Your Guide To Healthy Eating
23/06/2012
To get a healthy balance as well as getting pleasure from your food, you need to eat something from each food group everyday in accordance with the recommended intakes.
The theory: a little bit about calories
Recommended daily calorie intakes depend on gender, age and level of physical activity. Whatever total amount of calories you should be getting, it is recommended that 50-55% of this should be in the form of carbohydrates (1g of carbohydrates = 4 kcal), 30-35% in the form of fats (1g of fat = 9 kcal), of which 8% must be polyunsaturated fatty acids, and 10-15% in the form of proteins (1g of protein = 4 kcal). For an inactive adult man, this corresponds to:
290g of carbohydrates (bread, rice, pasta, potato and sugary food);
70g of fat (in fatty foods and “hidden fats” in other types of food);
70g of protein (in meat, eggs, fish, dairy products, pulses).
In practice: balance and moderation
No one food contains everything your body needs in terms of protein, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins and minerals, and in the same way, no food should be banished completely from a normal diet. There are no bad foods, and no bad eating habits either...
Different types of food vary in terms of how rich they are in carbohydrates, fats and proteins as well as in their vitamin and mineral content. To get a healthy balance as well as getting pleasure from your food, you need to eat something from each food group everyday in accordance with the recommended intakes.
The food pyramid helps us to visualise how much of our daily food intake each food group should represent.