Nutritionists Leigh

A healthy eating guide is designed to guide you into making informed choices about the food you eat on a daily basis. This healthy eating guide will change the way you eat by giving you healthy eating tips and simple guidelines that are easy to follow so that you can eat healthily and enjoy a long and healthy life.

When you understand the basics, healthy eating will soon become an enjoyable new way of life.

There is no need for healthy eating recipes to be boring or monotonous because there are so many foods to choose from and with a little bit of creativity you can eat something different every day.

The most important aspect of healthy eating is to be aware of basic food values so that you do not unconsciously give your body worthless foods that it cannot use.

This healthy eating guide will help you understand which food you should be eating to stay healthy and which unhealthy foods you should avoid.

Fresh is best

Processed and refined food should be avoided

Sugar and all its derivatives should be cut down to a minimum, preferably cut out

Eat plenty of vegetables and fruit, raw when possible

Eat less fat

Eat foods rich in fibre (formerly known as roughage) Healthy Eating Tips 1: Fresh is Best

You should aim to eat as much wholesome, fresh, uncontaminated food as possible. It is the best way to get essential vitamins and minerals.

Most of the food available in stores and supermarkets has been tampered with in some way; the goodness taken out by refining and processing, chemicals added to prolong shelf life, stabilize, preserve, flavour, colour, sweeten, and thicken - all of which may please your eyes and your taste buds, but not your stomach or your health.

Be wary of anything white - white flour, pastries, rice, and sugar. White means a blank, most of the nourishment has been taken out and all sorts of synthetic things put in. Wholegrain cereals, flour, bread and brown rice should replace this fortified white stodge.

Sugar is the number one enemy of healthy eating and good nutrition yet sugar accounts for about 20% of an average diet in the Western world.

Sugar was unknown to man until 200 years ago, so the body handles it as a foreign substance.

In nature sugar is packaged with vitamins and minerals - in fruit as fructose and in vegetables as starch.

The refined product we call sugar is in fact straight sucrose, which your body absorbs much faster than natural sugars, and because it is so similar to blood sugar which has already been metabolised into glucose, it escapes your body’s processing action.

Your body is forced to use its vitamins and minerals and acids to fight the invasion, and this surge of activity can lower blood sugar and body energy levels leaving you feeling tired, mentally slow, irritable and susceptible to disease.

The odd sweet or chocolate bar...