Healthy eating basics

Healthy eating is not about sticking to strict diets or depriving yourself of the foods you love. Rather, it’s about eating a balanced range of foods that help you feel great, have more energy, improve your outlook, and help you achieve and maintain a healthy weight.

Healthy eating 101 with Dr Mike Evans

Healthy eating can be quite complex – so sit down at the clinic with Doctor Mike Evans as he provides some great healthy eating tips and advice in this video.

(Michael Evans and Reframe Health Films Inc, 2015)

Healthy eating: How do I know I'm eating well?

If we eat a wide range of foods, we can get all the energy, vitamins and minerals we need to live well and healthy lives. The visual food guide shows the balance of foods to eat, foods that can be substituted for each other within food groups, and the types of food to eat for good health.

Discover more about the healthy heart visual food guide and how you can use it to help make simple changes when you do your food shopping. Check out the Heart Foundation website for more heart healthy tips.

Eat these foods the most

Vegetables & fruit

"Eat plenty of fruit and vegetables," heard it all before? Perhaps, but the truth remains: you do have to eat them if you want to stay healthy!

(Image credit: Canva)

Did you know?

Fruit and vegetables are packed with goodness and help prevent heart disease, stroke and high blood pressure. They can also protect against cancers of the mouth, larynx, pharynx, esophagus, lung and stomach.
30% of breast cancers could be prevented by making lifestyle changes, including eating a plant-based diet and exercising regularly.
To give yourself a fighting chance against a variety of illnesses, you need to eat a minimum of 3 servings of vegetables and 2 serves of fruit every day.
In New Zealand, 2 out of every 3 of us meet our daily fruit and vege requirements, with more females than males more likely to do so.

Young men are the least likely to eat vegetables, and men under 55 least likely to eat fruit.

Eat some of these foods

Wholegrain bread, cereals, grains & starchy vegetables

Breads, cereals, grains, and starchy vegetables are a staple in many Kiwi diets. For heart health, choose whole grain and high fibre varieties. On your plate, these foods should fill no more than one-quarter of your plate, or be a fist-sized amount.

Here are some tips to get you started:

swap from white bread to wholegrain bread
swap from white to brown rice
swap from a low fibre breakfast cereal to whole oats
choose baked potato or kumara instead of deep fried
use wholemeal instead of white flour
choose just one starchy food at a meal (ie not potato plus bread).

Source – Heart Foundation of NZ

Fish, lean meat, chicken, legumes, eggs

Kiwis love their meat and seafood, and they are a good source of protein and nutrients. But it's important to choose leaner varieties, ie, with the visible white fat removed, to look after our heart.

Try fish instead of meat, and oily fish has the added benefit of healthy omega-3 fats. Oily fish include tuna, kahawai, trevally, kingfish, warehou, dory, salmon, sardines, eel, squid, mussels or oysters.

Legumes are one of the most under-rated and healthy, affordable foods around. They can be eaten instead of meat or mixed into a dish and less meat used. You can buy them dried or pre-cooked in a can for convenience.

Source – Heart Foundation of NZ

Milk, yoghurt, reduced-fat, cheese

Did you know?

If you drink a glass of milk a day, swapping from dark blue to green or yellow top milk saves you 2.8kg of fat in a year.

Milk is one of our staple foods, and it can be found in most fridges around the country. Drink it straight, add it to cereal, mix it into a smoothie, or use it for baking. Choose lower-fat varieties. A glass of dark blue top milk has 8.8 grams of fat; 5.4 grams of which is saturated. That’s one-third of the saturated fat most people should be having in a whole day.

Read more...

Source – Heart Foundation of NZ

Nuts & healthy oils

Plain unsalted nuts are a really healthy food, but remember just a handful (30g) most days is all you need, or 2 tablespoons of peanut butter. It's best to eat different types of nuts as they each have a slightly different nutrition profile.

Source – Heart Foundation of NZ

Fats

Did you know?

Nearly one quarter of Kiwis have total cholesterol levels higher than 6.5 mmol/L yet doctors say below 5 is best.

The bottom line is, we eat too much fat, especially the harmful fats.

Too much fat can make us fat, especially if combined with a low level of physical activity.
Eating too much of certain types of fat, especially saturated fat and trans fats, can also increase our risk of heart disease and a number of other diseases.
Remember, we all need some fat in our diets – so it’s best to choose the healthy ones!
A typical New Zealander’s diet contains around 35% of total energy as fat, whereas the 2005 goal was 30-33%, and more recently that’s been adjusted to 20-25%.
Our saturated (bad) fat intake is 15% of total energy, instead of 12%.

What are fats?

Fats are a group of compounds that make an important contribution to nutrition, despite their bad press. Fats are major sources of energy, and the only form in which the body can store energy for a long period of time.

Getting the right balance of how much and what type of fat to eat is important.

We all need some fat in our diets – so it’s best to choose the healthy ones. It is better for our heart to eat plant-based fats and oils (except coconut and palm oils) instead of animal based fats and oils (eg. butter, meat fat).

View fats and oils

Cut back on processed foods

Processed foods are most foods you find in a packet, jar or bag. Such foods include all junk foods, takeaways and drinks and tend to be high in sugar, salt, saturated or trans fats.

Salt

Most New Zealanders eat about 10 times more salt (sodium) than they need.

Foods high in salt include:

Many takeaway foods,
vegemite and marmite,
pickled foods,
soy sauce,
many packet snacks such as crackers, and chippies,
processed meats like bacon, luncheon sausage and salami.

While most of us should use less salt, ie, less sodium, in our diets, we also need more iodine – impossible task, or interesting challenge? Nutritionists say first focus on lowering your sodium intake, then take a look at ensuring you are getting enough iodine.

View salt section & how to eat less salt but more iodine

Sugar

Take care with your sugar intake!

No one is saying never eat sugar – how dull would that be? And it appears some of us may actually have a sweet tooth gene, making it even harder to resist. But eating sugar in excess is not healthy. High sugar = 15g or more per 100g food, low sugar = 2g or less per 100g food.

Foods high in sugar can ‘displace’ more nutritious foods from your diet, and add to weight gain, leading to heart disease, obesity and type 2 diabetes. Sugar, like salt, hides in much of the processed foods we buy, so we can consume too much without even knowing it. Another trap is the high sugar content of juices and soft drinks – often juice will have more sugar than a fizzy drink - so save all these for a treat.

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View sugar section and tips to drop sugar intake

Saturated fat

Considered the bad fats because of their link to heart disease, saturated fats should be eaten in small amounts. They come predominantly from animal products, especially fatty meats, and dairy products, like butter, full-fat milk and cheese, but also from coconut and palm oil.

Fast foods are also major contributors. Eating saturated fat increases both good (HDL) and bad (LDL) cholesterol levels. Controlling your LDL cholesterol level is the best known way of lessening your risk of coronary heart disease, so eating fewer of the foods that contain large amounts of saturated fat is an important way to do this.

View saturated and trans fats

Trans fat

We don’t need these fats in our diet at all. Although they are unsaturated, when food manufacturers 'hygrogenate' them to make them firm, they become more like saturated fats in their effects on blood cholesterol; not only do they increase our levels of bad (LDL) cholesterol, but they also decrease our levels of good (HDL) cholesterol.

Trans fats do not occur naturally – except in small amounts from cows and sheep. Mostly they come from manufactured foods, like some margarines and peanut butters, biscuits, crackers, cakes and potato chips. However, most spreads now available in New Zealand and Australia only contain a small proportion of trans fats.

Check food labels to see if what you are buying contains trans fats.

View saturated and trans fats

Healthy drinking

Water

Did you know?

Water is one of the two most essential materials for human life – the other is oxygen. The average person can survive for about 40 days without food, but most people will die if they go for more than 5 days without water.

Top tips

Drink plenty of water every day.
Consume an amount of fluid equivalent to 6-8 cups of water per day (enough to make you urinate 4 to 5 times a day).
Try low-fat milk sometimes, as a nutritious alternative to water or soft drinks.
Avoid excessive intakes of alcohol, soft drinks and fruit juices.
Fizzy drinks are not recommended for children under the age of 2 years.
People susceptible to caffeine should minimise consumption of tea, coffee and other caffeinated drinks.

Read more...

Alcohol

For many adults, a drink after work or with family and friends is an important part of socialising and relaxing. However for others, one drink is never enough. Find out how much is a standard drink, the effects of alcohol on our bodies and where to get help if you or a loved one's drinking is becoming a problem.

Read more...

Try this course

Pacific Community Nutrition Course Heart Foundation

One challenge Pacific people face when moving to and living in NZ is the move away from their traditional pacific foods and meals to foods that are higher in fat, sugar and salt.
This change in diet means that Pacific people have higher rates of heart disease compared to other ethnic groups. They are living with obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure making them more at risk of having a heart attack and stroke.
This course is a “hands-on” way of taking nutrition information and using it in daily life.
If you are working with Pacific communities as a health worker, leader or advisor: try this nine-day training course – The Certificate in Pacific Nutrition.
Register your Interest Or contact Pacific Heart – Email: info@pacificheart.org.nz or phone: (09) 571 9189.