It was drilled into our heads, don't follow crash diets, practice portion control so many times, that I don't even stop to investigate fad diets anymore. Having a balanced diet does not require you to withhold the foods you enjoy from yourself, you just need to carefully plan and stick to the recommended portions and consume them appropriately. What does this even mean? Too much or too little of the required foods will result in an imbalance.
While it may seem daunting to try to take control of your food portions or even to differentiate Servings from Portions, as with everything else, it just takes a little research. I have outlined below how you can go about doing so.
A serving is a standard measure used for a particular food. It is the amount of food that yields a set amount of energy. For staples, a serving of any food belonging to that group yields 15 grams of carbohydrates. Therefore if you take a serving of bread (1 slice) or a serving of rice (1/2 cup), both being one serving will give you only 15 grams of carbohydrates. Most regions have serving standards which is a list of the foods eaten there and the accepted standard for one serving. If you are not from the Caribbean I assure you that there are some foods on these lists that you eat in your region as well. Below is a list of serving sizes for the staples food group for the Caribbean.
Even though your serving size is a fixed amount, your portion size may vary. So for your portion, you might choose to have 3 slices of bread. That is your portion, but you are actually having 3 servings of the staple.
The size of your portions is what really determines whether you are overeating or not. By taking care to control portions there is little need to eliminate one food group from the diet.
We generally consume much more of one food group than the others, leading to an imbalance in our nutrition status. Therefore we need to pay special attention to our eating patterns and more carefully match them to the ideal.
The recommended servings sizes are a range within which you can choose. Someone living with diabetes would be encouraged to consume the number of servings at the lower end of the range while an athlete or a manual worker would be encouraged to consume the number of servings at the higher end of the range.
It is recommended that each day we consume the following servings of the six food groups :
6 -11 servings of Staples
3-4 servings of Vegetables
2-4 servings of Legumes
2-4 servings of Food From Animals
1-3 serving of Fats and Oils
2-4 servings of Fruits
Therefore if we know the number of servings to consume during one day as well as the standards for one serving for the different foods, we can control our portions effectively.
Source:
Six food groups for use in the Caribbean http://www.paho.org/english/cfni/six_food_groups.pdf
Standards for Servings: Appendix III http://www.paho.org/english/cfni/cfni-protocolnmodh.pdf
Number of Servings per day : http://www.highfiveforlife.com/images/hi_five/food-group.jpg
2 comments:
I really liked this post. Sometimes people do get confused with the terms and so don't understand how to effectively achieve their goals. Great post Tanya
Thank you IslandGypsy. I really hope everyone is able to understand from my post if not, I hope they will let me know.
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