A healthy eating style
If you Google “healthy eating,” you will get literally hundreds of millions of hits. Follow the links, and you will find that some of them deliver solid information, while others lead you down confusing paths of outright misinformation. As one fad diet after another grabs the spotlight, conflicting information can make it difficult to distinguish scientifically backed nutrition advice from marketing and hype. And news headlines can make it seem as if views on good nutrition are changing all the time.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The optimal diet for good health, low disease risk, healthy weight, and long life has been a matter of growing consensus over the last several decades, thanks to a hard-earned body of evidence.
Moreover, the power of this healthful diet is becoming clearer over time. “When we began our research on diet and health in the late 1970s, we had a general sense that diet was likely to be important in the prevention of heart disease and cancer,” says Dr. Walter Willett, past chair of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. What he and other researchers found was that it did exactly that—and more. “Aspects of diet play a role in the prevention of disease and dysfunction in almost every organ of the body,” he says. In addition to lowering your blood pressure, total cholesterol, and risks of certain types of cancer, it can help ward off strokes, diabetes, cognitive decline, osteoporosis, kidney problems, certain gastrointestinal problems, various eye diseases, and so on down a long list.
Yes, this plan involves eating more vegetables— and, as you may have guessed, it doesn’t include a lot of packaged snacks or fast food. But once you know how to prepare healthy meals, you’ll find they can be much more tasty than highly processed foods. As Dr. Willett says, just think of sitting at an outdoor restaurant in Italy, savoring vegetables roasted in olive oil, perfectly seasoned with herbs and spices. Add in a hunk of hearty whole-grain bread and an entree of fresh grilled fish, and you can readily imagine just how satisfying this whole-foods diet can be. Now compare that with greasy burgers and chips at the local diner. “It’s junk food that’s tasteless, requiring large amounts of added salt, sugar, and fat to make it palatable,” he says.
If you’re convinced, then there’s no time like the present to start remaking your diet. You have nothing to lose—except perhaps a few unwanted pounds and points off your cholesterol and blood pressure numbers. This report will help explain in greater depth how to accomplish this.