Do you know your food groups? Maybe not as well as you think. Here is a refresher course with information on the recommended intake, serving size, benefits and a list of healthy choices for each food group.

Grains:

These are usually referred to as ‘carbohydrates’ but it’s not really that simple. Carbohydrates are the sugars and starches found in grains, fruits and vegetables, so it’s not just grains alone.

Benefits:

Grains include many nutrients like vitamin B, which helps us control and maintain our energy levels, and fibre, which is important for our digestive health. It also includes many essential minerals like iron, magnesium and selenium. It is found that eating healthy grains can reduce chronic disease and reduces constipation.

Recommended intake:

Around 5-7 servings a day. BUT, these servings are much smaller than you’d think. For instance, one serving of rice is about 1/2 cup of rice.

To make it easy to imagine, this is around 1 1/2 times to 2 times the usual portion size for an average rice, pasta or noodles dish. In US, where the portions are bigger, it’s probably at least 2 times more.

Healthy Choices:

The reason why this food group is getting such a bad reputation is because the most common ‘grains’ are white bread, rice and pasta. Generally speaking, these a less healthy because they include sugar, refined flour and is more processed compared to their brown counterparts.

It’s probably not wise to cut grains out of your diet, but try eating more of these foods instead:

• Oats (it is healthier to buy rolled oats or steel-cut oats instead of packaged oatmeal to control the sugar and flavouring)
• Whole wheat bread or pasta
• Seeded or multigrain bread
• Brown rice
• Quinoa
• Flaxseed
• Chia seeds

Fruits and Vegetables

Benefits:

Other than contributing to a healthy diet, fruits and vegetables are important for dietary fiber. Most fruits and vegetables also contain Vitamin A and Vitamin C. Vegetables are also low in fats and calories, so it’s great for controlling obesity, high cholesterol and diabetes.

Recommended intake:

You should be eating at least 4-5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. For vegetables, an average serving should be around 1 cup. However, the recommended portion for fruits does depend on the sugar and caloric content of the individual fruit.

Healthy Choices:

Generally speaking, most fruits or vegetables are extremely healthy. It is best to eat a variety in order to absorb different nutrients and minerals. The only concern, perhaps, is to watch what sort of fruits you can eat if you are diabetic.

If you are diabetic, then you should consider eating more berries, guava or grapefruit to fulfil your daily intake rather than mango, pineapple or any other fruit high in sugar.

Protein

Traditionally speaking, this food group is better known as meat or poultry. However, this food group, like grains, now holds a negative stigma. Some people think meat is unhealthy because there is evidence that red meat is linked to cancer, heart disease and weight gain.

Benefits:

Contrary to claims that red meat leads to weight gain, eating more protein has been linked to weight control and increased metabolism. Protein is also important to keep your bones, skin and cartilage healthy. This becomes more important as we age, particularly when our knees and ankles for instance, start to deteriorate.

Recommended Intake:

Like everything, meat should be eaten in moderation. The recommended intake for meat is about 85g, one egg or a handful of nuts per serving, and you should aim to have about 2-3 servings of protein (not necessarily meat) a day.

The recommended intake for protein is to be about 15% of your calorie intake in order not to be protein deficient. However, if you are looking to lose weight, or to eat less starchy foods in general, then you might want to increase your intake to about 20-25%.

Healthy Choices:

• Lean chicken
• Lean beef
• Fatty fishes like mackerel and salmon
• Shrimp
• Eggs
• Nuts
• Avocados
• Tofu

Diary:

This is yet another food group which has come under scrutiny. Again, it’s easy to correlate ‘dairy’ with unhealthier products like cream, and it’s also easy to think of ‘pizza’ when you think ‘cheese. However, like every other food group, dairy can be good for you too.

Benefits

Dairy is a great source of calcium, which is essential for bone health, particularly for growing children and the elderly. Some dairy products also are a great source of protein.

Recommended Intake

Noted, there aren’t that many benefits to dairy. However, it is perfectly healthy to consume 1-2 servings of dairy daily. BUT, these servings are not very big. A typical serving of milk or yogurt is about 1 cup, or around 60g of high protein cheese.

Healthy Choices:

Skip the ice cream, pizza, cream cheese and flavoured frozen yogurts. To be fair, these products should be categorised more in the Fats and Sugars food group, even though they are predominantly made of dairy products. These choices are much better:

• Full fat or low fat milk (not flavoured!)
• Greek yogurt
• Plain full fat or low fat yogurt
• Healthier types of cheeses like cottage cheese, mozzarella, ricotta and feta or parmesan

Fats and Sugars:

Unfortunately, this food group does deserve its reputation for something to be minimised and avoided. Sugar of any form is harmful to your body, and the ‘fats’ categorised in this group are trans fats. Trans fats are processed fats found in your typical fast foods, deep-fried foods and desserts.

However, the best way to minimise your intake of fats is not a low-fat diet. Saturated fats and monounsaturated fats, which are natural fats found in foods like nuts, fatty fish and avocado, are essential for your health.

Recommended Intake

For most of us, it is impossible to entirely avoid fats and sugars, and it can be hard to ‘recommend’ a maximum intake. It also depends how unhealthy the foods are. For instance, plain crackers generally do have either trans fats or some form of sugar in them, but they aren’t generally as bad for you as an Oreo for example. The best is to cutting trans fats and processed sugars out from your diet as much as possible.

Health(ier) Choices:

The best way to control and minimise your intake of trans fats and sugars is to choose natural fats and sugars to bake and cook your desserts with. If you’re trying to choose a packaged snack, or looking for desserts, see if you can ask the waiter/waitress if the desserts are baked with natural sugars. Since there is more awareness about healthy eating, you are bound to find somewhere that provides healthier desserts!

Here are some things to watch out for:

• Foods cooked with coconut oil, olive oil or rapeseed oil rather than cooking oil, vegetable oil or canola oil
• Raw butter (look at the labels for trans fats)
• Desserts made with raw forms of sugar like honey and cane sugar
• Dark chocolate (check the labels to see if they include trans fats)
• Avoid foods with lard, preservatives, flavouring or colouring (and don’t be fooled when it says it’s ‘natural’)

That’s it! Was there some things that surprised you about these food groups? Let me know in the comments below!