New Nutrition Chart Changes The Way You Think About Food

The old Food Guide Pyramid that we know and love has been reorganized, both visually and in content.

Based on new information and research provided by nutrition experts, the new My Pyramid establishes guidelines based on the most recent nutrition knowledge. Check out the new nutrition chart to find out if you still meet guidelines!

Good Grains—Some Are Gone

Do you remember how the old nutrition chart began with grains at the bottom? This indicated that consumers should get more daily servings of bread compared with any other food. However, the new food chart dictates that about three ounces of grains—rice, cereal, crackers, or bread—should be eaten every day.

However, you should not just eat any old grains—the new food guide recommends whole grains as opposed to refined grains. Examples of whole grains include whole-wheat flour, bulgur (cracked wheat), oatmeal, whole cornmeal, and brown rice. Subsequently, try to avoid eating white flour, degermed cornmeal, white bread, and white rice.

Fun Fruits And Varied Veggies

The next change in the new nutrition chart has to do with the amount of fruits and vegetables that should be consumed on a daily basis. On the old food chart, these foods were second only to grains. However, now they have become the first priority. Though the exact amount of recommended fruits and veggies you should consume depends on your age and sex, these foods should comprise the bulk of your diet.

What types of fruits and veggies are the best for you? Well, it is recommended that you consume vegetables that are dark green or orange in color. Additionally, eating more beans and dry peas is another recommendation. For fruits, any or all fruits are acceptable, but it is important to stay away from sugary fruit juices.

Dairy Desires And Meat Madness

The next section of the new nutrition chart deals with dairy and meat. It is important to drink lots of milk every day in order to obtain the recommended amount of calcium. People who can’t drink milk for health reasons should get their calcium from other low fat dairy sources, such as cheese and yogurt or find a good calcium supplement.

When it comes to meat and protein, stick to lean meats and poultry. Also, remember that you can get your daily serving of protein from items such as fish, nuts, and beans.

Change Is Good—But What Stayed The Same?

Despite all the changes to the nutrition chart, one aspect has remained the same. The recommendation to limit fat and oil consumption is one consistency throughout both food charts. Some things will never change!

To Your Health,

Michael Toscano & Brue Baker

Owners / Founders

http://www.DietHealthandFitness.com/

New Food Guide Pyramid Offers Better Nutritional Guidance

For those of you who haven't been paying attention, the United States Department of Agriculture updated its decades old food guide pyramid back in 2005.

They did this to try and offer consumers a better guide to healthy eating by not only listing the food groups but also offering guidance about how much of each food group is required to form a healthy, balanced diet. They even took the step to color-code the food guide pyramid to help children have a better understanding of nutrition.













The new food guide pyramid expands on the original one of four food groups and now suggests there should be six. The color rainbow is included on the food guide pyramid with the size of the color stripes showing how much of a particular food group should be consumed in a given day. Not so much the quantity of each group, but the amount in relation to the entire balanced meal plan.

As you can see, the colors of the food group include orange for grains, green for vegetables and red for fruits. Yellow, representing fats and oils, has been added to the new food guide pyramid and milk and dairy products are represented by blue with purple for meat, beans, nuts and fish.

Helping Kids Understand Need For Balance

The widths of the colors on the food guide pyramid are designed to offer a visual idea on how much of each food group should be included in a balanced nutritional diet.

For example, the color yellow is the thinnest stripe indicating fats and oils should represent the smallest amount of the daily diet. Purple is the next thinnest and shows that meat, beans and fish should be limited as well.

Additionally, the new food guide pyramid offers information about how much you need of each group for different reasons. Whether you want to lose weight, maintain your weight or just eat the right foods for better health, the food guide pyramid offers advice on how to do this.

While including regular exercise, to maintain your weight you're advised to eat as many calories as you burn and to lose weight you'll have to burn more calories than you consume.

Eating for health will vary depending on the health issue you're striving to overcome, but the overall guidance offered by the food guide pyramid will benefit just about everyone seeking to eat healthier and more nutritionally balanced meals.

Are you looking for more ideas on eating better, taking vitamins and minerals or staying in shape? Click Here

To Your Health,

Michael Toscano & Brue Baker
Owners / Founders
DietHealthandFitness.com

What Ingredients To Avoid When Reading Food Labels

If you are a person that is conscious about what you eat, you will no doubt have come across a lot of nutrition information that is displayed on most of the favorite foods that you buy. Hopefully, this nutrition information is helping you make informed decisions about what to buy and what to leave there on the shelf.

I believe that as we move into the future, more and more Americans will begin to pay attention to the labels and begin to understand what ingredients are good and which ones are to be avoided. This will be a MUST for the people who seem to be hoovering on the obesity line and dangling between wanting to be healthy and actually making an effort to get there.

Suits All Kinds Of People

Where can you get good nutrition information online? There are a bunch of great websites but one that you might want to look at first would be www.nutrition.gov. This site brings information to you from the US Department of Agriculture as well as the National Agricultural Library and is designed to give you resources on all facets of human nutrition for consumers.

You can learn about the latest news with regard to dietary guidelines for different ages, daily recommended servings, the Food Guide Pyramid and the best methods to get the required foods into your daily diet.

The best part is that it's not all that difficult to include the proper foods into your diet and there is nothing complicated about it. A big part of being healthy is that you must have the required nutrition information from a reliable source.

At Diet Health and Fitness, we recommend you look for a nutritionist in your area and speak with them as well. The only way you're going to get on the track to health is if you reach out and find the needed information to get your diet in order. Sometimes the internet can be helpful with providing sites and information on creating a healthy diet and sometimes it may be better to grab an actual hardcover book from a bookstore instead.

If you are serious about learning about the food you're eating and how to live healthier, change your diet and find more resources to living a natural, healthy life we recommend you grab this book Natural Cures by Kevin Trudeau. This book will 'wake' you up to the truth about the food in our country, I guarantee it.

Since there is a lot to learn about when it comes to great health, including the benefits of certain herbs, taking multi-vitamins and even daily supplements, we realize you can't learn everything overnight.

We would recommend that you should, whenever possible, consume your nutrients from natural foods instead of consuming those that are manufactured. (Pretty much stay away food that is made by publicly traded companies because the processing of the food by these companies is actually what's creating health problems for so many Americans. It stems from the chemicals and preservatives they add - it's not good for your body. It's not natural. These chemicals are what's causing weight gain and a multitude of other health issues in more and more people every single day.)

As of now, nutrition information is a federal requirement that must be displayed on the food labels which can then be used by consumers to plan their diets. This is important because many people are generally ignorant about what is contained in the foods that we consume, and even though there are also many that do not care to check the nutrition information, it is still the best means of planning a healthy diet.

Being conscious about eating healthy is something that we should all take seriously and it pays to check the nutrition information to weed out those foods from our diet that contain too many additives or whose food preparation process is detrimental to good health.

With that in mind, here are a few ingredients you need to STAY AWAY FROM when you're reading the food labels in the grocery store...

* Aspartame (NutraSweet and Splenda) - these are artificial sweeteners found in sodas and diet sodas which actually make people gain weight. Aspartame (Nutrasweet and Splenda) is also chemically addicting and should have been banned by the FDA years ago and never allowed in the production of food in this country. Click this link to find out the Truth About Splenda.

* High Fructose Corn Syrup - is used by manufacturers for two reasons. First, it is very inexpensive. Secondly, it makes you fatter than the other sweeteners they could use. (If you didn't figure it out yet, food companies make money by selling more food. Chemicals and preservatives make people physically addicted to the foods and therefore come back to buy more week in and week out. The food industry is like every other industry in the world - it's all about money.) Needless to say, stay away from high fructose corn syrup and don't get hooked. Take a peek at this book The Sugar Fix.

* MSG (Monosodium Glutamate) - is a form of rat poison and can be found in Chinese food and many canned foods such as soups and sauces. MSG causes headaches, asthma, heart irregularities, depression and ADD/ADHD. Please grab a copy of this book In Bad Taste, The MSG Complex and get the facts.

You can also use the Food Guide Pyramid found at www.nutrition.gov as a good starting point to plan your diet. It states the basics of what we should consume on a regular basis and you can use it to make necessary adjustments to your diet so that you meet your weight goals and also keep to the proper levels of calorie intake.

Well, there you have it, keep a watchful eye on the food labels at the grocery store from now on and keep learning about the way food is produced in this country and we promise you the benefits of great health will be worth the effort.

To Your Health,

Michael Toscano & Brue Baker

Owners / Founders

http://www.DietHealthandFitness.com/

Does Nutrition Play a Major Role In Creating A Healthy Lifestyle?

Some diet and nutrition plans might sound good on the surface but there are many things to consider when ensuring proper nutrition in your meal plan.

Some people try to reduce or eliminate their carbohydrate intake when dieting because by reducing carbohydrates you reduce the sugar in your system. The problem is that since carbohydrates provide glucose and glucose provides energy to the cells in the body, this may not be the best solution.

There are two types of carbohydrates you may be aware of; simple carbohydrates and complex carbohydrates. Simple carbohydrates metabolize quickly, increasing the amount of glucose in the blood and then storing some of the leftovers in fat cells throughout the body.

Complex carbohydrates on the other hand, are slower to turn into sugar in the bloodstream and the glucose is usually used before being stored in surrounding fat cells. Obviously everyone is different and each person's individual metabolism rate will ultimately determine how fast these carbohydrates will metabolize within the body.

By focusing on better food nutrition, taking nutritional supplements, eating nutrition bars, fruits, vegetables and the like, not only will you create a healthier lifestyle but you'll also be able to better control your weight day in and day out.

It's pretty much common knowledge that in order to lose weight a person has to consume less calories than their body burns off throughout the day.

The biggest myth people have fallen victim to is that they think the less they eat, the more weight they'll lose. This couldn't be further from the truth.

You see, when you don't feed your body in an effort to lose weight, what you're actually doing is starving your body and when your body is not receiving it's "fuel," it goes into starvation mode.

Now when this happens, your body begins to use the protein in the muscle as it's backup source of energy. Have you ever noticed people who go on diets, lose weight but still look flabby? That's because they're losing lean muscle through the starvation process and when they hit their goal weight and begin to eat "normally" again, they almost always gain back the weight they lost and MORE.

There really is no single diet plan that will offer the same benefits for everyone, but considering the purpose of the diet, nutrition information must be used when developing an individual plan. For the right plan with the right nutrition for each individual, it may be necessary to seek professional advice.

If you're like me, you'd rather figure out your own daily caloric intake numbers. If that's the case, here's an easy calculation you can use to figure out how many calories you should be consuming on a daily basis.

The calculation is as follows:

Your Weight x's 10 = ________ x's (Activity Level)______ = Your Daily Caloric Intake (to stay the same weight)

Activity Levels:

1.4 = Not very active
1.6 = Semi-Active
1.8 = Very Active

Example:

Let's take a 200 lb. male and figure out how many calories he would need to eat each day to stay at 200 lbs.

200lbs. x's 10 = 2,000 x's 1.6 = 3,200 calories/day to stay at 200 lbs.

Here's what you would do if you're trying to LOSE WEIGHT.

If you are trying to LOSE 1 lb./wk, you would subtract 500 calories from your diet each day.

If you're trying to LOSE 2 lbs./wk, you would subtract 1,000 calories from your diet each day.

Example:

3,200 - 500 = 2,700 Calories/day to LOSE 1 lb./wk
3,200 - 1,000 = 2,200 Calories/day to LOSE 2 lbs./wk

Now, if you're trying to GAIN WEIGHT, just do the exact opposite.

If you are trying to GAIN 1 lb./wk, you would ADD 500 calories to your diet each day.
If you're trying to GAIN 2 lbs./wk, you would ADD 1,000 calories to your diet each day.

Example:

3,200 + 500 = 3,700 Calories/day to GAIN 1 lb./wk
3,200 + 1,000 = 4,200 Calories/day to GAIN 2 lbs./wk

You might be wondering why we use 500 and 1,000 calories to figure out how we gain or lose weight.

It's actually because there are approximately 3,500 calories in a pound. If you divide 3,500 by 7 days in the week, you'll come up with + or - 500 calories a day. Pretty cool huh?!

These days when people are pushing for weight management, many people still seem to forget an important part of any diet plan; making sure your body gets the correct nutrition it needs.

While many people are exercising and counting calories, they still may be overlooking the correct amount of calories that their body needs to supply energy to the body.

Many people will cut out several foods in their diet not realizing that some of those foods provide the needed sources of nutrition and actually put their health at risk.

Up until 2005, the Department of Agriculture had a food pyramid that listed four major food groups and had recommendations of how much to eat from each food group. They listed their recommendations from each food group in order to have the proper nutrition in your diet and since then have expanded to the food pyramid to six groups.

We highly recommend taking a look at the newest food pyramid (below) as your guide to building and maintaining a health and nutrition regimen that works best for you.

To Your Health,

Michael Toscano & Brue Baker
Owners / Founders
DietHealthandFitness.com

How To Consume Food With Proper Food Nutrition Value

In recent times, there have been many changes to the four basic food groups that we know of: Dairy, Fruits, Vegetables and Meat.

The reason why these groupings have blurred, and some might even say disappeared from the food nutrition scene is that the healthy food diets we can choose from today have many more options than in the past.

Nowadays, you can choose to include legumes, whole grains, fish, seeds, nuts as well as plant oils that all add up to making for better food nutrition. In addition, the many different ethnic, cultural and even religious preferences give us more options than any other time in history.

Create A Healthy Food Plan

To stay healthy, you have to keep in mind the proper food nutrition when you're creating a healthy plan for your meals. A good idea is to create a pyramid plan, which will show you which foods are your best choices.

Since there's a lot of variety in even these food pyramids, you might wonder which one is most suitable for you even though they're more or less based on the same principles.

Good food nutrition, as outlined by the various food pyramids, will mean eating plenty of fruits, vegetables and whole grains. You'll want to cut back on the foods heavy in saturated fats, cholesterol and trans fats in the process. Other than that, to benefit from proper food nutrition you need to also limit or eliminate sweets and excess salt.

As far as alcohol goes, discretion is certainly your best option and you should really moderate the amount of alcohol you consume.

In addition, you need to be careful about the size of the portions of your meals. Keeping a close eye on the number of calories you consume will only benefit you in the long run. And of course, working in some time throughout the day to exercise wouldn't hurt.

Another good option to help you maintain proper food nutrition is to make use of vegetables, not as side dishes; rather, they can be used as main meals which means there are a number of vegetables to consider.

Some choices to consider would be Portobello mushroom burgers, spring greens with butternut squash, asparagus and tomato as well as red pepper French bread pizza, grilled vegetable kebobs, asparagus with almonds, Italian vegetables with pasta and honey-glazed sweet potatoes as ideal vegetable dishes that are sure to be rich in terms of food nutrition value.

To Your Health,

Michael Toscano & Brue Baker

Owners/Founders

DietHealthandFitness.com