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