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Put
the Dietary Guidelines to work for you
January 27, 05
Suzanne Havala Hobbs
The government has unveiled our nation’s new collective
diet plan – the 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
Now that the hoopla has died down, you may be left with one
overriding question:
How do I do it?
One key is to realize that – for the most part –
the guidelines all complement each other. Eat enough fruits
and vegetables, for instance, and you’ll likely decrease
your saturated fat intake. Eat fewer processed foods, and
you’ll cut your intake of sodium and trans fats.
The most prominent recommendation, however, doesn’t
even pertain to diet. The guidelines call for higher levels
of physical activity for virtually all of us. The minimum
is 30 minutes a day, up to 60 minutes for anyone who needs
to lose weight – that’s most of us – and
up to 90 minutes if you’ve lost weight and want to keep
it off.
That’s a lot of exercise. How to pull it off?
* Take the time off the top. It’s your health, so consider
the time a fixed item in your schedule. You may have to drop
something else – TV, shopping, phone calls, email –
unless you can compress more into less time.
* Choose something you enjoy. If you despise the gym, walk
in your neighborhood.
* Picture yourself being regularly active. It gets easier
the longer you do it and as it becomes part of your identity.
Think about the people you know who exercise regularly. Ask
them how they manage to keep it up.
Then there’s diet.
What the guidelines say to do and some practical steps for
getting there:
* Eat at least 4.5 cups of fruits and vegetables per day.
Pull the veggies from the side and bring them – in heaping
servings – to the center of the plate. They’re
the main dish now. Add fruit as a garnish or chopped and added
to salads or your morning cereal. Take fresh fruit to school
or work.
* Make at least half of your breads and cereals whole grain.
Go to a natural foods store for the biggest selection of whole
grain crackers, cereals, mixes, pasta and breads. The big
bonus: they’ll also be trans fat-free.
* Push hard to make most fats come from plant sources. That
means eating fewer animal products. Fats from nuts, seeds,
vegetable oils, and fish: good. Fats from meat, poultry, cheese,
milk and ice cream: bad. Aim for as few trans fats as possible
– zero is ideal.
The new guidelines raise the recommended number of servings
of milk to three per day. That’s an area of contention
for some nutrition experts, including myself. Walter Willett,
chair of the department of nutrition at Harvard’s School
of Public Health, told USA Today that there are “too
many servings of dairy without strong evidence of their safety
and benefit.” If you drink milk, make it skim or _ percent.
Otherwise, drink calcium-fortified soymilk or fortified orange
juice.
* Limit added sugars and caloric sweeteners. According to
the new guidelines, even the sugar in one soft drink per day
is too much for most people. Buy diet drinks instead or –
better yet – switch to water.
* Hold sodium to less than 2300 milligrams per day. That’s
equivalent to one level teaspoon of salt. We get most of our
sodium from processed foods, however, so eat more fresh foods,
rinse canned vegetables, and buy canned goods marked “no
salt added.” Your taste buds adjust to a diet low in
sodium over time.
The new dietary guidelines are a good start. Now we need national
policies – for example, junk food advertising limits
and the shifting of agricultural subsidies to fruits and vegetables
– to create an environment more supportive of the lifestyle
changes we all need to make.
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