Every year Dietitians of Canada dishes out helpful info on healthy eating with their Nutrition Month campaign in March. You can visit their website any day for healthy eating information, they just step it up a little in March.
This year the mantra is "Celebrate food... from field to table!" The media release says that cheese, apples, corn, fresh veggies, lobster and beef are our Canadian favorites.
The campaign urges people to learn more about where food comes from, food safety issues, knowing the nutritional benefits of food, and how to best plan, purchase, and prepare foods to promote optimum health.
Sounds good to me.
I remember the first time I visited a registered dietitian over 20 years ago.. my nutrition was a disaster.
Concerned about eating too much fat I had actually cut my fat intake too low.. a mere 15% of my total calories were from fat. The dietitian bumped this up to 25%. On the positive side I met nearly all of my vitamin and mineral needs, but not because I had an optimal choice of foods; I trained so much that I needed thousands of calories on most days (around 4000 cals) so I simply ate and ate... mmmm gooood.
Not really.. I could be doing better. When I ate my favorite pancake or french toast breakfast I would go hard core on the butter and syrup and justified the mega calorie intake via my mega calorie output on the bike.
What changed? Drop the number of pancakes, reduce the butter down to 1 tablespoon (it was at least 3X that much), reduce the syrup, and add fruit and veggies. (I no longer buy or eat butter*.)
After a couple weeks of eating more veggies (way more veggies), upping my fat intake (healthy fats; nuts, seeds, olive oil), decreasing my saturated fat intake (too much butter at breakfast), my energy level increased significantly.
More energy through the day, better recovery from exercise, and better performance.
I also dropped the multi vitamins I was taking.
When the dietitian said I didn't need the one a day pill I was surprised. "I thought you would give me bonus points for taking in extra vitamins." "Cris, your dietary analyses shows you are getting what you need from food. You don't need the pill." It's true I needed a bit more greens and beans to increase magnesium and folate, which I did, but the one a day I was taking was a waste of time.
Recent research actually shows that a one a day vitamin has no health benefit at all compared to healthy eating.
It took me a couple weeks of pondering to get over the popular notion that vitamin pills "might help, can't harm". Once I "got it", I thought how silly I had been to down unnecessary pills when I should have been thinking about what foods I should be eating to provide optimum health.
The visit, (and subsequent visits) to a dietitian helped me learn how think about my food choices. I switched from being primarily concerned with food making me feel full and tasting good, to meeting my nutrient needs and tasting good.
The switch to healthy eating is actually far more rewarding flavour wise as eating healthy means lot's of variety, which means lot's of flavours to explore.
Instead of relying on different fatty salad dressings to add punch to my salads I learned to change up the veggies, add fruit like strawberries and blueberries, throw in some almonds, apple slices, etc.
Salads went from wet leaves to a fantastic palate pleasing nutrient dense mainstay in my daily food intake.
I'm glad I went to that dietitian to get me on the right track as much of what I thought was right wasn't quite right. Evidently this is the case for most of us.. 70% of Canadians don't eat enough veggies, about 60% of the population is overweight, and we're too concerned with feeling full rather than being healthy.
It's worth it to change the way we look at food though.. It really does improve your life to eat healthy; more energy, better sleep, protection from disease, longer life, and better quality of life.
Footnote on butter..
*No butter! What? You some kind of freaky extremist!? I get the eating healthy thing, but you don't have to give up butter! No, you don't have to. But I did. Why? I looked at the nutrient density of butter compared to peanut butter and almond butter, and other fat sources such as ground flax seeds and olive oil. The nuts are more nutrient dense than butter. So now I get the satiating and pleasing flavour of fats that our taste buds appreciate, plus mega vitamins and minerals.
Comparing 1 tbsp of Sunflower seed butter to butter (source: USDA Nutrient Database)
| Nutrient: Sunflower Seed Butter | Units | 1.00 X 1 tbsp ------- 16g |
|---|---|---|
| Water | g | 0.20 |
| Energy | kcal | 93 |
| Energy | kJ | 388 |
| Protein | g | 3.15 |
| Total lipid (fat) | g | 7.64 |
| Ash | g | 0.63 |
| Carbohydrate, by difference | g | 4.39 |
| Minerals | ||
| Calcium, Ca | mg | 20 |
| Iron, Fe | mg | 0.76 |
| Magnesium, Mg | mg | 59 |
| Phosphorus, P | mg | 118 |
| Potassium, K | mg | 12 |
| Nutrient: Butter | Units | Value per 16 grams | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Water | g | 2.87 | |
| Energy | kcal | 115 | |
| Energy | kJ | 480 | |
| Protein | g | 0.14 | |
| Total lipid (fat) | g | 12.98 | |
| Ash | g | 0.01 | |
| Carbohydrate, by difference | g | 0.01 | |
| Fiber, total dietary | g | 0.0 | |
| Sugars, total | g | 0.01 | |
| Minerals | |||
| Calcium, Ca | mg | 4 | |
| Iron, Fe | mg | 0.00 | |
| Magnesium, Mg | mg | 0 | |
| Phosphorus, P | mg | 4 | |
| Potassium, K | mg | 4 |
I would rather have Sunflower seed butter on my toast than butter. Same calories (a little less actually), and not a huge amount of vitamins and minerals, but some. There is more flavour variety when switching out peanut butter, almond butter, and sunflower seed butter compared to the same old boring butter.
Get out of the butter trap. Learn about the nutrient density of highly flavourful healthy foods; you'll soon learn that butter is most certainly not a "must have", but rather a boring, pedestrian ingredient that lacks imagination. It's the cheap and dirty way to add flavour.
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