What is a healthy diet these days?

[Sunflowerhappy]

There is an article on every food or drink saying something is healthy and another saying it's not.

Diet drinks are now seemingly worse than sugary drinks because of the artificial sweetness.

Cows milk and another animal products are now bad? As well as cheese and yogurts

Red meat is bad. As is cold meats like ham and chorizo

Ready meals, cerial, bread and even pasta are on the list too.

What is a healthy diet? And what should we be eating?
I'm terrified to bring my dd up in this generation. Awful processed food and foods full of sweetners and sugar. The supermarkets are rife with unhealthy food that's so easily available and cheap.

How do you sustain a healthy diet in this generation?

Eat as much unprocessed stuff as you can. Then at least you know how much salt or whatever else you’re putting into it. Eat as much fruit and veg as you can. Most of your meal should be plant based. Go for fish and chicken for protein and keep red meat to a minimum (get iron and b12 from nuts and pulses and avocados which are all healthier options). Go for whole grains / granary / brown bread etc where possible.

I know all this and yet day to day I still eat whatever I like and most of it isn’t good for me! You have to enjoy food too!

Yes, unprocessed is better. As a rule anyway.Rice is better than bread, chicken is better than sausages.

If something has to be advertised It's probably not good for us.

Eat food.
Not too much.
Mostly plants.

Michael Pollan's advice from Food Rules still stands firm for me (except when I break the rules)

It's not that complicated.
Fewer preservatives, more veg & fruit. More whole grains than refined grains. Make sure you understand what the ingredients are that you eat, try not to eat E-numbers, hydrog. fat or anything that sounds like a long chemical name.

this explains it

Fairylea has it spot on

Sadly like fairylea I also eat what I want and to hell with the consequences not recommended though as I have gained a stone but boy have I enjoyed eating and drinking until my heart is content

I'm no expert but I like the advice to only eat things your great great grandparents would have recognised as food.

So that generally means no processed food. Soft drinks of any variety are best avoided IMO. Everything else, as much variety as possible. Limited sugar.

Avoid processed food as much as you can
Everything is OK in moderation

I'd say that covers most bases

What's your budget?

I'd suggest buying good quality meat; red meat isn't bad , just don't eat it every day. I'd be stuffed without red meat though, it fills up our meals 4 times a week to be honest.

I buy 'brown' everything, make most meals myself and avoid ready meals which you chuck in the oven to heat up.

Don't be worried about everything you feed your children, you have to feed them something.

Avoid a ton of sweet food like biscuits, chocolate and sugar laden squashes for starters.

The above pretty much has it, eat as unprocessed as possible.

I must correct one thing though - B12 is only available naturally in animal food sources.

Sherrybaby makes a good point, never thought of it that way before. Kind of like, "nature never made a sandwich"!

There have been some large, recent studies that suggest that red meat is actually fine as long as it is balanced by lots of vegetables. They think that the studies done in the 60s and 70s that linked red meat to cancer and heart disease interpreted the data incorrectly, and that the significant causal factor was not frequent red meat eating, but lack of sufficient vegetables.

I'm not a nutritionist, I just like red meat, and like studies that tell me it's ok.

Eat a broad variety of foods from different food groups. The less processed the better.

I'm not sure that my great, great grandparents would have recognised olives, hummous or quinoa though 😉

I have a 15 yr old DD that I am trying to bring up to be healthy. I don't ban anything as I think that causes problems and people are always going to eat ' unhealthy ' foods. I have always told her to aim for 80% unprocessed foods. So basically anything can be eaten in moderation, seems to be working for us so far.

I'd sum it up as.. lots of fats except trans fats, lots of protein and greens, keep sugar to a minimum

Agree with staying away from processed food and trying to eat good quality food that has had as little done to it as possible.

I think evidence about low fat, high carb not being ideal is quite convincing but I wouldn't go over to high fat, low carb unless trying to lose weight. I think in general medium fat, medium carbs restricted sugar is what I would aim for.

Basically normal food, mostly home cooked in a traditional manner and trying to stick to more veg than meat or starchy carbs. But I wouldn't try to balance every meal. I'd have a big roast dinner or pasta dish one day and a veggie casserole or curry another time.

But still having some fun food, enjoying food and having desserts and cakes or a takeaway whatever within reason.

It's pretty easy to know what's healthy. The problem is that healthy food doesn't taste nice.

Watch sugary drinks, eat as much veg and fruit as you can, stop eating when you are no longer hungry.

I think that put quite simply it is eating as many foods as possible with just one ingredient (whole foods is a better term I guess )
So fruit or veg etc
Flavour things with herbs and spices and less salt
Eat less meat and more plants
Drink water rather than fizzy drinks

Etc etc it's just common sense.
Of course I don't follow this - always have a little of what you fancy as well!
I also believe that if you exercise regularly, the impact of a not so great diet will be lessened to an extent.