Nobody’s perfect, and that’s especially true when it comes to eating a healthy, well-balanced diet.
“All these years and we still know that balance, variety and moderation are the keys to good nutrition, and that includes enjoying occasional splurges,” said dietitian Jill Melton, editor of Relish Magazine.
Melton and more than 8,000 other nutrition experts gathered at the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics 2012 Food & Nutrition Conference in Philadelphia to learn the latest research and sample the best new healthy food products.
Here’s a taste of what they learned:
What’s on your plate?
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s nutrition icon, MyPlate, which has replaced the food pyramid, is receiving rave reviews from dietitians.
“It’s an easy visual. People easily see that half their plate should be fruits and vegetables whether they’re eating at home or at a restaurant,” said dietitian Roberta Duyff, the author of “The Complete Food and Nutrition Guide.”
Dr. Robert Post, deputy director of the USDA’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, said MyPlate’s meal planning tool called SuperTracker will soon allow users to include their favorite foods to calculations.
“If you have your own version of a turkey avocado sandwich,” Post said, “you can create it with SuperTracker and save it in your profile.”
Write it if you bite it.
Jotting down what you eat is a healthy habit to keep track of food intake.
“There’s so much mindless eating going on,” said dietitian Katherine Brooking of the nutrition website Appetite for Health. “Journaling can really help so that at the end of a week or month you get a sense of where excess calories are coming from. For people who are losing weight, it’s your best tool.”
Tasty techniques
Chefs shared tips on maximizing flavors. “Caramelizing or roasting vegetables to bring out the natural sweetness, adding a ground sea salt just at the end of cooking and sprinkling with just a little great quality bacon offers high impact to healthy recipes,” said Lucien Vendome, director of culinary operations for Nestle Foods.
Know more, eat more
While one of the USDA’s nutrition messages to combat obesity is “Enjoy your food, but eat less,” Dr. Barbara Rolls said the message should be to eat more of certain foods. “People tend to eat a consistent amount of food,” said Rolls, a professor of nutrition at Penn State University and the author of “The Ultimate Volumetrics Diet.” “If you tell them to just eat less, they don’t like it because they don’t want a plate that’s half empty.” Rolls’ research shows that eating more foods that are higher in water content such as fruits, vegetables and soups adds volume to the plate and improves satiety to support weight loss.
Taste more waters
“Drink more water” is pretty common advice to help people stay hydrated and support bodily functions including healthy skin and a happy digestive tract. To learn more about the nuances of tastes and even textures of drinking water, dietitians were invited to a water tasting led by wine expert David Cobbold. Presented with samples of still and sparkling waters, participants tasted the difference between waters with different levels of sodium, calcium, magnesium and other minerals. “Like wine, what you’re tasting is a reflection of soil structure and rainfall,” Cobbold said. “There’s a texture difference. Drinking water is not so boring. Each water has it’s own taste.”
