I attended Wellness Day last Friday. It was interesting to see things there that counted as wellness, like Planned Parenthood. I don’t know how Planned Parenthood can help your wellness. Apparently babies aren’t good for your health or well-being. But that is beside the point.
I picked up a bunch of fliers from most of the booths. One flier, from Natural Grocers, taught how to “build a healthy meal”. It states that a healthy meal means that you need HALF your plate to be vegetables; the second half of the meal is split up into approximately equal sections including whole grains, protein, fruit, and healthy fats. What happened to the food pyramid that we learned in school?
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| Healthy Meal Wheel |
vs
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| The Food Pyramid |
This brings up the question again, how do we know what is good for us? As you will notice, dairy products are not even shown on the first diagram as its own food group. People live many different lifestyles and I think that is the root cause of these differences. After attending yoga classes for a few semesters, I have gotten to see the lifestyles and beliefs that a lot of these, I will call them "yoga people" share. I think people that don’t eat meat are crazy; it is one of my favorite things. I think this Healthy Meal Wheel is skewed towards those who live the ‘yoga lifestyle’ and don’t see animal products as being a necessity in the diet.
The realization that I am beginning to have its this: choose what you think is important in your diet. Vegetables are proven to be very beneficial to your health. Some fats are better for you than others. Calories are what give you energy to make it through the day. From there, choose your proportions as you wish. These are all just guidelines from various government agencies and health food stores. If you would die if you had to give up eating ice cream or drinking wine every day, then don't give it up. Wellness is balancing things that make you happy with things that are good for your body. The latter is obviously still up to debate. So take your best guess and do what makes you happy.
What? Babies aren't good for my health? I guess I better stop eating them! :P
ReplyDeleteI like your view on food. I agree that there is bias in any food pyramid-like diagram. There wouldn't be discrepancies between them if one was correct!
When I go to the store, I don't think, let's get this proportion of this and that proportion of that. I get what I know I will enjoy and what I can afford while trying to stay away from junk food. It seems to keep me alive and able, so why change it?
I hardly eat any vegetables (besides potatoes, spinach artichoke dip (yes I classify that as a vegetable), and a couple others) and I refuse to ever eat a salad. I do however eat plenty of fruits and a lot of dairy. To my knowledge I am perfectly health, so I agree with you that it's hard knowing what is good for you to eat. I feel that as long as you don't fill your body with only junk food and never get off the couch or exercise, that you should be somewhat okay.
ReplyDeleteMy guess for the reason planned parenthood is at wellness day is because condoms help prevent sexual diseases, which could negatively effect your health. But yeah I agree, it is weird to see them there.
I think that there is not one way to be healthy, there are many. Like dream helmet mentioned he hardly eats vegetables but he is healthy. It seem to me that whatever works for you and makes you feel good is how your diet should be. Thus I'm not too much of a believer in "food science" such as the pyramid (which has actually been updated, it's weird now).
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