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Healthy Eating: It’s About the Quality, Quantity of Food

By Joe Southern

Standard-Radio Post Managing Editor

The saying “you are what you eat” has never been truer.

The same goes for “variety is the spice of life.”

Kim Thornton, a registered dietician and certified diabetes educator at Hill Country Memorial Wellness Center, said most people do not understand how what they eat impacts their bodies.

“One of the first things you learn in dietician school is variety … you need different kinds of food on your plate,” she said.

To better understand healthy eating, it helps to define a key word that is often misunderstood in American culture — diet. Thornton explained that diet is what one normally eats versus the notion that a diet is a program designed for weight loss, especially fad diets.

She said the secret to healthy eating is to control what kinds and how much food a person eats.

“You can’t get all the nutrition you need if you don’t have different kinds of food on the plate,” she said.

What to eat

“At least half the plate should be vegetable,” Thornton said. “And a quarter of the plate should be some kind of starch or fruit.”

The remaining fourth should be a meat or protein. She said following that simple guideline is a start, but it must be followed by variety, such as eating different fruits and vegetables, alternating protein types, and considering healthier options for starches.

“Acorn squash is a much more nutritious starch versus pasta or rice,” she said.

Instead of eating anything made with white flour, she suggests alternatives such as beans.

“They’re a lot healthier and they’re a very nutritious starch food,” she said.

She said eating whole grains is important to get the full nutritional value. Whole wheat, for example, is better for the body than white flour, which is basically the wheat starch with the nutritious portion stripped away.

What not to eat

In addition to white flour, Thornton said people should avoid processed sugar and anything that has been deep fried.

“Avoid anything that has been dunked down in fat and cooked,” she said.

That includes French fries, tater tots, chicken, fish, etc.

“The heat begins to break down the fat and it becomes toxic and inflammatory to your body,” she said.

She said one of the worst offenders is a donut because it is deep-fried and smothered in processed sugar.

Thornton said people should look at the ingredients list on the packaging of foods they buy. They should look for recognizable foods as ingredients and stay away from things that are largely chemicals and/or preservatives.

How much to eat

Thornton said that even people who consume a healthy diet often overlook the amount of food they eat. She said controlling portions