Well, not always but there are some things you need to be aware of…
In the previous blog post I talked about the issue of American childhood obesity and how a large portion of the kids in our country are overweight or obese. Although diet isn’t the only factor that contributes to obesity when analyzing what our children eat it is very apparent that their diets need to be improved and that they can be improved in a rather drastic way.
One of the main reasons I believe our kids aren’t eating as well as they can is because there is a lot of misinformation about diet and exercise on a daily basis so in this blog we will talk about some of the more reliable sources for healthier diets and what types of sources too avoid.
Who can we trust on the internet?
The first and one of the most recent sources that can help you lead and live a healthy diet is MyPlate. MyPlate is a government run project that is headed by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). It is an interactive website, with a supported phone app, that allows you to see how many servings you should be eating of each of the food groups on a single plate. This allow each person to be able to see what their plates at meals should look like in order to meet the recommended dietary needs.
The second reliable source that you can use are the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines from health.gov. Health.gov is a website with a plethora of information regarding healthy living and is run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as a part of the Office for Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (ODPHP). More specific to diet is their dietary guidelines that come out every five years that can help at risk populations better understand the amount of each food group they are supposed to be eating and which types of food to avoid.
I wouldn’t be a very good blog writer if I didn’t understand that some people don’t like or trust the American government. So for those of you who don’t look no further than the World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO is an international organization that takes into consideration general dietary requirements of humans across the globe. Their healthy diet on record gives information about how much adults and children should consume of each type of food group. As well as they mention what foods to avoid to decrease chance of chronic disease.
Who to keep a close eye on?
There are several different types of sources that you need to keep your eye on that maybe misleading you. The first types of sources that you should be weary of are sources that offer diets that seem to good to be true. Such as Healthy Diet Magazine that claims you can still lose weight while eating treats. The specific example they give is a desert with what appears to be 90% whipped cream, which is high in fat and added sugars, and about 10% fruit. This diet seems too good to be true and you should be suspicious of them.
The second type of diet plans you should avoid are those that offer easy rapid weight loss. One that you may have see on TV for example, is Nutrisystem. Nutrisystem’s main goal is also to sell a product and not to help you lose weight. This can be seen as soon as you log onto their website. The first tile on their menu is an option to buy the program and they don’t tell you what types of food you can eat on their system until the last tile. This is a red flag and you should be weary of any diet plan that tries to sell you a product before actually telling you how it works and what you can eat.
Finally, another type of source that you should avoid are diet plans that offer no long term solution to a healthy diet. An example of this is Healthline, healthline is a website/magazine that does use peer reviewed research articles as evidence for why their methods work to help lose weight. However, they offer programs to help people lose weight quickly (see above for why this also is a red flag) but also offer weight loss plans that aren’t sustainable for long term weight loss. This means that their plan isn’t a very healthy diet but that instead they are a very restrictive diet plan that if followed for too long can cause adverse healthy effects.
So no the internet lying to you…
But there is a lot of information on the internet and being informed on how to determine the best types of information is an important skill that will help you make healthier dietary choices.
Good Eats While Eating Good 