What Should I Eat?: A Complete Guide to the New Food Pyramid - Softcover

D'Elgin, Tershia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0345487435 ISBN 13: 9780345487438

Verlag: Ballantine Books, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

The must-have guide to the first revision of the food pyramid in over 13 years!

For the first time in more than a decade, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has revised the Food Pyramid–the government’s official recommendations concerning the nutrients our bodies require and the proportion of each we need to stay healthy. The new guidelines, called My Pyramid, have been significantly adjusted to reflect the latest scientific research on nutrition. They are also very confusing!

What Should I Eat? helps clarify My Pyramid’s vast and complicated information and tells you exactly what you need to know in order to benefit from the new nutritional guidelines. Moreover, this essential manual will show you how to tailor My Pyramid for your specific health and fitness needs. You will learn how to

• Best meet the requirements of each food group
• Eyeball portion sizes (What does an ounce look like?)
• Gauge nutrition requirements for both women and men
• Pack maximum nutrition into every meal
• Make smart choices in restaurants
• Incorporate exercise into your busy schedule

With tips for shopping, storage, and cooking, and suggestions for seeking nutritional supplements and professional care, What Should I Eat? is your ultimate roadmap to a long and healthy life.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Tershia d'Elgin has been a contributing writer for many science/health/psychology books, including Think Like a Shrink and Fat Is Not Your Fat: Outsmart Your Genes and Lose the Weight Forever.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

CHAPTER ONE
 
Why Is a New Food Pyramid Necessary?
 
A Brief History of Dietary Recommendations
 
First there was the “square meal,” a four-cornered approach to meals that dated from 1943, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced the Basic Four to help citizens achieve better nutrition during war shortages. The square meal included a meat portion, a vegetable or fruit portion, a starch portion, and a milk portion, three times a day every day. Baby boomers grew up on square meals. They also grew out. By the seventies, Americans were no longer the active, rosy-cheeked specimens depicted in Norman Rockwell illustrations. And as Americans became fatter, scientists proved links between rich food and heart disease. It was obvious that the square meal needed an overhaul.
 
My Pyramid Is a Product of the USDA, but What Is the USDA?
 
President Abraham Lincoln created the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1862. He called it the “people’s department.” In those days, more than half of all Americans were farmers. Today’s statistics are much lower— about 1 percent—yet the USDA still assumes advocacy for the people and corporations that grow our food. At the same time, the USDA is home to the Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services, whose agencies administer the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion. This group links scientific research to consumers’ nutritional needs, then distributes science-based dietary guidance. The new My Pyramid is a recent manifestation.
 
In the late 1970s, the USDA added another category to the Basic Four and put the culprits—sweets, alcohol, and fat—into it. Despite, or perhaps because of, the fifth element, incidences of heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and stroke, and weight gain mounted. So during the eighties the USDA decided to get graphic. The agency came up with an emblem designed to signify what previous polygons could not—variety, proportion, and moderation. The 1992 Food Pyramid stacked the food groups according to the proportions in which they should be consumed, with grains occupying the wider base and sweets at the top. The message was (and still is), make cereals, rice, pasta, and bread the foundation of your diet. Consume plenty of vegetables and fruits. Enjoy milk, cheese, yogurt, and other dairy products. Eat some meat, fish, poultry, and legumes. Add a smattering of sweets, oils, and fats.
 
The old pyramid was more complicated than the square meal, but was still fairly simple. Its advice was also better for us and reflected the growing body of knowledge about carbohydrates, fats, and other components of good nutrition. Unfortunately, it did not make U.S. citizens healthier. Just the opposite.
 
The Girth Factor
 
Increasingly poor nutritional habits and lack of exercise undermined the Food Pyramid’s good intentions. The pattern of weight gain continued. Of twenty-two industrialized countries, the United States has the highest obesity statistics. Today, fully two-thirds of Americans over the age of twenty are overweight, and nearly one-third of adults are obese, according to the 1999–2000 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. This prevalence has increased steadily in the last forty years, in both genders and all ethnic groups. Over these decades, the
 
Obese versus Overweight: What’s the Difference?
 
OBESITY = ABNORMALLY HIGH PROPORTIONS OF BODY FAT
 
OVERWEIGHT = EXCESS MUSCLE, BONE, FAT, AND/OR BODY WATER RELATIVE TO HEIGHT
 
All obese people are overweight, but not every overweight person is obese; there is a distinction. Technically, overweight means simply that you weigh more than average. Some people are not fat, but they carry surplus weight in their musculature.
 
statistics on overweight people increased only marginally (from 32.5 to 33.6 percent), but obesity more than doubled (from 13.3 to 30.9 percent).
 
If you want to know whether you are overweight and/or obese, use the same system as health professionals and scientists. The Body Mass Index, or BMI, can help you determine unhealthy degrees of weight.
 
Body Mass Index Table
 
Look at the table on page 8. Find the appropriate height in the left-hand column labeled “Height.” Move across to a given weight. The number at the top of the column is the BMI at that height and weight. Pounds have been rounded off.
 
There are subtleties that indicate just how healthy your BMI is.
 
For instance, bodybuilders and other muscular types may be technically overweight but still very fit. However, older people or people who have lost body mass through dieting may fall within a healthy BMI category but have decreased nutritional reserves. There are also distinctions between men and women that are not incorporated into the BMI. Evidently the BMI is not a flawless methodology, but it is the best we have now and it is a good starting place for analysis.
 
The Body Mass Index Formula
 
The following equation is based on the metric system:
Weight (Kilograms)/ Height (meters) x 2
 
Using U.S. customary measurements instead, multiply your weight in pounds by 704.5, then divide the result by height in inches, then divide that result by height in inches a second time. Or just use the table.
 
Obesity increases the risk of mortality by 50 to 100 percent. Boiled down, this means that obese people are shortening their lives by anywhere from a handful of years up to twenty years, depending on their BMI.
 
What about children? Officially, pudgy children are only overweight, not obese. Even though today’s children cannot be labeled obese until after they reach the age of twenty, they are, overall, three times as fat as they were thirty-five years ago. In 1970, 4 percent of American children ages 6 through 11 were overweight, as were 5 percent of children ages 12 through 19. Today, 16 percent of all American children carry more weight than they need and more than is healthy. The extra pounds increase their vulnerability to disease and the likelihood that they will develop life-threatening illnesses in adulthood, if not before. Just as worrisome are the additional 15 percent who are within a few pounds of joining this category.
 
The Disease Factor
 
Americans’ problem goes beyond tipping the scale. Many people compromise their health with poor eating habits, even if they are not overweight. Most Americans eat plenty; they just eat too little of the right things. Mouthful by mouthful, they increase their vulnerability to diabetes, cardiovascular disease, osteoarthritis, breathing problems, some forms of cancer, and many other diseases, with too little nutritional food and too much high-fat, high-sodium, high-sugar, and refinedcarbohydrate food. Of the nearly seven hundred thousand adult deaths every year in the United States, roughly three hundred thousand are attributable to unhealthy dietary habits and inactive lifestyles.1, 2
 
Eighteen million people have type 2 diabetes.3 Twenty million people have impaired glucose tolerance (prediabetes).4 Seventeen million require ambulatory care for hypertension each year. 5 About a third of all Americans, 101 million, have cholesterol high enough to pose the risk of heart disease.6
 
Part of the problem is bad food—food with too much that leads to weight gain and disease and too little that leads to better health. According to another USDA study, the Healthy Eating Index, fewer than 10 percent of all Americans actually eat right. Greater than 16 percent eat really poorly. Those 48 million, plus a good number of the borderline eaters, are putting away way too much saturated fat, salt, sugar, and refined carbs. By eating these foods instead of plenty of fresh fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, they increase their vulnerability to disease.
 
The Inactivity Factor
 
The rest of the problem is too much food—an imbalance between calories in and calories out. We Americans are consuming too many calories, and we are burning fewer and fewer. Between 1973 and 2000, our per capita intake went up 716 calories per day. (In the United Kingdom, which was right behind us in this race to eat more, intake went up only 220 calories per day.) The average man eats approximately 2,700 calories a day. That average man would have to play golf nine hours a day— without a golf cart—to burn all those calories. How often does that happen?
 
Instead, we are spending most of our time sitting, slumping, and sacked out—behind the wheel, at the office, and on the couch. Cave people and even preindustrial humans had to burn calories to get calories. All we have to do now is pass five bucks out the window at the drive-through.
 
Factor It All Together
 
To be fair, it is a mistake to expect a triangular graphic image to reshape America’s eating habits and deliver vitality packaged in great physiques. Nevertheless, the USDA shouldered the challenge and went back to the drawing board. Clearly, either too few people were actually heeding the old-fashioned food pyramid’s advice or something was missing from the message. The USDA nutritionists decided the pyramid failed in both categories. My Pyramid is the USDA’s stab at making the message more persuasive . . . and more comprehensive. Together, irrefutable new facts and fresh ideas have turned the former pyramid on its side.
 
 

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Ballantine Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0345487435
• ISBN 13: 9780345487438
• Einband: Tapa blanda
• Sprache: Englisch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 224
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar