p20

Summary

Healthy Eating Tips

1. Include at least 1-2 varied fresh/tinned fish meals per week
2. Include several varied lean red meat meals per week
vegetarians need to eat legumes and/or nuts daily
3. Include white meat about once a week
4. Include at least one legume meal per week (in place of meat if desired)
5. Include a handful of a variety of nuts several times a week, preferably in vegetable dishes (in place of meat if desired)
6. Include an egg meal (2 eggs) per week (in place of meat if desired)
7. Try to have several cups of a variety of vegetables per day, especially dark green leafy types, include a range of deep coloured vegetables across the week and include garlic, onions and herbs in meals daily.
8. Use cooking methods that do not charr foods and serve/marinade foods with herbs, spices/curry, lemon juice, wine, extra virgin olive oil, vinegar and fruit chutneys to minimise the formation of cancer causing compounds.
9. Include 2 serves of low fat milk and milk products daily
10. Try to have at least two different pieces of fruit daily (especially apples, citrus, grapes, berries because they are high in antioxidants)
11. Try to make most of your cereal serves wholegrain and reduced in salt (about 5 serves/day)
12. It is OK to sprinkle a little iodised salt on vegetables, fish and other healthy foods to improve their flavour, as long as you have reduced salt bread and you don't eat a lot of processed food.
13. It is OK to sprinkle a little sugar to healthy foods to improve their flavour; limit your intake of added sugar (~5 teaspoons/day) and prefer foods with naturally occuring sugars over those high in added sugar.
14. Increase your daily intake of water (8 glasses) and tea; avoid soft drinks and limit fruit juice to less than 2 small glasses per day.

Also, you will learn in the Healthy Eating Tips module on FATs that it is best to:
15. Minimise 'hidden fats' by choosing lean meats, low fat dairy products and low fat processed foods.
16. Prefer unrefined natural fat found in nuts, seeds, fish, soy, avocado because the fat is accompanied by other desirable nutrients
17. Reserve added fats (preferably cold pressed monounsaturated oils) for cooking to improve the palatability of vegetables, legumes and fish dishes; oils may also help increase the absorption of fat soluble vitamins and phytochemicals from plant foods; if added oil is the major source of fat in the diet, one could have 2-3 tablespoons daily on a 2000kcal diet or 1-2 tablespoons on a weight loss diet providing 1200kcal.