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By MARY ANN LIENHART CROSS
County Extension Director, Purdue Extension Elkhart County
Eating for Your Heart’s Sake!
February is a great month to remind you to take a look at your eating. Is it as healthy as it should be? Most of us don’t really think about eating healthy or eating food for the nutrients that your body needs. I also have to write: do you ever think about how much you eat? I know I do, this is of course after I have overeaten.
I know you all know that there is a food movement that is very complex. It involves where food comes from, how it is prepared, how much we are eating and what we are eating. I know from presenting programs that most of you don’t think about the fact that we are what we eat, and that what we eat or don’t eat contributes to our overall health. This is reality.
When it comes to growing, raising, and processing America’s food there have been so many changes that it is mind boggling to me. Beyond that are some of the biggest changes which includes the size of the dishes we eat from and the cooking equipment. I encourage you to really look at the size of your plates. The American dinner plate is now more like a platter. A real easy switch that many of you can make to help in your healthy eating is to switch to eating on a luncheon-size or smaller plate. Suggested serving sizes will fill your plate, and this is really important; remember we first eat with our eyes.
I am encouraging you to develop a fresh approach to healthy eating and this is a great time of the year to do this. You need to begin by looking at the serving/portion sizes of your food. Have more vegetables and fruits on your plate. A bonus for many of you is that this will help with weight management, and just help you feel better on a daily basis.
For most of you simply by looking, thinking, and making a few adjustments, you’ll find yourself eating for long-term health. First, look to see if the proportion of food is right. A good rule of thumb is that plant-based foods like vegetables, fruits, whole grains and beans should cover two-thirds or more of your plate. Then protein foods like meat, fish, and poultry should cover one-fourth of your plate. This is not how most American plates look.
A real way of looking at this guideline is that it reverses the traditional American plate and shows meat as a side dish rather than the main ingredient. An eye appealing, tasty sample meal, would be a vegetable blend of broccoli, carrots and cauliflower, a dark green salad, and some brown rice with 3 ounces of grilled beef, pork, chicken, or fish.
Next time you are eating I suggest you check your proportions. Look at the size of the servings on your plate. I know that you know from what you see and hear our county is experiencing an obesity epidemic. Fifty percent or more of Americans are overweight. At the same time, the serving sizes on American plates have grown larger and larger. Recently, when watching a television commercial for a fast food item, I figured there was enough protein in the entrée for at least three people and probably not even one serving of vegetables.
Visitors from other countries express amazement at the amounts of food heaped on our plates. Foods that we have adapted from foreign cuisines such as the croissant, bagel or quesadilla have doubled or tripled in size and we just keep eating them. Meanwhile, fast food restaurants feature gigantic value meals and “super” size. Even many sit down or table service restaurants have swapped the traditional 10.5-inch plate for a 12-inch plate.
Using MyPlate and the suggested servings is the best and healthiest way to eat. Also when you eat with MyPlate for a while it will become a good habit. For those of you that use the internet I suggest you use ChooseMyPlate.gov. Use your measuring cups at home to determine how much food you’re eating. When eating away from home, choose the regular burger instead of the big one, or cut the big one in two. When it comes to pasta have one to two cups of pasta instead of three to four. Once you suit your serving size to what your body needs you will find you will feel better every day and it is easier to maintain a healthy weight for life. Along with this, remember that some daily exercise is really important and moderation is key!