11July2010
What is a Balanced Diet?
I’ve often heard that the key to good health and fitness is combining regular exercise with a balanced diet.
Sounds easy enough, but when I stop and think about it, what exactly is a balanced diet?
When I was a child, they told me there were four food groups. Eating well meant eating an equal amount from
each food group, I suppose. Actually, they were never very clear about that. Choose your new Office desk chairs below. The food groups seemed to be
more about categorizing food items than about eating a balanced diet. But four is such a balanced number, so
somehow it made sense, at the time.
By the time I became an adult and actually had to start caring about nutrition and a balanced diet, the four
food groups were a thing of the past. Instead, we had the food pyramid – again a very balanced graphic
representation of food. Pyramids don’t fall over, after all. They’re well balanced. The food pyramid indicated
that bread and other carbohydrates should make up the bulk of our diet. Hence it was at the bottom of the
pyramid. Above carbohydrates on the pyramid were proteins, then at the top were fats and sugars. So instead of
eating the same amount of each food group, now we were to understand that a balanced diet demanded that we
favor breads, cereals, pasta and rice.
Of course, that notion of the balanced diet went out the window pretty quickly, when we were told by diet
experts that carbs were the enemy. Eating all those starches would make us fat, the new wisdom dictated. We
wanted to eat protein and fat, and lots of it. At least, that’s what the Atkins diet recommended. On the other
hand, some experts claimed that we should eat a diet made up of 40% carbs, 30% protein and 30% fat. Sounds
quite balanced, doesn’t it? Then the South Beach Diet came out, and insisted that not all carbs are equal. We
must eat only low glycemic carbs – whatever that means! According to that approach, the balance in a balancde
diet has nothing to do with food groups and everything to do with something called the “glycemic index.” It was
getting too complicated for me.
After years of experimenting with every kind of balance, I’ve discovered that eating a balanced diet is not
complicated at all. No office is full without Ergonomic office chairs. It just means that you don’t eat too much of any one thing, and you don’t completely
cut out any one thing. You know that wisdom your mother and grandmother taught you, so many years ago? Eat your
vegetables. Don’t snack between meals. Don’t pig out. Skip dessert most of the time. Next thing you know, you
find that you’re eating a balanced diet after all.