Today’s conversation is about removing the vagueness from nutrition-related advice. This is especially important from health professionals such as me so that we can truly do our best to help people achieve their greatest health.
Updating Old Vague Nutrition Related Advice
A common phrase that is often said in a bid to explain in as few words as possible how to be healthy is: ‘Enjoy a healthy balanced diet.’ This phrase however is just too vague and that’s why I created what I believe is a better, and more updated and helpful version of the old saying to “Enjoy an organic whole-food rich rainbow diet daily”.
The former implies that eating a healthy balanced diet will basically lead to being healthy… however this is not quite the case which is my issue with it.
Misinterpretation Leads To Not Achieving Optimal Health
This old saying is just too vague and open for interpretation. For example, some people can take this as it is okay to eat 50% junk food and balance it out with 50% healthy food in a typical week. This saying doesn’t actually emphasise just how much healthy whole-food needs to be eaten per day to achieve optimal health.
This vague health advice is also a factor in causing people to not truly understand this saying and to also misinterpret it. This is not the publics fault which is why I want to update this and add clarity based on the most up to date science. As it is our duty as health professionals to keep revising these nutrition-related health messages and do better for the people we serve.
Non-Biased Health Research Says We Need To Eat The Whole-Food Rainbow
Research from the Institute for Functional Medicine states that for optimal health we need to eat 9-13 servings of plant-based food every day, alongside healthy sources of fat and protein. With all food coming from organically grown whole-food sources. This translates to not eating processed food sources that are stripped of nutrients and has added harmful chemicals.
When it comes to the 9-13 servings of plant-based food, they also advise we “eat the rainbow” of colours, and eat the full seven colours of plant-based foods every day to ensure we don’t just get stuck eating the same beige plant-based foods (as one common example – think pasta, bread, rice etc) as doing so will leave people missing out on important vitamins, major minerals and trace minerals.
Eating real organic whole-food is a great way to get healthy and then when you add in eating from the rainbow of plant foods you really start taking your health to another awesome level!
