Healthy foods provide you with vitamins, minerals and other nutrients your body needs to stay strong and healthy. They contain a minimum of saturated fat, trans fat and sodium. Most healthy foods are unprocessed---think fruits, veggies, lean meat and whole grains. Foods that are processed, such as frozen dinners and canned foods, often contain unhealthy doses of sodium and preservatives.
Identification: Healthy Foods
The government's Dietary Guidelines for Americans includes a full list of foods considered healthy because of the nutrients they provide. These foods include whole grain items such as whole wheat bread and oatmeal, veggies including tomatoes, broccoli and sweet potatoes, and fruits such as bananas, oranges and strawberries. The guidelines recommend you always eat fat-free or low-fat dairy products, as well as lean meat sources such as poultry and fish.
Recommended Daily Intakes
The recommended daily intake, or RDI, tells you how much of a particular nutrient your body needs per day to maintain good health. RDIs differ for children, adults, seniors and pregnant or lactating women. The government's Food and Nutrition Information Center website posts RDIs for all age groups, broken up into vitamins, minerals, macronutrients and elements. When you consult a food label to find out how much iron is in your breakfast cereal, for example, you'll want to compare that number to your age- and gender-appropriate RDI.
Neglected Nutrients
The Dietary Guidelines note that most Americans don't get enough calcium, fiber, vitamin C or potassium. To beef up your supply of these neglected nutrients, seek out the following foods. You'll get 345 mg of calcium from an 8-oz. container of low-fat fruit yogurt and 306 mg in 1 cup of fat-free milk. For fiber, choose ½ cup of bran cereal for 8.8 g of fiber or eat a baked sweet potato with peel for 4.8 g. For vitamin C, eat ½ cup of raw sweet red pepper for 142 mg or drink ¾ cup of orange juice to get an average of 75 mg. In terms of potassium, a baked sweet potato contains 694 mg while 3 oz. of cooked halibut contains 490 mg.
Healthy Foods to Encourage
According to the Dietary Guidelines, adults on an average 2,000-calorie diet should aim to consume the following per day to make sure they get adequate nutrition: 2 cups of fruit, 2.5 cups of veggies, 3 oz. of whole grains and 3 cups of low-fat or fat-free dairy products. In terms of healthy fat sources, the guidelines suggest you focus on polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats, like those found in nuts, vegetable oils and fish.
Unhealthy Foods to Discourage
It's just as important to know what's unhealthy as it is to know which foods offer beneficial nutrients. The Dietary Guidelines suggest that less than 10 percent of your daily calories come from saturated fats or trans fats. Keep your cholesterol consumption under 300 mg per day and your sodium consumption under 2,300 mg per day. Foods that contain large percentages of these items--50 percent or more--are likely to have little nutritional value.
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