Power Eating

Here, in order of importance, are the nutritional steps most vital to your healthy diet and the stuff that's not worth worrying about.

GET THE FAT OUT

The experts were almost unanimous in putting weight control at the top of the list - 97 percent of them gave it high priority.

If everybody in United states maintain their ideal weight, the incidence of Type-H diabetes would be greatly reduced, hypertension would be much less common and so would coronary disease. Nearly 24 cent of American men are overweight for their age and build, which makes obesity one of the country's biggest health problems.

How do experts recommend we lose weight?

75 percent said that cutting calories is Extremely Important or Very Important . 70 percent said the same about controlling fat intake. The two go hand in hand. If you cut calories, you'll cut fat. The number of calorie you eat ultimately determines how much you'll weigh, but reducing fat is important fr other reasons. It slashes the risk of heart disease by keeping arteries from choking with plaque, and it may reduce the risk of some form of cancer.

EAT AND RUN

Strictly speaking, exercise isn't a nutritional habit, but we included it in our survey because physical activity has a direct bearing on how much we eat and what happens to food once we've taken it in.
Exercise boosts your metabolism, allowing you to eat more without putting on more pounds. It also helps relieve stress and keep your heart, bones and circulatory system in top form.
Most people can fill their exercise quota with 20 minutes of brisk walking three times a week. Adding a regimen of resistance weight training fires up your metabolism to its calorie-burning peak.

DON'T LIKE IT, DON'T EAT IT

Giving up all your favorite foods and switching to a very healthy but very boring diet won't work. Nobody is going to eat food they don't enjoy for very long. If you want to eat healthy, you have to either find low-fat prepared foods that taste great or lean tyo cook your own.

KEEP IT BALANCED BUT LEAN

you've heard the old nutritionists' creed: Balance your diet among four food groups, and make sure you get the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) of vitamins and minerals. These concept are certainly not passe; roughly 90 percent of those surveyed said they're still high priority. Yet those notions now clearly take a backseat to cutting fat and controlling weight.
The weakness of the four-food-groups approach is that it doesn't provide enough guidance to prevent you from eating too much fat and amassing too much of it on your body.
If you make fat-fighting your number one priority, however, it quiet naturally leads you toward fulfilling those other guidelines. If you phase out the high-calorie, high-fat foods in your diet, you're going to have to replace them with something low fat-cereals, fruits and vegetables. An emphasis on those foods moves you closer to meeting your RDA for vitamins and minerals. It can also move you closer to balancing your diet, which for most Americans is overladen with high-fat meat and dairy products.

DON'T SWEAT THE TECHNICALITIES

If you have been able to keep straight the difference between saturated, unsaturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, here's good news: You don't have to. The trendy notion that you should trade saturated fats for heart-smarter monounsaturated and polyunsaturated ones is "putting the cart before the horse."
Most of the foods that are highest in total fat-ice cream, cheeseburgers and doughnuts, for example- are also highest in saturated fat. So if you simply cut down on all fatty foods, you'll cut down on saturated fat as well.
How much fat should you eat?
The nutritionists advice following the American Heart Association's recommendation that total dietary fat comprise no more than 30 percent of calories.

LET CHOLESTEROL TAKE CARE OF ITSELF

Cutting cholesterol scored surprisingly low. Only 14 percent of the experts rated it extremely important. It's not that cholesterol is insignificant, but, again, if you follow the priorities outline above, you'll have already taken care of it. Those polled felt that expensive concern about this issue to the exclusion of all others could lead you to eat foods that are low in cholesterol but still dangerously high in fat. For example, Potato-chips fried in vegetable oil contain no cholesterol, but 72 percent of their calories are from fat.
[ POWER EATING ]

 

DON'T FEAR SAYING “CHEERS”

The nation’s top nutritionists plainly don’t support prohibition. But they’re staunch believers in moderation when it comes to alcohol. There's no evidence, unless you are driving, that drinking alcohol in limited quantities is bad for you. Alcohol in excess (more than two drinks per day) is another story: It will destroy livers as well as lives.
 

PRACTICE SAFE EATING

While many people are worried about pesticides on fruit and vegetables, the experts rated it 34 out of 44 on their list of priorities.

More than three-quarters of the nutritionists thought it wise to avoid raw foods, particularly eggs, meat and seafood. Raw eggs and chicken can harbor salmonella bacteria, a common cause of food poisoning. Raw seafood can harbor viruses or parasites. Buy only from a reputable dealer, or avoid raw seafood altogether.

GET MORE FIBER

Insoluble or soluble? It doesn’t matter how you get your fiber. What’s important is that you do get it. People eat so little fiber, we’ll take anything. Whatever you can find – some peas in your stew – put them in!

A high fiber diet fills you up without filling you out, keeps you regular, helps lower your cholesterol level and may help reduce the risk of colon cancer. The nutritionists advocate getting at least 20 grams per day. A breakfast of oatmeal, wholewheat toast, appear and a banana would give you more than half that amount. The highest-fiber foods are fruits, vegetables, whole grains and legumes.

MORE SURF, LESS TURF

Fish is lower in saturated fat than meat, ant the oil in fish-especially cold-water varieties such as salmon and mackerel-helps your cardiovascular-system by keeping blood from clotting and preventing hardening of the arteries. If you do eat meat, the experts recommend limiting portions to three or four ounces, choosing lean cuts such as flank steak and using low-fat cooking methods such as broiling and braising.

AVOID FADS

Many nutrition hazards you read or hear about the 11 o’clock news aren’t worth paying attention to. For example, avoiding trans-fatty acids (found in sick margarine) and tropical oils drew only moderate priority ratings from the nutrition authorities, despite their getting big play in the news. Again, it’s much more important to lower total fat intake.

Rated lowest of all was avoiding irradiated foods- 68 percent of respondents put this among the Probably Worthless, right down there with avoiding charred or blackened foods. Neather appear to pose any significant health risk.