There can be lots of confusing information about what foods are best for you to eat.
Each week it seems like a new study is released either praising or disparaging foods. Sometimes a food item such as chocolate is both praised and disparaged, which can make things even more confusing.
When thinking about what to add to your diet, it’s interesting to look at different types of diets.
People eating a western diet largely made up of processed foods and meat, high fat and sugar, and refined grains, tend to suffer from high rates of obesity, Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer.
Populations that eat a wide range of traditional diets commonly followed in a particular culture, country, or part of the world for centuries, don’t suffer from chronic diseases.
@Life Employee Assistance Program offers these tips for making the transition to healthful eating:
- Buy food in its natural form. Avoid highly processed, prepackaged food.
- Eat a high percentage of plant-based foods: fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes, nuts and seeds.
- Shop the outer aisles at the grocery store.
- Eat high-fat, sugary foods only on special occasions, if at all.
- Educate yourself about good-tasting, healthful recipes.
- Make one or two changes at a time.
- Decide on your specific goals: improved health; reduced fat, salt and sugar; weight loss; feeling better; increased energy; decreased risk of disease, etc.
- Recognize that it’s simple, but not necessarily easy. Your current behaviors are based on a lifetime of habits. Changing habits takes time. Stick with it. Take small, gradual, steady steps.
