How Do I Ensure That I Follow the Right Diet for a Healthy Life?
Learn more from Dr. Michael Rakotz on behalf of NorthShore University about following the right diet for a healthy life.
Transcript
MICHAEL RAKOTZ, MD: How do I ensure that I follow the right diet for a healthy life? Well, we've learned a lot over the last 20 years
about a lifestyle that contributes to health and living a long, healthy life.
Number one on that list across the board, if you want to live a long, healthy life is don't smoke. Smoking is the single most dangerous thing
that you can do to your body for shortening your life expectancy and increasing your risk for a host of things,
including heart disease and cancer. So not smoking should be at the top of the list. As far as dietary intervention goes,
eat more fruits and vegetables. We know that the people who live the longest eat five to seven servings of fruits and vegetables a day.
The good news is that a serving of vegetables cooked is about a half a cup and raw is about a whole cup.
So it's not as bad as it sounds. But it's very important to try to get five to seven servings
in a day. One of my personal recommendations that I think is very important and really helps people is to try to eat more natural food.
When you're shopping the grocery store, if you can stick with produce-- fruits and vegetables that you find in the produce section.
And real whole, natural foods-- eggs, fish, poultry. Things that you find on the outside of grocery store.
Typically, again, in the dairy section, the low fat dairy is recommended. Those things are real.
They're real food, and they're not processed. And I think it's the lack of processing, the fact that they're natural, really makes them
better for you. Processed food is something to avoid. A large portion of the food that we buy in the grocery store
are made by huge companies in factories. And there's not a whole lot of natural food in them, if any, in many of these products.
The more highly processed our food is, you increase the amount of chemicals you add and food coloring you add.
And it really is turning out there's a lot of the scientists and physicians in medicine
who are starting to realize that the high amounts of processed foods are certainly not good for us
and may eventually turn out to be linked to serious health conditions that we're bringing upon ourselves
by eating these foods. We need to eat more fiber. Fiber is something that if you have the adequate recommended
amount of fiber every day, you're going to lower your risk for heart attack in both men and women. And that's really important. So try to eat foods high in fiber.
And limit red meat consumption. There's some confusion here. A lot of people-- there's some debate. Does red meat cause heart disease?
Does it contribute to heart disease? My recommendation comes from the fact that people that eat more than three servings a week
of red meat increase their risk of colon cancer significantly. And this is true throughout the world, if you look at populations.
And so just a safe recommendation. Try to limit your amount of red meat consumption. Twice a week is probably as much as you want to do
and that should, hopefully, help lower your risk for colon cancer. Eating a handful of nuts a day is a very healthy thing to do,
possibly due to the omega-3s that are found in some nuts. It's a small amount but for some reason, people that eat a handful of nuts a day
live longer than people who don't eat nuts. Same thing is true for fish. Again, eating fish twice a week-- people that eat fish twice a week lower their risk
for having serious health conditions. They, for some reason, live a little bit longer than people who don't eat fish.
We think it's the omega-3 fatty acids, the fish oil that you hear so much about. But for whatever reason, fish is a healthy thing
to eat on a regular basis. And like I said, I recommend twice a week. If you're not getting fish twice a week in your diet, it's a good idea to take a good fish oil supplement.
And don't forget to exercise. Exercise, though it's not part of the diet for a healthy life, it's part of a good plan for a healthy life.
So like not smoking, getting regular exercise every day is extremely good for you.
healthy eating
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