To think there is a poor understanding of a healthy diet?

[LivelyLemonQuoter]

I think most people think they know what a healthy diet looks like, but in reality they do not. I see so many comments on MN that demonstrate this.

The most common one is that fruit should be limited because of its sugar content. This is very bad advice. Sugar in fruit has little impact on our blood sugar levels. And most people in the UK do not eat enough fruit.

The other is concern over eating any carbs. Wholemeal bread and pasta is fine, carbs in pastry and doughnuts is not great though.

And most people need to eat more nuts. Nuts are very good for you and should be part of your regular diet.

I didn’t say all…but most. Personally, from that list, I wouldn’t add palm oil, sugar, spirit vinegar or rapeseed oil to my bread or think them necessary so I prefer homemade and would rather buy the seeds to add.

Diabetics are no longer told to avoid fruit. That advice is very out of date

And yet that actually sounds delicious to me and is actually quite close to what i eat most days ( though I don't much like soup so I'd have a chickpea salad salad with maybe some salmon or chicken for lunch with baby spinach and peppers and a slice of sourdough bread instead )

I regularly eat plain nuts and or fruit as snacks. Or plain yoghurt mixed with some fruit and/or nuts as a snack

I generally follow the Mind diet because I like the food and because it lists mostly what to eat instead of what not to eat
Green leafy veg min 6 times a week
Other veg min 2 portions a day
Berries min 2 a week
Nuts and seeds min 2 a week
Wholegrains min 2 a day
(oily) fish min 1 a week
Poultry min 2 a week
Pulses and beans min 4 a week

wine max 1 glass a day
Butter/marg max 1 a day
Cheese max 1 a week
Red meat max 3 a week
Fried/ fast food max 1 a week
Pastries and sweets max 4 a week

Other fruit (ie not berries) is not listed but I have some.most days

I don't follow it religiously but i do eat green leafy veg moat days and at least one other sort of veg usually more than one . I eat oily fish at least 1-2 a week and some form of nuts most days

I am nonetheless morbidly obese so healthy content or not, portion control is important if not being fat is more important to you than obviously is to me

Arnold Schwarzenegger is vegan, he’s v healthy

I was thinking something rather similar.

Mind you - TMI - I have a diagnosis of IBS.

Fruit really does send Blood Sugar sky high for many Type 1 diabetics.

I’m fairly mindful of eating healthy food and try to eat home made as much as possible. I absolutely love lentils but every time I eat them my stomach blows up like a balloon. It's unfortunate, I tend to avoid them because of it.
I generally have a handful of mixed nuts every day. I like seeds and buy them then promptly forget about them!

I’d literally be sick if I ate whole tub of ice cream

Tbf you can buy the seeds mentioned at any decent sized supermarket.

And I’m not sure what you mean when you say you can’t name a protein? Do you mean you don’t know any foods that contain protein? Or are you over complicating it and thinking you need to be able to name specific proteins in eg chicken?

Exactly. Especially dried fruit. Of course fruit is better than a slice of cake, but you still have to be mindful about how much fruit you eat. Better that it's spread throughout the day rather than in one setting.
OP sounds a bit preachy. Reading some articles doesn't make you expert. I'm not sure what you are trying to achieve. Why do you feel the need to have a perfectly healthy diet? You are verging on orthorexia territory.

Sugar in fruit has little impact on our blood sugar levels of healthy people without diabetes though.

While I agree that fruit isn’t bad for us, nor - usually- their carb content as they also contain quite a bit of fibre which probably 80% of people do not get enough of.
However, fruit DOES INDEED have quite a large blood sugar rise depending on type of fruit and quantity.

What fruit are we talking about berries or grapes, apple or banana, mango or dates?

Now for a healthy adult, blood sugar rises are fine if moderate as long as body has enough time to recover before the next spike appears.
the risk is constant spikes or very large ones over the years will lead to insulin resistance (which you will not be able to test for until it’s too late and the doctor notice your hbA1C is starting to rise and warns you you’re heading into pre-diabetes).
Unfortunately by that point you’ve had insulin resistance for (likely) years.

You can verify the above by wearing a CGM device.
This post is just to put some info out.

Personally, I believe we need to go back to teaching nutrition, diet, health and home economics at school.

I'm no perfectionist; can you really be? This bread's under £1.20 for a large loaf. It lasts twice as long as one of my home-made. It contains zero long-name ingredients. They probably use more sugar than me (they're offsetting it with the vinegar) but their recipe evidently beats the soya into submission: the bread really is soft & bouncy.

I use olive oil, may as well be rapeseed, and I'm willing to trade the palm oil off against all those lovely seed and grain varieties. There's 5g of protein in one slice (!) and 2.8g fibre. It's a win, imo.

I'm sure every supermarket's "best" seedy wholemeal is just as good.

I wouldn't! I could train you if you'd like to improve your Ben & Jerry's resilience 😂

A portion isn’t always huge though especially if you go off the 30 plants thing
so mixed frozen berries for breakfast
banana or an apple for a snack
I make a soup that has red lentils, tomatoes, sweet potato, butternut squash, carrots, peppers, celery, onion in which I make mostly because it’s so delicious!
add some veg/pulses for your evening meal and you’re pretty much there

The protein thing is driving me insane! People have become obsessive over it all whilst food companies capitalise on new high protein products that are full of absolute rubbish.. I tried a protein bar out of pure curiosity the other day - an ingredients list straight from a science lab and tasted crap. What happened to good old non UPF sources like eggs, nuts, pulses, meats etc?

Agree with you re: sugar too. I’d take the real stuff over awful chemical sweeteners any day! I try to avoid them if at all possible

ha ha me either...especially not with the 3 fruit and 3 veg a day...and as for chia seeds...... I think what there is is a poor understanding of how different people's digestive systems can be....

"go back to" has it ever been taught?

I'd be ever so grateful if you could post the recipe. It sounds gorgeous!

I am certainly no perfectionist either and I do also buy supermarket bread occasionally! I just said most (not all) supermarket bread is ultra processed - which is true!

I eat bread. But as OP is preaching about being so healthy she should only be consuming natural carbs such as sweet potato. Not bread 😂

Yes oats raise my blood sugar as do most fruit. I know this from taking part in the Zoe programme. So for me; porridge with banana is not a very good breakfast because it spikes my blood sugar. I used to eat that and I was always starving by about 11am. This is not true for everyone. We are all different.

I still eat plenty of fruit. I'm not diabetic and fruit is very healthy in many other ways. Eaten as dessert after a decent meaL, a small portion of fruit doesn't impact my blood sugar that much.

Wholemeal bread is also bad for my blood sugar.

The healthiest diet for most people is a Mediterranean style diet with lots and lots of vegetables, lots of pulses, lean protein, good fats such as nuts and plenty of olive oil. In fact the late great Dr Michael Mosley did a radio programme about how we all need 2 tbsp of olive oil a day for our heart health.

I agree most of us have little understanding of what is a good diet.

Red meat consumption is directly linked with a higher risk of bowel cancer. Doesn’t sound so amazing to me!

It’s not always about not understanding what a healthy diet is it’s about affording it. Fresh fruit and vegetables and nuts is expensive. As is meat.

Sure! It’s basically this as the basic recipe and I add the other stuff in, it’s very adaptable to whatever you have and you can’t mess it up
I usually add some finely chopped celery in with the onion and put carrots in to roast with the other veg