Nutition - Is it possible to get a balanced diet?

[C~Q]

I thought i'd start this thread as a follow on from the NSW funding surgery thread as we seemed to be getting a bit off topic.

As part of my training to become a personal trainer I attended a workshop last weekend. On one of the mornings we focused on nutrtion and some of the information we found out was terrifying We all left really disheartened especially after I asked our teacher if it was possible for anyone in todays world to get a completely balanced diet and she said "probably not, no".

Some of the scary things she said were -
*The fruit that we eat from Coles and Woolies and some fruit and veg shops could be as much as 3 years old.
*What goodness is left is pretty much destroyed by cooking.
*You have to eat about 3 apples today to get the goodness you used to get out of 1 apple (not sure if this is a bit of a myth).
*Your average woman needs roughly 0.8 grams of Protein per K of body weight and only a small amount of people (esp women) get that.
*Consuming calcium with some foods inc chocolate, coffee and spinach can make calcium unavailable to the body - so giving your child a glass of chocolate milk to boost their calcium intake won't acually work.
*Iron os very hard for your body to absorb even the best Haem iron from meat is only about 10% absorbed and non-haem iron sources like veggies can be as low as 1%.
*She also said buying meat pre sliced from the deli is a bad source of protein (unfortunatly I can't remember the exact reasons why ) she said the best thing to do if you want to have meat in your sandwhich is to buy a free-range chicken/turkey/whatever, cook it, slice it up into portions and freeze to use as needed.

There was so much more info but these were the things that really stuck in my mind.

So...short of growing your own veggies in mineral rich soil and weighing out and measuring the percentages and amounts of everything you eat, and taking so many tablets that you rattle when you walk, does anyone have any ideas how to get a balanced diet?

I think if we can share info and tips then we should be able to come up with some ways to put our (my) minds at ease.

Thanks for listening to my ramblings

[Phteven]

The idea that goodness is destroyed by cooking is a bit of a myth. The vitamins and minerals in carrots are actually made more accessible by cooking. Some vitamins ie vitamin C are destroyed by heat but many aren't.
Some fruit might be 3 years old but that is very rare - the more perishable fruits strawberries, blueberries, mandarins etc just can't be stored that long. If you buy from the farmer's markets the fruit is very fresh.
We only need about 3 serves of protien a day. Protien is found in an amazing array of foods - cheese is quite protien rich and ful of calcium too. Also mushrooms, nuts.
There is a subtle but important differance between reducing the amount of calcium available and maing it unavailable. A child will get less calcium from chocolate milk than straight but far more than from no milk at all.
Vitamin C increases iron absorbtion so if you have a steak eat drink an OJ at the same time or eat some strawberries afterwards. Calcium reduces iron absorbtion so if iron is a concern don't drink milk after your steak. Or have lasagne or cheesey sauces with meat.

TBH I'm not convinced that your teacher is as well informed as she should be.

[TheBear]

Even the perishable fruits are being routinely stored for very long periods of time now, they are chilled to near freezing (1 degree) and kept in an environment of high humidity (90-95%) and low oxygen content (3% instead of 23%), the exact gas balances vary according to the item being stored - there was a documentary recently on Woollies that claimed that the average age of the apples they were selling was now over 12 months.
Long term storage gradually reduces the amount of soluable protein in the fruit along with many anti-oxidants and other volatile compounds as these are slowly released into the atmosphere along with ethylene - the atmosphere is circulated through scrubbers that remove these compounds from the air.
A few minutes with google will find you lots of research papers, and commercial brochures from suppliers of the equipment that back this up.

I do agree with the comment about the farmer's markets, but there are some stall holders that buy their produce from producers that do use long term storage and shipping techniques - it well worth talking to the stall holders about the produce before you purchase.

The fashion for low fat diets has done a great deal of harm to the average diet, one of the impacts is to reduce protein intake at the same time, many of the best protein sources are perceived to be high in fats, or prepared with fat.

But to get back to the original question...I think it is possible to eat a balanced diet, my view is that the changes that have been made to food production methods over the last century are the root cause of many of the dietary problems that are present today - if you are able to source and prepare foods using methods that have been around since before 1930 then your diet will probably be significantly improved.

[MantaRay]

Certainly it is more difficult to have a nutritious diet, but not impossible.

The iron thing is true, this is one huge benefit of bfing - there is not a lot of iron in bm, but 98% or so of what is there is absorbed by the body. So we can give our kids a great start by bfing until at least age 2 as recommended by the WHO (I know this isn't possible for all, both my DSs self weaned before age 2, but it's a noble aim). Also, as Dach said, vitamin C helps the absorption of iron. As someone with a condition which means I have high iron, I have seen how dramatically my iron levels can rise if I take multi-vitamins (even those without iron in them!).

Also sourcing your fruit and vegies to get the freshest ones is a good thing. I think growing our own is a good thing to aim for, although again, not possible for everyone. Also think of the environmental impact of being partly self-sufficent - less transport to deliver food etc. Sure, for one person, not much difference, but for a whole community it can have an impact.

Another issue which I am passionate about, is the ability to feed our kids (and our selves) without foods that are high in salt and/or sugar and/or potentially harmful additives. This is next to impossible, especially when they attend parties etc. But again, with some effort, you can do a reasonable job at avoiding these things most of the time.

[C~Q]

Thanks Dach, I have been briefly searching the web to find out some more info and it looks like It depends on what the veggie is and the way it is cooked.

In another article published in The Journal of the American Dietetic Association, nutrient retention was compared when beef strips were stir-fried, broiled, and microwaved. The report notes that the true retention of vitamin B6, iron, zinc, and magnesium were significantly higher in strips that were cooked by stir-frying than in those cooked by microwaving or by broiling. Although many people today are not necessarily big beef-eaters, this tells us something about the relationship between food preparation and nutrients.

Most Australians could do with more salads and fresh raw foods in their daily diets, but an all-raw food diet is restrictive and unnecessary. There are also some valuable components in some products that are more bioavailable after cooking. The lycopene in tomatoes, for example, is more easily absorbed from cooked tomatoes than from raw. However, the folate in tomatoes is destroyed by cooking. The obvious solution is to eat both raw and cooked tomatoes.

Some cooking methods retain higher levels of nutrients, so let's take a closer look.

Steaming
Steaming preserves around 90% or more of most vitamins, including folate ? the most fragile of the vitamins. There is almost no loss of vitamin E with steaming and the limited research on retention of antioxidants also supports steaming as the top cooking method.

Stir-frying
With a quick stir-fry in a hot pan using a little oil, over 80% of most vitamins are retained ? as long as you stir-fry only to the tender crisp stage. If you stir-fry for so long that the vegetables begin to lose their bright colour, their vitamins will also start disappearing rapidly.

Baking
Baking results only in small losses of most nutrients, but is applicable to vegetables such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, onions, carrots, beetroot, fennel, parsnips and swedes. Green vegetables don't taste so good when baked as they lose texture and colour and this will parallel their losses of vitamin C and the B complex vitamins.

Boiling
It might be the most common method of cooking vegetables, but boiling the worst from a nutritional viewpoint. Nutrients leach into the cooking water and the more water and the longer the cooking period, the greater the losses. Some vitamins can be saved if the water is used in soups or sauces, but in general, losses of at least 50% of the vitamins occur with boiling.

Boiling is suitable when making soups as the vitamin-rich liquid is consumed. However, much of the folate from green vegetables will be destroyed, so it's important to enjoy salads as well as soups.


The take-home message is that an ideal diet contains both cooked and raw foods. When cooking, steaming is the preferred method for vegetables, followed closely by stir-frying or microwaving. For top retention of vitamins and protective phytochemicals, avoid boiling or microwaving in large amounts of water for long periods at high power.

Some fruit might be 3 years old but that is very rare - the more perishable fruits strawberries, blueberries, mandarins etc just can't be stored that long. If you buy from the farmer's markets the fruit is very fresh.

I don't think it's very rare at all. In the last week I have spoken to quite a few people who have told me the same thing. Also at the markets. If you go to one that is run by small farms or people growing their own F&V then yes, it would be fresh, but a lot of the bigger markets have food from the last few seasons that they will try and sell you first. I have found it very hard to find decent fruit and veg in any supermarket. I think the most important thing I have taken from this is to ask the people that work there whether it's this years season or not.

The main problem with getting enough Protein in your diet is that protein breaks down into amino acids, only 12 of these amino acids are made in the body and the other 8 have to be obtained from the diet. However the body's cells require ALL 20 of the amino acids to be present to be used. Yes, Protein is found in many foods - all nutrients are. Which is why people are encouraged to have a balanced diet.

There are many things that can effect calcium absorption http://paleodiet.com/losspts.txt here are a few.

I'm not being argumentative but I think making a few statements to counter everything I have said is encouraging the attitude of many people to not look into where our food is coming from, how it's made and what is in it.

[Phteven]

TBH I think that it's easier to have a balanced diet now than ever before.
In years gone by people ate food that was in season and in climates with a very cold winter spend most of the winter subsisting on heavily salted or picked produce. The choice of fruits was pretty much limited to what was grown nearby and in many cases to what they could grow themselves.
Until the industrial revolution even the wealthy were only one bad season from starvation and generally had attrocious diets.
I've got a photo somewhere of the avaerage 50's family standing in front of the food they consumed in a year. There was not a great deal of variety and there was a lot of fatty and heavily salted food.

TBH I think that we're incredibly lucky in that we have access to such a variety of healthy and nutritious foods. If I was living on US$5 a week I might find it hard to have a nutritious diet but since I don't I guess I think my glass is pretty much full.

IMO the statement that it is impossible to get a balanced diet is taking a totally ahistorical view of nutrition. It's never been possible yet the human race has thrived and prospered despite it.

[C~Q]

I started this thread was in the hope that we could give each other tips and advice on how to improve our diets and make our food and the food we feed our children more balanced and nutritious. I hope some people can come up with some constructive advise.

MR - I agree that it's scary the amount of high sugar/salt foods their are out there. I'm trying now to make my own sauces instead of using pre-made ones.

[Phteven]

I think I was a bit out of line. Sorry for being a b1tch and derailling your thread.
I still think it's totally incorrect to say that we can't have a balanced diet. An entire industry has grown out of convincing Australians that our diets are inadequate in this that and the other. As a result we have the world's most expensive wee.

I would encourage everyone to rip up some of their lawn or flowers and plant veges.
A vege garden doesn't just provide healthy fruit it's also a way to teach our children about life, insects, the environment, plants and so on. A composting system is a part of any good garden so you can reduce landfill too.
Even in a tiny apartment we can grow some veges and herbs in pots.

[C~Q]

No worries, you weren't a *****! I do know what you mean about big companies trying to convince us that we are lacking in certain things only to pop up with a miracle pill to cure everything which is why I think people need to discuss things like this - to open peoples eyes who otherwise would believe everything they're told (myself included )

[Phteven]

When I was at woolies today I had a look at the packing dates on the sides of all the boxes.
Most of the fruit that I looked at was packed quite recently.
I wrote the dates down on my phone (and got some wierd looks lol)
Cucumber, tomatoe - 30/07
Lettuce, onions, 27/07
Pears 01/08
Apples 28/07
Rockmelon 31/07
I'm ok with those dates because although they aren't Ideal I have kept my own home grown veges for just as long. Sometimes you get a glut so you end up storing quite a bit. Homegrown pears need to be picked before ripening and ripened off the tree or they just rot (maybe not all breeds but the ones my Dad grew did)

There was a box of grapes packed January. TBH I wouldn't have bought them anyway because they looked kind of skanky - the stems weren't nice and fresh looking, they were wizened yet soggy.
I didn't look at the dates on any of the imported fruits because I don't buy them anyway (I'm not quite a locavore but I try to buy local produce) but I guess they would have been older. I tend to stick mainly to what is seasonal. It seems so wrong eating a mango in winter. MIL bought some mexican ones last winter and they were awful.

ETA - I busted my local woolies breaking company policy too. The policy is to display fruit in the boxes it is packed in but the spinich I bought was in a crate that had manderins packed in it about a week ago - tsk tsk tsk.

[TheBear]

Unfortunately the carton dates only indicate when the items were packed into those cartons, they may well have been in storage before being packed into the cardboard cartons. If you get the names of the producers off the cartons then you can usually find out a little more, if the carton is generic and does not carry the name of the producer then chances are it's been repacked somewhere along the line. Cardboard cartons don't hold up well in high humidity storage, so anything that has been stored has to be repacked when it comes out of storage....unless it was originally packed in breathable plastic....look at the little punnets of berries as an example.

My suggestions:-
1. Don't buy anything with artificial sweeteners in it - this is pretty much anything with the word "Diet" written on it. Artificial sweeteners have been repeatedly shown to stimulate appetite - if you eat something sweet that contains few calories, then your body will make you go looking for the calories elsewhere. Many reduced fat items are artificially sweetened. Use natural sugars - honey, fruit, etc in preference to processed sugar.

2. Eat for flavour as much as nutrition - treat your meals as a celebration of produce, not merely an exercise in sustenance. Commercial food production is about producing maximum product for minimum cost, the biggest cost item is naturally grown produce - very few traditional diets work this way - the bulk of your diet should consist of fresh produce, complemented with a small quantity of prepared stocks and sauces.

3. Make your own stocks and sauces - it's the best way of getting maximum nutritional value out of the produce that have bought, the offcuts and trimmings from your more elaborate meals will furnish you with a range of sauces, stock and even soups. Don't buy pre-trimmed produce - if you buy root vegetables, then get them with the leaves still attached, buy whole chickens, whole fish, etc. Just about every part of the produce has a place in most traditional diets, the roughage, fibre and nutritional benefits of these sub-prime foods goes a long way to balance your diet.
Prepared sauces and dressings are usually really bad news, they are salt, sugar and fat rich and full of chemicals to stablise them for long term storage. If you have oils, spices and vinegars in your store cupboard, then you can reconstruct most of the supermarkets' product ranges with surprisingly little effort.

4. Source your produce carefully - know where it has come from, how it has been handled and treated. Avoid varities of fruit and veg that have been geneticially modified for faster growth - slow, growing varieties contain more flavour and more nutritional benefit.

5. Source your meat with even more care - eat more mature animals on a regular basis, mutton or hoggett in preference to lamb, beef > 2 years old (most Aussie beef is <1 yr). Avoid animals that have been specially grown for fast growth, try to source meat that grows slower for more flavour.

6. Eat less fat, but don't compromise the rest of your diet to do it - if you increase the intake of sugar and processed grains in order to reduce fat then you will do more harm than good. Fats carry flavour and much nutritional value, eradicating them is not part of a balanced diet. Learn the lessons from traditional diets that use cooking methods and seasonings to get maximum benefit and minimum detriment from fat.

7. Season your food well - the use of a broad range of seasonings (fresh and dried) will help reduce your salt intake without reducing flavour.

8. Reduce your intake of processed grains - eat whole grains in place of processed grains, but limit them to a small part of your diet - use beans and pulses to replace them where possible. Grains are a relatively recent introduction to our diet, and their is a fair bit of evidence to suggest that the side effects of digesting grains is still not well understood.

9. Broaden your diet - try new types of produce, cook them in new ways - the internet will provide you with a hundred recipes for anything you don't already know how to cook.

10. Buy food from farmers, not from scientists or large commercial organisations - we've been farming for 000's of years, and scientifically/commercially dabbling with the food supply on a widespread basis for around a hundred....the scientists and accountants still know a lot less about what we need to eat than the farmers. The rates of obesity and diet related illnesses have sky-rocketed in direct proportion to the popularity of processed food products....they should make up a very small part of your diet.

[Neenee Jellybeanie]

This is a fantastic topic!

I don't have anything as significant to add as these super-smart ladies but personally I think we eat way too much carbs these days. It seems to me that traditionally, we would've eaten mostly vegetables and when available, meat. I also think that the recommended servings are way over the top too. There's been research to suggest that you actually live longer if you eat fewer calories because your body decides to try to conserve what it has, having received the impression there's not enough to go 'round. I also don't think there's really anything valuable about most fruit juices (though I am parcial and usually drink a glass every day!), there's more fibre in the actual fruit (because its the skin and parts your body can't digest that are the actual fibre).
I don't believe that eggs are bad for you because of cholesterol either, and we all need to eat much more fish! I found a fantastic supplier of salmon. I was assured at the fish shop that all the salmon is under 2 days old when it arrives in the shop, is farmed in clean waters and has no preservatives added to it. Costs a small fortune but MAN it's lovely! It's actually only a few dollars per kilo more expensive than coles' salmon.

[C~Q]

The Bear - Wow! Thank you, some fantastic information there.

Socks - IKWYM about fruit juice and it's usually loaded with sugar. I drink the fruit and veg juice though, I think anything that tastes that disgusting must be food for you!

[krysalyss]

we all need to eat much more fish!

If you want a good non-animal source of EFAs you can use linseed/flaxseed. Freshly ground is best. Essential for brain development and great for skin and hair.

[Phteven]

Unfortunately the carton dates only indicate when the items were packed into those cartons, they may well have been in storage before being packed into the cardboard cartons. If you get the names of the producers off the cartons then you can usually find out a little more, if the carton is generic and does not carry the name of the producer then chances are it's been repacked somewhere along the line. Cardboard cartons don't hold up well in high humidity storage, so anything that has been stored has to be repacked when it comes out of storage....unless it was originally packed in breathable plastic....look at the little punnets of berries as an example.

I used to work as a fruit picker (and packer) on my school holidays so I know from my own life experience (rather than docos) that the fruit is picked and goes into the carton then onto the back of the ute or truck and off to market.
Our farmers don't really have the money for very sophisticated storage systems and they generally want it off the farms and sold so that they can pay the bills.
If you actually take a moment to look at the labels you will see that they nearly always have the name and address of the supplier (even the black pallets). As far as I know this is a legal requirement. I never worked anywhere that didn't slap a sticker on or have a custom box with a date space that we filled in in texta. Why not try ringing some of our farmers and asking them about their storage systems - the number is often right there on the box. Our farmers are people too - not they're faceless forces of evil.
I have no doubt that there is some very old fruit out there but you don't need to know much about fruit to spot it.

[Nai]

[QUOTE=Baby_Socks;1366561]and we all need to eat much more fish! [QUOTE]

Sorry to disagree with this one but as a vegetarian you can have a very well balanced diet (probably better than most meat eaters) without eating animal proteins. As Krysalys said flaxseed is an excellent alternative for those not wanting to eat animal products.

My diet is very heavy on locally produced and in-season fresh fruit & veg, whole grains and legumes/pulses. I am actually quite a lazy cook but manage to whip up healthy foods pretty easily with this as a base.

I am also a blood donor (when not preg or BF) and my iron, B12, folate, clacium etc has been measured to be better than most people so my diet is obviously doing what it should. I have done Olympic distance triathlons, have been pregnant (now twice) and breastfed for 14 months on a vegetarian diet and I rarely get sick.

Personally I think it is possible to have a balanced diet these days if you just take a bit of extra time selecting the foods you buy (and where you buy them - I would never buy fruit and veg from a stupormarket). Menu planning is a great tool to help in this regard so that you get what you need and can balance your diet across the week.

[TheBear]

Dachlo - I've worked for supermarkets doing supply chain optimisation, I do have first hand experience of this.

A small proportion of the crop is taken directly to market as you described, the vast majority is processed through co-operative/commercial packing and processing organisations. The large supermarkets will contract with the processors for a continuous supply of produce through the year. The processors will use sub-prime items for juices, or other processed foods and only supply the higher grades of produce as whole items.

In order to meet their continuous supply contracts they are forced to try and time-shift the harvest by using storage systems, if it is done well then there is no visible degradation to the most items.

You are right when you say that the farmers can't afford to do this kind of thing, but the supermarkets can. They do this to maintain maximum margin on produce by reducing the effects that harvest periods have on supply/demand pricing - it enables them to buy from the farmers at the lowest possible price (when they are harvesting and have stock of a fresh product that they cannot store) and spread the sales out to the consumer over the year.

Nai - Good for you, out of curiosity - are you avoiding all animal fats and proteins (eggs, dairy, etc)?

[sloane]

Socks - IKWYM about fruit juice and it's usually loaded with sugar. I drink the fruit and veg juice though, I think anything that tastes that disgusting must be food for you!

i've been meaning to try wheatgrass juice for ages!

seriously though, this is a great thread. it's a topic that really interests me - but it also confuses me because you read so much conflicting information! now that i'm ttc, i feel like i want to get the absolute best information.

it's so easy to buy everything at the supermarket for convenience - but it's not really a valid excuse when you're talking about your health.

what do people think of the produce at big markets - like the vic market or sth melb market for those in melb. do you think this is substantially fresher than in the supermarket?