A Balanced Diet： Understanding Food Groups And Healthy Eating ｜ Nutritionist Explains

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00:00Hi, I'm Jimmy Wright, an accredited nutritionist, and I specialize in helping people all across

00:04the world achieve their goals without any silly fad diets. On today's episode of Nutritionist

00:09Explained, we're going to be talking about what is a balanced diet, how we feel ourselves matters.

00:14Now, I hope that doesn't come to a surprise to any of you, but our diet directly impacts both

00:19our physical and mental health. And for you athletes out there, it's also critically

00:23influential in your recovery, performance, and body composition. In this episode of Nutritionist

00:29explains that we're going to talk about all things balanced diet and how you can piece together

00:33a diet that works for you and supports you in moving towards your goals.

00:41Balanced or healthy diet means many different things to many different groups of people. We

00:46live in an age whereby I genuinely don't think I could give a definition of a balanced diet without

00:51upsetting someone, so I've gone and I've dug to find the version of a balanced diet that I believe

00:55will appeal to the majority of you watching. But before I jump into that, let's look at the

00:59most popular iterations of a balanced diet. Let's start off with the UK's Eat Well Guide,

01:04a pictorial representation of a healthy diet which superseded the Eat Well Plate in 2016.

01:10The guide is split into five categories with the following daily recommendations.

01:15Aim to eat at least five portions of fruit and veg a day. A third of your daily energy intake should

01:20come from potatoes, bread, rice, pasta, and other starchy carbohydrates, with an aim to choose

01:25whole grain or higher fiber options where possible. The guide recommends having some beans, pulses,

01:31fish, eggs, meat, and other proteins, including two portions of fish every week of which one should

01:37be oily. The guide also recommends to include some dairy or dairy alternatives such as soya drinks,

01:43aiming to choose lower fat and lower sugar options where possible. And finally, the guide also asks to

01:49incorporate small amounts of unsaturated oils and spreads. The Eat Well Guide also provides some

01:54suggestions for energy intake and maintaining adequate hydration, but these are rather generic.

02:00Onto the next set of balanced diet principles I wanted to touch on, the United States version of

02:04the Eat Well Guide, MyPlate. MyPlate was first introduced in 2011 and replaced MyPyramid, which

02:11ultimately got scrapped because it was so confusing. On the surface, MyPlate and the Eat Well Guide aren't

02:16hugely dissimilar. Both would have a greater preference for carbohydrates over fats and protein,

02:21and both advocate for more plants in the diet. The MyPlate is slightly different in that it is more

02:27simplistic and is divided into four categories, grains, vegetables, fruits, and protein, with a

02:33smaller circle outside of the plate to represent dairy. The MyPlate also has more defined percentage

02:38based recommendations compared to the Eat Well Guide and recommends that 30% of your diet or plate

02:44is grains, 40% of it is vegetables, 10% is fruits, and the remaining 20% is protein. Now, before I

02:51launched into two of the more popular sets of balanced diet guidelines, I did say that I had

02:55dug pretty deep on the subject to find you, at least in my mind, the best set of general healthy

03:01eating guidelines. Want to know where I found them? South Korea. They use the Food Balance Whales.

03:07Now, the reason why I'm a fan of the Food Balance Whales or some other balanced diet guidelines is the

03:12advocacy for more protein in the diet as they recommend three to four portions per day. While that

03:17recommendation, at least in its practical application without further education on appropriate

03:22serving sizes, may not be optimal for health, at least in my opinion, it does appear to help

03:27influence Koreans in achieving a better daily intake of protein compared to other countries

03:32who often fall short of the recommended daily intake. A 2013 study investigated the impact of

03:38adherence to the Food Balance Whales on health outcomes. This study included over 5,000 data sets

03:43collected from people involved in the Korean National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey.

03:48That's quite a mouthful. Those with the greatest levels of adherence to the guidelines were at the

03:52lowest risk of diabetes, hypertension, osteoporosis, and cardiovascular disease. They were also much

03:58more likely to be able to maintain and manage a healthy weight. Let's have a bit of fun. Why don't we

04:03give it a crack at trying to make our own guidelines? A goal-orientated, balanced diet. Where better to start with a

04:10perfect balanced diet than energy intake. Understanding your energy intake needs in

04:15advance of determining your macronutrient goals and ultimately planning your meals is essentially

04:20laying a foundation. Personally, I would recommend the use of a calorie calculator here. These calculators

04:25will help you to determine the energy intake you need to take in each day to maintain or change your

04:30current weight. My advice would be to try to use a calculator which factors in your physical activity

04:34levels too, as without that, the intake suggested may be inadequate. Everyone's favourite next?

04:40Fruits and... I'm just kidding. Let's focus on protein. Now, in terms of hierarchy of actual

04:46importance for survivability and health, you could argue that protein and plants are level par,

04:52but that's really just if we were referring to the vitamins and minerals achieved through plant intake.

04:57Fortunately, nutrients don't tend to exist in isolation, so almost all of the food and fluid sources of

05:01protein available to us would also contribute to vitamin and mineral intake. Also, we don't have

05:06the time to go into each vitamin and mineral individually, so for the purpose of our theoretical

05:11guidelines, we'll be grouping them within the fruits and vegetables category. Bear in mind that fruits

05:16and veggies can also contribute to protein intake, but let's not start getting into the weeds here.

05:20The current recommendations for dietary protein intake have been suggested to not be sufficient to

05:25promote optimal muscle health. So how about we come up with a new one? Now, if we were to consider a broad

05:31guideline for daily protein intake that could possibly provide the most health benefit across

05:35the board, then we may wish to consider recommending somewhere between 1.3 to 2.2 grams of protein per

05:41kilogram of body weight per day. This suggestion is based on findings looking at weight management,

05:47requirements for athletic populations and reducing the risk of sarcopenia, which is age-related loss of

05:52muscle mass, frailty and fall risk in the elderly. For simplicity's sake, that could look like a palm-sized

05:59portion of protein three to five times per day, depending on your own unique requirements.

06:04I would make a similar portion recommendation for plants at each meal, which leads me into the next

06:08guideline. How many plants should we be having per day? Well, ideally as much as possible. As a general

06:14rule of thumb, or palm if you're using that, we should be aiming for five portions of fruit and veggies

06:20a day. To make your life easier in achieving this guideline, a few simple tips would be to plan in a

06:25stir fry, incorporate soup into your routine, add fruits like blueberries to your breakfast, and

06:30throw in vegetables to recipes to increase the bulk, and make the meal go further for yourself or your

06:35family. The next nutrient in focus has to be dietary fats. Dietary fats matter because there are essential

06:41fatty acids which we have to attain from our diet because we can't produce them ourselves. These are

06:46the omega-3 fatty acids and omega-6 fatty acids. I'll not cover their function in too much depth in this

06:51video, but they're involved in many different aspects of the human body, ranging from the immune

06:56system to the cellular structures of your brain. These kinds of fats are found predominantly in oily

07:01fish and plant-based foods such as nuts, seeds, and certain leafy veg. While deficiency in these fats is

07:08rare and we tend to get plenty of omega-6 fatty acids in our diet as it is, I would recommend making

07:13a conscious effort to include fat sources rich in omega-3 fatty acids on a daily basis for optimal health,

07:19or even consider supplementing with them. The final food category I'd like to briefly discuss

07:24are the carbohydrates. I'd recommend focusing on whole grains and fiber-rich sources of carbohydrates

07:29at main meal times, and timing the intake of starchy carbohydrates or sugary carbs around exercise to

07:35help fuel performance and to optimize recovery. For those who prefer having a higher carbohydrate

07:40intake, roughly a clenched fist to a palm-sized portion will suffice in keeping you fueled. And for those

07:46of you who are fans of dietary fat over carbohydrate as your primary fuel source, that's fine too.

07:51I would be mindful of the types of dietary fat you're taking in, and you may also wish to get

07:56your blood lipids checked at least once a year, just to make sure everything is fine on that end.

08:00And the final point to touch on with these guidelines is hydration. Two things I'd like to mention here.

08:05Keep the sugar-sweetened, added sugar-rich drinks to a minimum. They're really not great for us.

08:10To maintain adequate hydration, adjust your fluids based on your pea colour. If it's straw yellow to clear,

08:15you're well hydrated. If it's darker than that, you will want to drink a bit more,

08:20but you also don't want it to be so clear that you're at risk of being overhydrated.

08:24And that's the guidelines. As always, don't forget to like this video and hit subscribe to the MyProtein

08:29YouTube channel for more helpful content, and be sure to keep asking the team questions

08:33so we can keep providing you with more evidence-based answers.

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