1. Eat a balanced, varied diet containing healthy ingredients from the four main food groups (visit the American Diabetes Association nutrition page).
2. Bulk up on 100% whole grains for fiber and 5-10 servings per day of richly colored fruits and vegetables.
3. Trim bad fats like saturated and trans and get healthy monounsaturated fats from ingredients like canola oil, salmon or other fatty fish, nuts and avocados.
4. Eat seafood 2-3 times per week.
5. Try meat alternatives like beans and tofu and milk alternatives like soy milk.
6. Pass on adding salt to your food to keep blood pressure in check.
7. Be mindful of serving sizes and the number of calories you consume daily.
8. Limit your intake of alcohol, caffeine and sugar.
9. Strive for 30-60 minutes a day of exercise, and 60-90 minutes of physical activity per day for children (visit the American Diabetes Association fitness page).
10. Minimize stress and get plenty of sleep.

As a recent study says

A healthy diet is expensive and could make it difficult for Americans to meet new U.S. nutritional guidelines, according to a study published Thursday that says the government should do more to help consumers eat healthier.

A 2010 update of what used to be known as the food pyramid called on Americans to eat more foods containing potassium, dietary fiber, vitamin D and calcium. But if they did that, the journal Health Affairs said, they would add hundreds more dollars to their annual grocery bill.

Inexpensive ways to add these nutrients to a person's diet include potatoes and beans for potassium and dietary fiber. But the study found introducing more potassium in a diet is likely to add $380 per year to the average consumer's food costs, said lead researcher Pablo Monsivais, an assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology and the School of Public Health at the University of Washington.

"We know more than ever about the science of nutrition, and yet we have not yet been able to move the needle on healthful eating," he said. The government should provide help for meeting the nutritional guidelines in an affordable way.

This isn’t good

It used to be that people who just couldn't break the plastic habit to go plastic-freecould at least rely on certain types of plastics, usually those labeled #2, #4, or #5 in the triangle of arrows on the bottom, because those plastics weren't made using bisphenol A or phthalates, the two chemicals in plastic that are known to interfere with the way your body produces and handles estrogen. But a new study published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives concludes that there really are no "safe" plastics, thanks to all the chemicals, additives, and processing aids that go into making plastic products. In a test of nearly 500 chemical containers, the authors discovered that nearly all exhibited some kind of estrogenic activity.

What does this mean?  Well first of all you need to stop using plastic containers in microwaves.

• Revamp your food storage. Glass, ceramic, and stainless steel are great food-storage materials that can go from stove to fridge to freezer easily.

• Buy less processed food. Most processed foods in the grocery store come in some form of plastic packaging. Buying fresh vegetables and ingredients in bulk (which you can package in your own plastic-free containers) will help you avoid most of it.

• BYO… You may already carry a reusable mug and reusable shopping bags to eliminate some plastics, but take the next step and start carrying reusable produce bags, too, when you shop. Like other forms of plastic, those flimsy plastic produce bags can leach hormone-disrupting chemicals into your berries and broccoli, and they're hard to recycle once they're contaminated with food. You can find regular and organic cotton produce bags online at Ecobags.com.

via

According to Robyn O’Brien in this much see video from TEDxAustin, it’s not.

via

Wired shows us how making supper is good thing.

The Ikea Effect is a psychological bias first identified by Michael Norton, Daniel Mochon and Dan Ariely. The concept will make perfect sense to anyone who has struggled to put together a bookshelf based on an inscrutable set of instructions. Although the furniture might look like crap — I always have a few leftover screws — the flimsy assembly of molded plywood feels like a masterpiece. (That shelf isn’t supposed to be straight, right?)

In one study, the behavioral economists asked people to fold origami and then bid on their own creations. As expected, the subjects were consistently willing to pay more for their own folded paper creations. In fact, they were so enamored of their amateurish designs that they valued them as highly as origami made by experts.

It turns out that the Ikea effect also applies to food, at least in mice. The experiment was simple: Mice were trained to push levers to get one of two rewards. If they pressed lever A, they got a delicious drop of sugar water. If they pressed lever B, they got a different tasting drop of sugar water. (This reward was made with polycose, not sucrose.)

The scientists then started to play mind games with the mice, as they gradually increased the amount of effort required to get one of the sweet rewards. Although the mice only had to press the lever a single time to get the sugar water at the start of the experiment, by the end they were required to press the lever 15 times.

Here’s where things get interesting: When the test was over and the mice were allowed to relax in their home cage, they showed an overwhelming preference for whichever reward they’d worked harder to obtain. More lever presses led to tastier water. (The scientists measured these preferences in a variety of ways, including an analysis of “licking microstructure”. Preferred foods lead to a faster rate of initial licking and longer duration of “licking bursts.”)

The scientists conclude the paper by speculating on why such an effect might exist. They argue that the association of effort and deliciousness would have been an adaptive association back when calories were scarce, and we’d sometimes have to work hard to end up with a rather disgusting dinner:

From the Globe and Mail

When it comes to indulgence, the Double Down isn't the only bad boy on the block. The Wendy's Baconator boasts 610 calories, 35 grams of fat and 1,130 mg of sodium. Meanwhile, Burger King's Triple Whopper with Cheese lives up to its name with 1,250 calories, 84 grams of fat and 1,600 mg of sodium.

“It's a really worrisome trend,” said Ms. L'Abbe. But there may be a grain of goodness in all that fat and salt: the buzz around products like the Double Down may end up getting Canadians talking about issues like sodium intake.

“It's very difficult to make them choose not to consume those products, but it's even worse if they consume them without knowing.”

The Double Down's debut in the U.S. last year has touched off a domino effect of overly indulgent take-out products, sort of like the extreme-sports version of fast food, said Debi Andrus, a marketing expert at the University of Calgary.

“Who in there wants to be left out of the big, juicy, meaty, high fat, high sodium choice?” Ms. Andrus said. “As soon as one starts it, then the others will look at, ‘Well, what can I do to compete with that?“’

The fast food chains are tapping into a demographic that is pushing against the healthy eating trend and giving in to a product that's being unabashedly upfront about being unhealthy, Ms. Andrus added.

Chatelaine has a great looking Dietician approved seven day meal plan for starting out 2010.

You need to be eating more of these foods.

Check out the list here.

Check out the list here. via

Epicurious has a pocket guide on how to cut the poison in your diet.

So how healthy is your Starbucks coffee? A Starbucks venti Caffe Mocha has 490 calories or the same as a McDonald's Quarter Pounder with Cheese

A 24-ounce Java Chip Frappuccino with whipped cream has 650 calories, not to mention almost an entire day’s allowance of saturated fat.

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