Eatwell guide
The Eatwell Guide shows how much of what we eat overall should come from each food group to achieve a healthy, balanced diet. It offers good downloadable graphics for classrooms and presentations too.
“Eat food, not too much, mostly plants“.
US author Michael Pollan’s quote is often repeated as the best simple guide to healthy eating. From his best-selling book Food Rules, there are a few simple tips, adapted below.
- Don’t eat anything your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.
- Don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients, or ingredients you can’t pronounce.
- Stay out of the middle of the supermarket. Real food tends to be on the outer edge of the store where it can be replaced with fresh foods when it goes bad.
- Don’t eat anything that won’t eventually rot. (There are exceptions such as honey).
- It is not just what you eat but how you eat. “Always leave the table a little hungry”.
- Enjoy meals, slowly, with the people you love.
The Slow Food Movement
How you eat is almost as important as what you eat. There is plenty of evidence that rushed meals, TV dinners, and fast food generally can upset blood sugar management and otherwise disrupt healthy digestion.
In most traditional communities and among country people eating is almost a ritual, and usually a family affair. It may become a time to ‘give grace’ for the bounty of nature and for your own efforts in producing the food, and to relish its tastes and textures.
Slow Food is a global, grassroots movement with thousands of members around the world that links the pleasure of food with a commitment to community and the environment. It was founded in 1989 in Italy.