Healthy eating tips from Dr. Chad Larson

Just love these tips! And am grateful to be able to share Dr. Larson's article with you

National Nutrition Month

with Dr. Chad Larson
March is National Nutrition Month sponsored by the American Dietetic Association. While I want to bring attention to National Nutrition Month, I am not going to reference much of the material on the website because it is fairly middle-of-the road and typical - calorie this, calorie that, measure this, measure that - nobody is going to follow these non-inspiring recommendations. I would rather emphasize some great tips from Michael Pollan, "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." Here are some of his Food Rules:

1.Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. "When you pick up that box of portable yogurt tubes, or eat something with 15 ingredients you can't pronounce, ask yourself, "What are those things doing there?"

2.Don't eat anything with more than five ingredients, or ingredients you can't pronounce.

3.Stay out of the middle of the supermarket; shop on the perimeter of the store. Real food tends to be on the outer edge of the store near the loading docks, where it can be replaced with fresh foods when it goes bad.

4.Don't eat anything that won't eventually rot. "There are exceptions - honey - but as a rule, things like Twinkies that never go bad aren't food."

5.It is not just what you eat but how you eat. "Always leave the table a little hungry," Pollan says. "Many cultures have rules that you stop eating before you are full. In Japan, they say eat until you are four-fifths full. Islamic culture has a similar rule, and in German culture they say, 'Tie off the sack before it's full.'"

6.Families traditionally ate together, around a table and not a TV, at regular meal times. It's a good tradition. Enjoy meals with the people you love.

7.Don't buy food where you buy your gasoline. In the U.S., 20% of food is eaten in the car.

This article appeared on The Pure Prescriptions website: http://www.pureprescriptions.com/ on Monday, March 1, 2010.

Keeping it healthy,

Hana