CHANGING YOUR DIET WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE

You don’t have to ditch the chocolate, but simply swapping junk food for more fruit and veg will improve your health dramatically

When it comes to ensuring your optimal health and living well for longer, your diet is spectacularly important. Almost all of us need to change the way and the amount we eat.

We are not advocating another new faddish diet involving soups and shakes, low calories or weird food. You don’t need to be hungry all the time (although feeling hunger occasionally is fine and probably quite good for you), and we’re not going to stop you eating chocolate or ice cream if you really don’t want to. You might just have to eat a bit less of it. What we do suggest is that you consider a few key changes that studies consistently show will make a big difference to your longterm health.

COUNT CALORIES

If achieving a healthy weight loss is one of your specified goals, it’s a really good idea to have some idea about the amount of food you’re putting on your plate and the extent to which you might be consuming more energy than you’re burning.

It can be handy, for instance, to know that a 48g Snickers bar is 245 calories (most of it sugar and fat), which is roughly the same number of calories as a balanced breakfast packed with the sort of nutrients your body needs to stay well. Our calorie counter opposite will help.

EAT MORE VEGETABLES

The most important rule is to fill your plate with a big pile of colourful vegetables, which reduce rates of just about every disease.

They are full of fibre, which not only makes them fantastically filling but they also keep you ‘regular’ (protecting you against bowel cancer). The indigestible carbohydrate that vegetables contain feeds your gut bacteria, which then release chemicals now known to have wide-ranging benefits on your whole body.

The official recommendation is still to aim for five portions of different fruit and vegetables a day, but you can aim higher. You’ll be far better off shooting high for the sake of your health and aiming for ten on a good day and accepting a fallback position of seven on a bad day.

The more plant-based your diet becomes, the healthier you will be. You don’t have to become vegan (although evidence shows you might live longer and better if you do), but the less meat and dairy you eat the better. We aim to have meat-free days. It’s as good for the planet as it is for your body.

Fruit might be packed with health-giving nutrients, but it is also usually sweet, so vegetables trump fruit every time. Aim for two different pieces of fruit (real fruit is better than juice and smoothies, which just give you a sugar rush and rotten teeth). Each different piece of fruit counts as one portion, so don’t think two or three apples gets you over the line – mix things up and throw a pear, orange or banana into the mix.

CUT OUT JUNK AND PROCESSED FOOD

Sorry, but if you want to be healthy, you can’t eat junk food. It might be delicious, but it isn’t nourishing. It’s the food equivalent of cigarettes, designed purely to get you to buy more.

Craving fat, salt, sugar and protein kept our ancestors alive, driving them to hunt and forage. Now these same traits are killing us. Hyper-delicious foods such as salted caramel, honey-coated nuts, stuffedcrust pizzas, crisps and burgers are designed with perfect ratios of fat, sugar, salt and other chemical flavourings delivered with the right amount of crunch, creaminess, chunkiness and chewiness to work on the innate vulnerabilities of your primitive human brain. These foods are addictive. No one ever just has one slice. If a little bit of junk food brings you joy, then have it as a treat. Enjoy it. But not every day.

The more ingredients something contains, the unhealthier it is likely to be because some of those ingredients will have been added to make you crave that food. It is much harder to overeat unsalted nuts than it is dry roasted or smoked nuts, for example. Eat real food instead. Peel your own fruit, buy meat with bones in it, wash your own salad. You’ll save money and you’ll think more about what you’re eating and the quantity you need.

Unless you have put yourself on a strict daily calorie limit, there’s no need to abolish bread, pasta, rice and desserts completely, but do keep portion sizes and quantity under control.