Healthy Eating Pyramid

5 QUICK TIPS: Following hte Healthy Eating Pyramid

1. Start with exercise. A healthy diet is built on a base of regular exercise, which keeps calories in balance and weight in check. Read five quick tips for staying active and getting to your healthy weight, and a dozen ideas for fitting exercise into your life.

2. Focus on food, not grams. The Healthy Eating Pyramid doesn’t worry about specific servings or grams of food, so neither should you. It’s a simple, general guide to how you should eat when you eat.

3. Go with plants. Eating a plant-based diet is healthiest. Choose plenty of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and healthy fats, like olive and canola oil. Check out these delicious healthy recipes that bring the Healthy Eating Pyramid into your kitchen.

4. Cut way back on American staples. Red meat, refined grains, potatoes, sugary drinks, and salty snacks are part of American culture, but they’re also really unhealthy. Go for a plant-based diet rich in non-starchy vegetables, fruits, and whole grains. And if you eat meat, fish and poultry are the best choices.

5. Take a multivitamin, and maybe have a drink. Taking a multivitamin can be a good nutrition insurance policy. Moderate drinking for many people can have real health benefits, but it's not for everyone. Those who don’t drink shouldn’t feel that they need to start. Read about balancing alcohol's risks and benefits.

THE BOTTOM LINE
We can’t look at a pyramid these days without thinking of food and healthy eating. There was the U.S. government’s Food Guide Pyramid, followed by its replacement, My Pyramid, which was basically the same thing, just pitched on its side. The problem was that these efforts, while generally well intentioned, have been quite flawed at actually showing people what makes up a healthy diet. Why? Their recommendations have often been based on out-of-date science and influenced by people with business interests in their messages. But, there’s a better alternative: the Healthy Eating Pyramid, built by the faculty in the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Based on the latest science, and unaffected by businesses and organizations with a stake in its messages, the Healthy Eating Pyramid is a simple, trustworthy guide to choosing a healthy diet. Its foundation is daily exercise and weight control, since these two related elements strongly influence your chances of staying healthy. The Healthy Eating Pyramid builds from there, showing that you should eat more foods from the bottom part of the pyramid (vegetables, whole grains) and less from the top (red meat, refined grains, sugary drinks)

Download a larger image of the Healthy Eating Pyramid.

The Healthy Eating Pyramid image on this Web site is owned by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. It may be downloaded and used without permission for educational and other non-commercial uses with proper attribution, including the following copyright notification and credit line:Copyright © 2008. For more information about The Healthy Eating Pyramid, please see The Nutrition Source, Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health, http://www.thenutritionsource.org, and Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy, by Walter C. Willett, M.D. and Patrick J. Skerrett (2005), Free Press/Simon & Schuster Inc. Any other use, including commercial reuse or mounting on other systems, requires permission of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health. To request permission, please contact us using the form on this Web site. Terms of Use The aim of the Harvard School of Public Health Nutrition Source is to provide timely information on diet and nutrition for clinicians, allied health professionals, and the public. The contents of this Web site are not intended to offer personal medical advice. You should seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on this Web site. The information does not mention brand names, nor does it endorse any particular products.

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