How to be sure we get out daily requirements of nutrient?

The great nutritional challenge of our times is this: how to sure we get our daily requirements of the various nutrients while keeping calories, fats, sodium and sugar at a low level to avoid the problems of overweight and chronic illness such as heart disease, hypertension and diabetes.

The answer is, through the careful selection of foods. For instance, dairy foods are the best sources of calcium, but whole milk and its products are also high in fat calories. Choose skim milk: 1 cup of skim milk has about the same amount of calcium as 1 cup of whole milk, but only traces of fat and half the number of calories.

Also, make every calories count. That is, know which foods give you a high amount of nutrients for the calories they bring in. These are the so called “nutrient-dense” foods. For instance, a serving of potatoes mashed with butter and milk will give you 7 mg. of vitamin C, but it will “cost” you 104 calories, and many of those from fats. Once medium sized guava, on the other hand, will give 212 mg of vitamin C, and at the cost of only 50 calories, barely a trace of these from fats. The better choice is obvious.

By this yardstick, you should also keep a tight leash on certain foods which bring in loads of calories but few or no nutrients: fatty spreads and dressings, sugar and sugary foods such as candy, jam jellies, soft drinks, honey and alcoholic beverages. Also most fast foods- a typical pig out(a double burger with fries and a cola) could virtually give you your total calories for the entire day and barely a look-in’s worth of minerals and vitamins.

How much of vegetables and fruits, rice and dal(pulses), meat or fish or beans should you include in your daily menu to make sure you get a mix of foods that would delight a nutritionist’s heart? There is no one ‘ideal” diet for everyone. People’s food needs differ depending on their body type, age, sex, level of activity and other conditions, ranging from illness to menopause.

Yet, for all healthy adults, some basic guidelines can be laid down, based on the information we have. In India there are no official recommendations. But the U.S department of Agriculture has issued a food guide to serve as an easy reminder of what foods and how much of these foods you need to get on to your daily platter. Because of its graphic representation, it was called “U.S.D.A.’s Eating Right Pyramid”

But this pyramid may not be so straightforwardly applicable in India, says nutritionist India Nutritionist, because cereal being a staple here, over average consumption is already much higher than the 40% recommended in the pyramid.

Again, the ‘meat’ group here would have to focus more on lentils (dals) than on meat and fish, the majority of Indian being vegetarian.

The USDA also defined portion size that is what constitutes’ one serving’, for instance, in the cereal group, one serving would one slice of bread or half a cup of cooked pasta or half a cup of cooked cereal, or 30 gm of ready-to-eat cereal And so on through the five groups.

However, at the practical level, the visual more workable is the ‘Plate; model. The bulk of this platter of foods is made up of cereal (more than half the platter- that is about 55 to 60% of it), fruits and vegetables take up the next highest segment of the circle or plate( about 30$ of it): Pulses(and/ or fish, meat egg, nuts) make up 10% and dairy products about 5%. The fat comes in along with the above foods (in cooked and uncooked items): the advice is to consume it very sparingly.