A New Year's Food Resolution

Happy New Year!

Now is the perfect time to make food-related resolutions for the coming year. I thought I’d share with you my personal food goal for 2015. If you do only one thing to change your eating habits this year, I urge you to join me and make it ...

Meals like this one, from
Bully Food Truck, meet
the Half Your Plate goal.

There is a new Canadian movement called “Half Your Plate” that seeks to have fruits & veggies make up half your plate at every meal: "Half Your Plate is meant to be fun, practical and informative while providing tips on how to prepare fruits and veggies using different colours, flavours and textures for meals and snacks at home, at school, at work, eating out or on the go. Check out the recipes section for more ideas on how to incorporate fruits and veggies into every meal!" I intend to try to take this one step further and make half of each lunch and dinner veggies, with the other half a combination of fruits, grains, legumes, meat and starches. 

halfyourplate.ca

A few guidelines for making the most of this resolution:

1)   Try to make things as colourful as possible… as a rule of thumb, the deeper the colour hues of your fruits & veggies, the more micronutrients they contain. So explore those deep purples, dark greens, rich reds, vibrant oranges and dazzling yellows.

2)   Make sure you experience variety… the more varied your diet and the more you expose yourself to the wealth of vegetables out there, the greater the chance that you will give your body all of the micro and macro nutrients it needs to thrive.

3)   Remember that iron absorption in plant based proteins (like lentils) is enhanced in the presence of vitamin C. Try to have tomatoes or citrus fruits like oranges, lemons or grapefruit in the presence of  plant proteins.

4)   Don’t be afraid to have a meatless meal. There is a lot of science behind the many reasons why this is a good thing to do in your regular diet, both for health of your body and of the planet.

5)   Lastly, be creative, experiment & have fun! Source out at the library some of my favourite cookbooks for veggie inspiration.

Visit our website at http://www.swefm.ca
Like us on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/swefm.ca
Write a review of us on Trip Advisor: SWEFM on Trip Advisor
Contributed by Sheri Hendsbee