If you read nothing else
- Cut the quick carbohydrates before you cut fat. Bread, white rice, pasta, cereal and sugary drinks do more damage to most people than the fat on their plate.
- Fill half the plate with vegetables, a quarter with protein, a quarter with something starchy. Get the shape right and the amounts mostly follow.
- Oily fish twice a week and extra-virgin olive oil as your default. Two changes, most of the benefit.
- Read the back of the pack, not the front. The front is marketing; the ingredients list is the truth.
- You do not need a diagnosis to benefit, and you do not need to be perfect. Most weeks going roughly right beats a fortnight of going exactly right.
The plate, in one picture
Forget weighing and counting. If the shape of the plate is right, the numbers tend to look after themselves.
- Half — vegetables and salad. The bigger and more colourful, the better. Fill this first.
- A quarter — protein. Oily fish, white fish, beans and lentils, eggs, chicken, tofu, lean meat.
- A quarter — starchy food. Whole grains, new potatoes, quinoa. Smaller if you are not very active.
- A drizzle — extra-virgin olive oil, and a side of fruit or plain dairy.
How much of it depends on your size, and a six-year-old is not a six-footer. The portion guide scales it to your height.
The thing most people get wrong
Most people who believe they eat healthily are half right. The half they usually get wrong is the starchy food — bread, rice, pasta, breakfast cereal, potatoes, and snacks marketed as healthy.
Your body turns those into sugar quickly. Do that many times a day for years and two things follow: your liver starts producing more of the harmful cholesterol particles, and the lining of your arteries gets damaged so those particles stick more easily. You cannot feel any of it happening.
This is not a reason to fear all carbohydrate. Vegetables, beans, lentils and whole fruit are not the problem. Refined, fast-acting carbohydrate in large amounts is.
Six changes that do most of the work
Pick one. Make it a habit. Then add another. Doing one properly beats doing six badly.
Cut the quick carbohydrates first
Less bread, white rice, pasta, cereal and sugary drinks. Nothing else on this list moves your numbers as much.
Oily fish twice a week
Salmon, mackerel, sardines, herring. Tinned counts and is cheap. The food scores show which fish carry the most omega-3.
Extra-virgin olive oil as your default
For cooking and for dressing. Yes, you can cook with it — the smoke-point warning is largely a myth. Why extra-virgin, and what to avoid.
Vegetables first, at the start of the meal
Eating the vegetables and protein before the starchy part measurably blunts the blood-sugar spike from the same meal. Free, and it works.
Aim for about 30g of fibre a day
Beans, lentils, oats, whole fruit, nuts. Most adults get half this. Fibre feeds the gut and carries cholesterol out of the body.
Stop eating after dinner
Twelve hours between your last food at night and your first in the morning. Water, plain tea or plain coffee in between. Why the gap matters.
Shopping in ninety seconds
Turn the packet over
The front of the pack is advertising. The ingredients list is the product. Fewer ingredients, and ones you recognise, is a reliable rule.
Watch where sugar hides
Sauces, breads, yoghurts, cereals and anything labelled low-fat. Removing fat usually means adding sugar to make it palatable again.
Spend where it counts
Good olive oil and decent fish are worth paying for. Frozen vegetables, tinned beans and dried lentils are cheap and every bit as good as fresh.
"Gluten-free" is not a health claim
Gluten-free biscuits are still biscuits, and often have more sugar. If you need to avoid gluten, read this.
If you are feeding children
- Under two years old: no added sugar at all. This is the window when taste preferences form for life, and it is the easiest rule to follow because it is absolute.
- How often treats happen matters more than how big any one of them is.
- A slim child eating badly is not protected. Appearance is a poor guide to what is happening inside an artery.
- Never put a child on a diet, and never restrict fat in the under-fives — they need it to grow.