To be confused about "healthy eating"

[Van34]

It's not that I don't understand what foods are and aren't healthy (or so i thought). But I have no idea how to eat healthily. Bear with me.
I used to have a jacket and tuna (with a dash of mayo) but then I was told that it was as unhealthy as sandwiches. So then I tried salads but remain hungry no matter how much I had. Went onto soup but was then told that they are also unhealthy and ultra processed. What should I have?
I understand moderation but portion sizes are minute. One portion of cereal is enough for a toddler. That's not going to fill me up until lunchtime. Is a slice of toast healthy? It used to be a staple breakfast when I was growing up. Or should we be having something else (not a tiny portion if cereal)
We eat home cooked food everyday, no ready meals. But are they healthy? Chilli, steak and chips, chicken in pittas, fajitas, mince and dumplings. All staples from childhood and all filling. But are they healthy? I know what's in them so they should be...
It's a minefield. No red meat. No wine. Low sugar. Low salt. Low carb. High fibre. Low fat. No fat. High protein. Low cal. But so many of these diet foods are processed....
I am so confused about it all.

That doesn't make the jacket potato unhealthy though.
Eating too many calories is unhealthy whether they come from celery or glace cherries.

According to My Fitness Pal, a medium jacket potato with tuna mayo is about 390 - 400 calories. Obvs will vary depending on the amount of mayo and size of potato. The calories required to maintain weight for a woman is 1500-2000 (again will vary depending on activity level). For weight loss, you're usually recommended 1200 calories.

So a lunch of your jacket potato and tuna mayo is a third of your daily calories if you are trying to lose weight, less than a third if you are not trying to lose weight. That is an IDEAL amount of calories for a lunch. leaves you 800 - 1100 calories to use over whatever else you eat in the day, drinks etc.

This demonisation of carbs is really very odd.

Nutrition is not adequately covered in medical school. Results from Macaninch, et al. (2020)
Out of 853 survey participants
"Most felt their nutrition training was inadequate, with >70% reporting less than 2 hours. "
"Only 26% of doctors were confident in their nutrition knowledge"
"74% gave nutritional advice less than once a month, citing lack of knowledge (75%) as the main barriers"
In specialist services, dieticians typically cover nutritional aspects of managing a condition.

A store of fat coming into winter? Only if you are planning to hibernate, surely. Winter or summer makes no difference in the modern world, food is freely available year round, there is no difference in lifestyle. And anyone with a BMI in the healthy range has a store of fat anyway....

One single potato - especially a baked one with its skin on - is NOT too many carbohydrates for an adult human to eat at once. If anyone's being "ridiculous" here, it's those claiming that eating any carbs = bad, or the reason for diabetes. Cutting out refined sugar (esp in the form of sugary drinks) and fried stuff (like crisps, chips etc) would be more sensible than avoiding all carbs.
OP: please ignore the cranks. Keep making home-cooked food and avoiding ultra-processed crap. Eat as wide a range of different vegetables as possible.

that is really interesting. I went to UCL and we covered a good amount on nutrition and most of the colleagues I have worked with have been good (maybe I have been lucky, but then I have mainly worked in tertiary centres). and as a patient requiring a special diet myself have received solid advice from consultants .... but happy to accept this is not the norm.

I consistently hear from doctors I work with that they don't have a first clue about nutrition. Although, not a doctor myself, we were told about the NHS drive to use every consultation as an opportunity to promote healthy lifestyle, smoke cessation and healthy eating but there was nothing in my clinical degree even remotely resembling nutrition training. So not sure how we are expected to promote it. Personally, I took CPD courses as well as lean heavily on my experience of sports nutrition. But yes, I believe it is sadly not the norm.

be wary about asking for advice about food on here as it will drag out the orthorexics

This. A hundred times this!

There are people who eat nothing but processed, manufactured, added-ingredients foods, low in nutrition but high in trans fats, fillers and salt. Those are the people who might benefit from some healthy diet advice.

No-one with an averagely mixed diet needs to micro-tweak it to the extent you describe. If you're concerned, eat more veg. Make sure you get enough protein. That's it.

OP, myfitnesspal app might interest you. You record what you eat and it keeps track of much fat etc you've eaten

Home made soup must be good for you

Sorry this is not only utter rubbish but posts like this hugely trigger the kinds of people who have tendencies towards disordered eating.

Anyone who thinks baked potatoes are a factor in rising levels of diabetes shouldn’t be allowed on the internet.

This kind of horseshit has an awful to to answer for in terms of anorexia/orthorexia. Ignore ignore ignore.

Agree. Absolutely bloody stupid.

I'm intrigued by this - what did the first school say was wrong with homemade bread and berries?! What would they have done if you'd refused to swap to school dinners?

You can't go far wrong eating real food. By that I mean fresh vegetables, meat, fish, poultry, eggs, beans, nuts, fruit with dried pulses and grains. Add a bit of healthy processed food like tofu, cheese, tinned sardines, wholemeal bread, humous, yoghurt etc. Save cakes, sweets, crisps etc for occasional treats.

Exactly. It's not rocket science. Fresh produce, cooked well, with balance between different groups with plentiful helpings of fruit, vegetables and pulses and grains, limits on meat and rationing of sweet foods and as little processed food as you can bear. That's really all there is to it and anyone who tells you otherwise is a charlatan or someone with a problematic relationship with food.

By the time you get to weighing out exact portions of foods for each meal, counting beans, worrying about the exact protein to carb proportions in your meal and eliminating entire food groups you know you've crossed over from healthy eating into neurosis. Calibrating the exact protein content of each meal is never going to be worth the mental illness associated with it.

Just eat normally.

WillowCraft
She was saying when people are more likely to get sick, and yes that would mean a healthy bmi but they were talking more about dieting and at times extreme dieting so she was saying if you don’t have a store of fat and you get sick you’re in bigger trouble than someone who can lose a bit of their body mass

When I had anorexia, my periods stopped. Clear sign of a failing body. I'm lucky to have come through it with no lasting organ damage. People can be strangely ignorant of the physiological need for calories: energy is the primary nutritional requirement (which is why food banks keep sugar in stock).

I think healthy is about the quantities as much as the actual food. Aim for roughly half veg, quarter carbs, and a quarter protein.

So your lunch for example while individual ingredients of jacket potato and tuna are not unhealthy, there is no veg.

Salads need to have a decent amount of protein in to fill you up.

After a life time of disordered eating, periods of not eating much at all, orthorexia/OSFED and then Binge eating/BED, I've now thrown the whole rule book out the window. I started to go down the UHPF rabbit hole recently but stopped myself. It's not healthy to me to obsess about food. I do enjoy cooking, but not every night so do batch cooking. There are aways lots of things that are easy to heat up/cook and eat as well. Nothing is off limits. I'm hoping I can manage to not pass this on to my DC

I had a heart attack last year and was told that my diet was one of my greatest risk factors. This surprised me greatly as I always thought I had a healthy diet!! But I have been reading advice from the British Heart Foundation on nutrition and use their recipes. OH has been doing it too with me (he has no problems in that area). I have lost a stone, I don't feel hungry as portion sizes aren't the main concern, and tbh the changes are minimal; red meat once a week, I don't have spread or mayo on anything, oat milk in coffee, lots of veggies, keep to low salt things....try reading their information, it's really useful stuff even if you don't have CHD.
https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-magazine/nutrition

So your lunch for example while individual ingredients of jacket potato and tuna are not unhealthy, there is no veg

Yes, maybe that's what the doctor meant. Tuna and potatoes are not unhealthy, but a meal without veg and salad is.

Of course, it's what you eat over the course of the day/longer term that matters, so it's not the end of the world if there's no veg in lunch, as long as you have plenty at dinner and some at breakfast and for snacks too, eg fruit and yogurt for breakfast, snack on crudites and a balanced meal in the evening.

Out of interest, what were you eating before, that you thought was a healthy diet but for you, turned out not to be?

SW advocates a balance of protein, carbs and lots of veg/ salad/ fruit. I don't eat UPF and have lost getting on 4 stone in a year following it. It up to you if you want to eat UPF ,same as if you are calorie counting and you want to use all your calories up on a Mars Bars.

I got terrible dietary advice from the NHS while I was pregnant and had gestational diabetes. The advice I got was to eat a very low fat diet, when of course with GD it’s fine to eat high fat foods, it’s carbohydrates you have to avoid.

So your lunch for example while individual ingredients of jacket potato and tuna are not unhealthy, there is no veg.

Apart from the actual potato itself.

Yes, maybe that's what the doctor meant. Tuna and potatoes are not unhealthy, but a meal without veg and salad is.

It really isn't. All your meals w/o salad and veg is not healthy. A meal w/o veg and salad is absolutely fine.

What are you looking to achieve? Weight loss? Better health for a specific condition? Why are you unhappy with your current diet?