Heart Healthy Diet and Balanced Diet
Heart Healthy Diet and Balanced Diet
Whether we have heart disease or not, we need to achieve whole and balanced nutrition. That means we have requirements on both certain food quantity and appropriate nutrient proportion. It's harmful for our body to lack or over-eat any nutrient.
We have about five food categeories:
1. Cereal provides heat energy, sugar, minerals and vitamin B, especially B1,etc.
2. Meat and fish provide protein, fat, calcium, Phosphor, Iron,vitamin B2,B12,etc.
3. Milk, egg, bean and bean products, provide protein, fat, sugar and vitamin B, etc.
4. Vegetables and fruits provide food fibers, minerals and vitamin C, etc.
5. Vegetable oil, animal oil and sugar are pure heat producing foods.
Each day we should eat variety foods from the above categories and should arrange them according to proper proportion.
In medical documents, as early as 3000 years ago, ancient chinese diet experts holded that diet should take cereal as main nourishment, fruits as assistance, fish and meat as benefit, vegetables as supplement. Cereal absorbs the essence of nature, so they are the most nourishable foods in the world.
Today american food pyramid holds the same point of view. In My Food Pyramid Plan it suggestes that the proper portion of each day's food intake should be:
- About 20-30% cereal,
- 35-40% vegetables and fruits,
- 10-15% lean meat and fish,
- 10-15% egg, milk, bean and bean products,
- 5% vegetable oil.
Many experts suggest that we can eat vegetables and fruits as possible as we can. That's not correct. Most vegetables and fruits are cool or cold in nature. Eating too much raw and cold foods will hurt Yang Qi of our body, especially those who are Yang deficiency. On the other hand, many fruits contain much sugar,eating too much will add extra heat energy. So no one kind food can we eat as much as we can, we need balanced diet.
