One of the good ways to live a healthy life is by maintaining balanced nutrition and physical exercises. It means consuming healthy diets, no alcohol, no smoking, and regular exercise. The food pyramid plays quite important role for the success stories of those who want to maintain their health, as well as for losing weight. Balancing the diet has proven to be effective to fulfill adequate nutrition and vitamins for your body, by consuming fiber, vitamins, minerals, fiber, fat, and other nutrient intakes equally, which can help solve your eating habit problem. There are actually quite different versions of this food pyramid, and you may need to rethink about the component that fits your nutrition needs.
The Origin of Food Pyramid
Back in 1970s, the very first food pyramid was invented by a Sweden, in response to the high price of foods at that time, so the idea to ‘separate’ between the basic and supplementary food emerged. The basic foods are the ones that people should eat; they are considered essential, while the supplementary one provides vitamins or other nutrition, which is not contained in the basic foods. A woman named Anna Agnsäter suggested making it into a triangular model, so it had better visual aspect for each ideal potion of the foods. The scheme has been revolutionized to be adjusted with the changing human need. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) recommends new food pyramid to replace the out-of-date food composition to match with today’s people needs and activities.
Say “Hi” to the New Food Pyramid
Some of you are probably accustomed to the old-style food pyramid presented as hierarchy and each group has their own serving portion, which is translated into nutrition education and recommendation of food to eat every day. The scheme also stresses the limitation of fats, oils, and sweets, and consumption of grains as the base of healthy diet.
The new food pyramid is presented as a spectrum, which specifies for whom the scheme is intended. Those who can follow the scheme are adults who are physically active for at least 30 minutes most days of the week, and children who are physically active for at least 60 minutes. Those people also need to do daily activities for at least 60 minutes or 90 minutes to prevent weight gain. In the spectrum, the fat intake should be derived from fish, nuts, and vegetables oil, and limit solid fats. Not only that, half of the grains consumed should be whole grains. You must also consume various fruits and vegetables to maintain the fiber intake.
