The British Nutrition Foundation’s Healthy Eating Week is taking place between the 12th and 16th of June, and this year’s theme is ‘Healthy Eating, for Everyone!’
The cost-of-living crisis continues to have an impact on the affordability of healthier diets for so many of us. It can be easy to trade down when it comes to food purchases, as the size of your supermarket bill might be a bigger concern than whether the food is healthy – but there are affordable ways to make healthy choices.
Let’s explore why it is important to eat a healthily:
Consuming a healthy, balanced diet involves eating the right sort of foods, in the right amounts to provide energy and nutrients for our bodies to function. Eating properly has a series of benefits, ranging from the health of our cardiovascular systems to uplifting our mood and mental health, plus lots in between. Let’s dive in a bit deeper:
- Cardiovascular health
Nutrition plays a key role in the prevention of cardiovascular disease, as well as other circulatory conditions, such as high blood pressure. - Mood/mental health
Diet can impact our mood in several ways. Consumption of highly processed carbohydrates can lead to energy peaks and troughs, the latter of which can contribute to dips in mood. There are also potential links with overly restrictive diets and negative thoughts/associations with food. - Immune health
A healthy, nutritious diet can contribute to our bodies being able to conduct an effective immune response, and research has also demonstrated immunity is impaired in those with a poor diet. - Gut health
An area of nutrition that is getting a lot of good press recently, gut health refers to the promotion of a healthy gut microbiome (the bacteria in our gut). Gut health is critical in several areas, namely; effective digestion of food and nutrient absorption; effective immune response; and a lowered risk of gastrointestinal (GI) illness. - Structural health
Healthy eating can help us maintain the overall health of our bodies. For example, it’s important to eat foods with sufficient calcium to support bone health.
So now we’ve discussed why healthy eating is so important, let’s define what healthy eating is. Everyone should aim for a well-balanced diet, including:
- Lots of fruit and vegetables – try for at least five portions a day, if not more! Fresh, frozen, dried or tinned all count.
- Choose wholegrain or wholemeal varieties of starchy foods, such as brown rice, wholewheat pasta, and brown, wholemeal, or higher fibre white bread. Overall, these starchy foods should make up around 1/3 of your total consumption.
- Try to have healthy fats like olive oil, rapeseed oil, sunflower oil, vegetable oil.
- Choose food options that are naturally lower in fat. Always check the label, as some “low fat” options contain lots of sugar.
- Protein sources to suit your diet such as: meat, (oily) fish, eggs, beans, and pulses; and non-dairy protein sources like walnuts or sunflower seeds.
- Some dairy products including milk (e.g., semi-skimmed or skimmed milk, low fat cheeses) for calcium and protein.
- Adults should not eat more than 6g (approx. one teaspoon) of salt per day, as this can contribute to high blood pressure.
Finally, let’s look at some strategies we could employ to encourage healthy eating, particularly in current times:
- Plan meals in advance to prevent snacking (particularly on sugary/high fat snacks). If you do want to snack, make healthy choices visible and hide the treats away;
- Planning what you will eat will also help you reduce food waste!
- Once you’ve planned your meals, write a shopping list;
- This will help stop extra items falling into the trolley, helping you keep healthy pockets too!
- Protein on a budget – protein is a crucial nutrition component as it helps us feel fuller for longer, which might help us reduce our overall intake and, therefore, expenditure;
- Plant proteins, like beans, lentils and tofu, are generally the cheapest way to get protein. They’re also lower in saturated fat than meat, making them a great choice for your heart health, too.
- Microwaves and pressure cookers tend to be the most energy-efficient ways of cooking, so can help save you money on your energy bills.
- Support healthy eating with adequate hydration.
- Use a smaller dinner plate or bowl;
- Research has suggested that seeing large parts of our plates without food on them can trick our brains into feeling we haven’t eaten enough, potentially leading to over-eating.
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