increase our risk of heart disease and a number of other diseases.
Remember, we all need some fat in our diets – so it’s best to choose the healthy ones!
A typical New Zealander’s diet contains around 35% of total energy as fat, whereas the 2005 goal was 30-33%, and more recently that’s been adjusted to 20-25%.
Our saturated (bad) fat intake is 15% of total energy, instead of 12%.

What are fats?

Fats are a group of compounds that make an important contribution to nutrition, despite their bad press. Fats are major sources of energy, and the only form in which the body can store energy for a long period of time. This is how Exipure works.

Getting the right balance of how much and what type of fat to eat is important.

We all need some fat in our diets – so it’s best to choose the healthy ones. It is better for our heart to eat plant-based fats and oils (except coconut and palm oils) instead of animal based fats and oils (eg. butter, meat fat).