February is a great month to remind you to take a look at your eating. Is it as healthy as it should be?

Most of us don’t really think about eating healthy or eating food for the nutrients that the body needs. Do you ever think about how much you eat? I know I do this of course after I have over-eaten.

I know you all know that there is a food movement that is very complex, it involves where food comes from, how it is prepared, how much we are eating and what we are eating. I know from presenting programs that most of you don’t think about the fact that we are what we eat and that what we eat or don’t eat contributes to our overall health.



When it comes to the growing, raising and processing of America’s food, there have been so many changes that it is mind boggling to me. Then beyond the food there are some of the biggest changes which are the size of the dishes we eat from and the cooking equipment. I encourage you to really look at the size of your plates. The American dinner plate is now more like a platter. A real easy switch that many of you can make to help in you healthy eating is to switch to eating on a luncheon or smaller plate. This way the suggested serving sizes will fill your plate. This is really important: Remember we first eat with our eyes.

I am encouraging you to develop a fresh approach to healthy eating and now is a great time of the year to do this. You need to begin by looking at the serving/portion sizes of your food, have more vegetables and fruit on your plate. A bonus for many of you is that this will help with weight management, and just help you feel better on a daily bases



For most of you by simply looking, thinking and making a few adjustments, you’ll find yourself eating for long term health, and how you feel on a daily bases. First look to see if the proportion of food is right. A good rule of thumb is that plant based food like vegetables, fruits, whole grains and beans should cover two-thirds or more of your plate. Then protein food like meat, fish, and poultry should cover one third of your plate. This is not how most American plates look.

A real way of looking at this guideline is that it reverses the traditional American plate and shows meat as a side dish rather than the main ingredient. An eye appealing tasty sample meal would be a vegetable blend mix of broccoli, carrots and cauliflower, a dark green salad, some brown rice with 3 ounces of grilled beef, pork, chicken, or fish.



Next time you are eating I suggest you check you proportion, look at the size of the servings on your plate. I know you know from what you see and hear our country is experiencing an obesity epidemic. Fifty percent or more of Americans are overweight. At the same time, the serving sizes on American plates have grown larger and larger. Recently when watching a television commercial for a fast food item I figured there was enough protein in the entrée for at least three people and probably not even one serving of vegetables.



Visitors from other countries express amazement at the amounts of food heaped on our plates. Foods that we have adopted from foreign cuisines such as the croissant, bagel or quesadillas have doubled or triple in size and we just keep eating them. Meanwhile fast food restaurants feature gigantic value meals and super-size. Even many sit down at table service restaurants that have swapped the traditional 10½-inch plate for a 12-inch plate.

Using Choose Myplate and the suggested servings are the best and healthiest way to eat. Also when you eat with MyPlate for a while it will become a good habit. For those of you that use the internet I suggest you use www.ChooseMyPlate.gov.

Use your measuring cups at home to determine how much food you are eating, When eating out choose the regular burger instead of the big one, or cut the big one in two. When it comes to pasta have one to two cups of pasta instead of three to four. Once you suit your serving size to what your body needs you should find you will feel better every day and it is easier to maintain a healthy weight for life. Along with this remember that some daily exercise is really important.

The bottom line is: all foods in moderation.