5 a Day Rule For Healthy Eating For Life

Contributed By Sandy | Published: Oct 26, 2006

By: Antony Wilton

The five a day rule is one of the most important rules to
healthy eating. The five a day rule refers to the
government’s recommendation that everyone eat at least five
servings a day of fruits and vegetables.

It is important to remember the many advantages of fruits
and vegetables when applying the five a day rule to your
own diet. For one thing, fruits and vegetables taste
great, contain fewer calories than many other foods and are
full of many important vitamins and minerals. In addition,
fruits and vegetables are colorful and beautiful, making
them great garnishes and salad toppings.

They are easy to prepare. even for the busiest individual.
In most cases, fresh fruits require no preparation at all,
other than a quick wash and perhaps peeling.

The five a day recommendation equates to roughly two cups
of fruit and two and a half cups of vegetables every day,
based on the average 2,000 calorie diet. This is not a
difficult goal to reach, but it is important to keep the
five a day goal in mind when grocery shopping, cooking and
planning meals.

One great way to get started toward a five a day lifestyle
is with a delicious serving of 100% fruit juice every
morning. Apple juice, grapefruit juice and orange juice
are all excellent choices for both taste and nutrition.

Fruits and vegetables can also be used as garnishes for
other foods. Who doesn’t enjoy a sliced strawberry or
banana with their morning cereal? And fruits and
vegetables make great snacks as well. Whether you keep a
couple of apples at your desk or a selection of carrot and
celery sticks in the fridge, having fruits and vegetables
readily at hand is a big part of the battle.

Of course variety is extremely important when making any
change to your diet, and many dietary changes fail due to
boredom. Constantly trying new varieties of fruits and
vegetables is a great way to keep yourself interested in
your new healthier way of eating. If you’ve never had kiwi
fruit or asparagus, for instance, why not give it a try?

Combining attractive colors, shapes and sizes of fruits is
another way to provide attractive and interesting meals for
yourself and your family. Combining white grapes, red
peppers and pineapple chunks can provide a delicious and
attractive salad.

It is important to provide constant variety when
implementing the five a day plan, particularly if you are
cooking for a family. Try making some interesting new
dishes, such as veggie pizza, made with fresh vegetables
and whole wheat pizza crust, a fresh vegetable wrap,
vegetable stir fry or pasta with fresh vegetables.

For those who think they are too busy to incorporate five
servings of fruits and vegetables a day into their diet,
there is help available. The many ready to eat,
prepackaged salad kits on the market make it easier than
ever to create a healthy salad on the go. Just keep a
bottle of your favorite low fat or nonfat salad dressing on
hand and you can enjoy a healthy salad anywhere and anytime.

Even fast food restaurants have made it easier than every
to eat healthy, with every major chain now offering at
least a few healthy menu items. In addition, most grocery
chains offer fresh salad bars where you can create your own
healthy lunch even if you’re pressed for time.

When creating your five a day healthy lifestyle, remember
that fruits and vegetables make great snacks. An apple,
orange or banana provides both great taste and excellent
nutrition. In addition, the natural sugars contained in
fruits do not provide the sugar high/sugar crash scenario
all parents are familiar with.

Topping meals and salads with additional fruits and
vegetables is a great way to enhance your new five a day
lifestyle. Strips of green and red peppers, broccoli
florets, sliced carrots and cucumbers are all great
additions to pasta and potato salads. And of course
carrots, spinach, apple slices, orange slices, nectarines,
pineapples and raisins are all great additions to any salad.

In addition, adding fresh fruits to foods you already eat
is a great way to make such foods part of your new
lifestyle. Adding berries, bananas or oranges to cereal
and yogurt is a great way to make sure you meet your five a
day goal every day.

Healthier eating means many things to many people, and
everyone has different goals for the perfect diet. The key
to following a healthier diet is to find a diet you can
stick with for the rest of your life. A diet should not be
simply a temporary change in the way you life, eat and
exercise. Rather, it should be a permanent change that you
can live with day in and day out, year in and year out.

For some people, a healthier diet can be as simple as
increasing the amount of fruits and vegetables in the daily
diet. For others, a radical change, involving strict
control of fat and cholesterol, may be required.

Of course what is needed will depend on the goal of each
individual. The serious runner in search of greater
conditioning will of course have different goals than the
couch potato who is concerned about the possibility of
heart disease.

Even though every person will have different goals when it
comes to healthier eating, the basic rules of healthier
eating are the same. The most important thing is to eat a
good variety of foods, while eating less of the bad stuff
and more of the good.

That may sound like an over simplification, but it really
is that easy. Putting that simple concept into proactive,
however, is the hard part. Everyone wants to eat
healthier, but there are so many temptations in today’s
world that healthier eating can be very difficult. The key
is to make healthier choices as appealing as unhealthy ones.

One way to make healthier foods appealing is buying a wide
variety of exotic fruits at the local supermarket. There
are probably varieties of fruits and vegetables at your
local grocery store that you never even heard of before.
Why not make your next trip to the grocery store an
adventure by sampling these exotic offerings?

Experimenting with new recipes is another great way to
bring excitement and adventure to healthier eating. A
quick perusal of your favorite low fat or healthy eating
cookbook will likely present you with many fun and exciting
recipes to try. Often a new cookbook, or a couple of new
recipes are all it takes to spur a healthier lifestyle.

It is also important to know that eating healthier does not
necessarily mean making a radical change. There are very
simple things you can do, such as cutting the skin off your
chicken breast, or trimming the fat from your favorite
steak, that can result in significant fat reductions and
health improvements. Dieters should not overlook the
importance of these small changes when seeking a healthier
diet.

Other examples of small changes resulting in healthier
eating include:

Replacing whole milk with skim or 2%, both in recipes and
for drinking Snacking on sorbet or low fat frozen yogurt
instead of premium ice cream. Spraying pans with nonfat
cooking spray instead of using butter or margarine
Replacing high fat cuts of meat with leaner ones. Eating
more low fat fish and less red meat. Using egg substitutes,
the kind made from egg whites, in recipes, meals and baking

There are probably hundreds of other such tips, and they
can add up to significant health improvements, whether your
goal is to get fit, lose weight or improve your level of
health. No matter who you are or what your current level
of fitness, eating a healthier diet and losing weight may
be easier than you think.

In the end, eating a healthier diet, improving your level
of fitness, and managing your consumption of fat and
cholesterol boils down to common sense. Depriving yourself
of your favorite foods can be counterproductive to a long
term dietary change. Deprivation leads inevitably to
cravings, and that can start a vicious cycle of dieting and
splurging.

It is best to think of healthier eating as a marathon
rather than a sprint. The goal of any healthier eating
program should be to make easy, lifelong changes in the way
you shop, cook and dine. Only by making changes that you
can follow for a lifetime will you truly be able to enjoy a
healthier diet.

Author Antony Wilton's popular blog on health and fitness
issues is a "must read". Get your daily dose at
http://www.fitness-health-beauty.com/alerts