In quarantine, social isolation, home office or at “regular” work, this phase can be a moment to rethinking the concept of a family healthy nutrition.
The World Health Organization (WHO) designates healthy eating as protecting against all forms of malnutrition or under-nutrition, as well as non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, stroke, and cancer.
The guidelines of the New Food Wheel recommend that nutrition should be complete with food from all food groups and water, and it must be balanced. Still, fruit and vegetables should be eaten in higher quantities, but the number of servings should be individually adjusted. Finally, nutrition should be varied with each of us eating different foods within each food group.
Healthy nutrition should be a balance of quantity and nutritional quality. There are several ways to make an inadequate food intake: by consuming an insufficient amount of healthy food or by consuming only more nutritionally deficient foods, or by mixing adequate and inadequate quality and quantity.
One of the issues I like to reinforce in a consultation is that you don’t necessarily have to buy superfoods and spend a lot of money in specialized shops to make it healthy, although you can do it that way. If you are a person who consumes five coffees a day and puts a packet of sugar in each, the halving is already making your diet healthier; although there are many other daily options, you will need to make a 100% healthy nutrition.
Start with small changes or start a process of food re-education with your nutritionist. Set goals and learn tricks that will help you today and the rest of your life.
Another issue that occurs regularly is that healthy eating has to be expensive. It doesn’t look real. For example, if you use a courgette to replace the potato in your soup but the courgette is out of season and costs 3 euros/kg, you should ask your nutritionist about options of this season that will be cheaper and nutritionally richer to use. You should buy local, seasonal and if possible organic food (from your neighbor, at a local market, or your family). You can plant some food at home, including a window breast. There are plenty of options for being healthier.
Some key tips I can give you include: always read the food label, plan your diet, ingest the recommended amount of water every day, consume fruit and vegetables and soup in the right amount, and use healthy cooking methods.
So, have a good quarantine with your family!
Author: Ana Magalhães Pereira
Learn more about Ana’s work here or on her profile at Nutrium.
