A Guide to Healthy Eating: Strategies, tips, and recipes to help you make better food choices - Harvard Health (2024)

Discover the Foods that Fight Disease and Help You Achieve Better Health!

The foods you eat have the power to help you live a longer, healthier life. Choose the right foods and you’ll fuel your body with the nutrients it needs to prevent nearly every disease and dysfunction from cataracts, infertility, and neurodegenerative conditions to cardiovascular disease and cancer.

But just as the right foods can help your health, the wrong foods (think: processed) can increase your risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and more.

To help you fill your plate with the healthiest foods, Harvard medical experts created A Guide to Healthy Eating: Strategies, tips, and recipes to help you make better food choices. This Special Health Report uses the latest information from the nation’s top nutrition experts to bring you the well-researched, specific recommendations
that have the potential to make you stronger and healthier.

For example, you’ll discover:

  • Harvard’s 6 simple steps to healthy eating
  • How processing can destroy nutrients like vitamins B and C
  • Why oranges are a healthier choice than orange juice
  • 4 ways to turn your favorite recipes into veggie-filled dishes
  • How to spot “high fiber” foods that aren’t that healthy
  • 7 reasons your body needs (healthy) fats
  • Why you may need more protein as you age

You’ll get the inside scoop on nutrition myths that can harm your health such as, saturated fats are no longer bad for you ... coconut oil is a veritable cure-all ... you should eliminate carbs from your diet ... meats are the only source of complete proteins ... and dozens more.

You’ll learn:

  • Why you may want to cut back on eggs if you have diabetes
  • How you can lower risk of heart disease by 30% just by regularly swapping a serving of red meat with fish or chicken
  • About the mineral that helps lower risk of colon cancer
  • Why supplements won’t boost your health as much as whole foods
  • How to tell if a fruit or vegetable is likely loaded with healthy plant chemicals
  • What every health conscious person needs to know about antioxidants

You’ll find tips for creating healthy meals with what you have in your pantry ... Easy and delicious ways to get more vegetables into your diet ... 6 secrets to smarter snacking ...Plus you’ll get a Special Bonus Section at no extra cost with 17 mouth-watering, healthy recipes.

Make sure you’re making the right food choices for your good health. Order your copy of A Guide to Healthy Eatingtoday.

Prepared by the editors of Harvard Health Publishing with faculty editorTeresa Fung, ScD, RD, LDN,Adjunct Professor, Harvard T.H.Chan School of Public Health,Professor of Nutrition,Simmons College,Nutrition Editor Carrie Dennett, MPH, RDN, and Recipe Developer Sharon Palmer, MSFS, RDN.53pages. (2023)

A healthy eating style

If you Google “healthy eating,” you will get literally hundreds of millions of hits. Follow the links, and you will find that some of them deliver solid information, while others lead you down confusing paths of outright misinformation. As one fad diet after another grabs the spotlight, conflicting information can make it difficult to distinguish scientifically backed nutrition advice from marketing and hype. And news headlines can make it seem as if views on good nutrition are changing all the time.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The optimal diet for good health, low disease risk, healthy weight, and long life has been a matter of growing consensus over the last several decades, thanks to a hard-earned body of evidence.

Moreover, the power of this healthful diet is becoming clearer over time. “When we began our research on diet and health in the late 1970s, we had a general sense that diet was likely to be important in the prevention of heart disease and cancer,” says Dr. Walter Willett, past chair of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. What he and other researchers found was that it did exactly that—and more. “Aspects of diet play a role in the prevention of disease and dysfunction in almost every organ of the body,” he says. In addition to lowering your blood pressure, total cholesterol, and risks of certain types of cancer, it can help ward off strokes, diabetes, cognitive decline, osteoporosis, kidney problems, certain gastrointestinal problems, various eye diseases, and so on down a long list.

Yes, this plan involves eating more vegetables— and, as you may have guessed, it doesn’t include a lot of packaged snacks or fast food. But once you know how to prepare healthy meals, you’ll find they can be much more tasty than highly processed foods. As Dr. Willett says, just think of sitting at an outdoor restaurant in Italy, savoring vegetables roasted in olive oil, perfectly seasoned with herbs and spices. Add in a hunk of hearty whole-grain bread and an entree of fresh grilled fish, and you can readily imagine just how satisfying this whole-foods diet can be. Now compare that with greasy burgers and chips at the local diner. “It’s junk food that’s tasteless, requiring large amounts of added salt, sugar, and fat to make it palatable,” he says.

If you’re convinced, then there’s no time like the present to start remaking your diet. You have nothing to lose—except perhaps a few unwanted pounds and points off your cholesterol and blood pressure numbers. This report will help explain in greater depth how to accomplish this.

A Guide to Healthy Eating: Strategies, tips, and recipes to help you make better food choices - Harvard Health (2024)
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