Easy ways to eat healthier: Part 1

                                                 By Diarmuid Cavanagh

Introduction

In this blog, we’ll dive into the most impactful strategies for creating  a healthy diet, cutting through the overwhelming amount of misinformation online. Whether your goals are related to nutrition or any aspect of life, it’s crucial to focus on approach-oriented goals rather than avoidance-oriented goals. Instead of focusing  on restricting specific food groups, shift your focus to incorporating more health-promoting options. Foods displace each other; every time you eat something, you don’t eat something else, and if we can focus on increasing the consumption of fruit for example, we naturally reduce our consumption of cookies.


Nutrition can feel confusing and frustrating because foods can have competing risks—what’s beneficial for one health outcome might be detrimental for another. Fortunately, there are evidence-based dietary patterns that provide a solid foundation for healthy eating. These include:

• The WHO dietary guidelines
• The Mediterranean diet
• The Portfolio diet
• The DASH diet
• Diets scoring high on the Healthy Eating Index

All these dietary approaches are likely non-inferior to each other, and they offer clear guidance on what works best for long-term health, they are all also incredibly similar. 

The WHO Dietary Guidelines 

• Energy Balance: Align calorie intake with energy expenditure to maintain a healthy weight.

• Fat Intake: Limit total fat to 30% of daily energy, and saturated fats to 10%. Replace saturated fats with unsaturated fats. 

• Sugar Intake: Keep free sugars under 10% of daily energy.

• Salt Intake: Consume less than 5 grams of salt daily (equivalent to 2 grams of sodium) to reduce risks of hypertension & cardiovascular diseases.

What would a healthy macronutrient split be?

The percentage split of Carbs, protein and fats, probably doesn’t matter too much, what actually matters is what foods we select to meet these calorie goals but a safe general heuristic would be to get above 1.2g protein per kg of body weight, fats no lower than 0.8g/kg of body weight ( if you can easily maintain a healthy body weight don’t be afraid to eat plenty of healthy fats, your fat choices will be discussed in Part 2 of this blog series) and then it would be a good idea for carbohydrates not to make up more than 40% of your total calories.

Fruit and Veggies

This meta-analysis found that the lowest risk of coronary heart disease, stroke, cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality is observed at 800 g/day. (Approx 10 servings per day) Meanwhile, the lowest total cancer risk was observed at 550-600 g/day. I wouldn’t worry about the specific type of fruit/ veggie, just consume whatever you enjoy and can see yourself doing consistently. Try and make them as diverse as possible to keep things exciting and improve adherence. Please don’t feel like you need to hit 10 servings a day. It’s all about just trying to improve from where you are currently at, if you get in 3 servings a day, aim for 5. If you already get 5  aim for 7 etc.