Knowing Your Basic Food Groups

All of us have seen a basic food pyramid at one point or another, but few people really remember the importance of the basic food groups. Healthy nutrition is something that many people just forget about as they grow older. It all looks so simple when you are a kid, but as you get on in years, it can slip away. Few children and fewer adults in modern day America get enough vegetables to eat, and many people of all ages eat unhealthy processed food on a daily basis. In short, things do not bode well for our health as a nation.

If you do not have healthy eating habits, you should take a long look at yourself and your ways of doing things before you decide on a course of action. Many people decide to put up a chart of the basic food groups and immediately trying to do everything perfectly. In reality, this is simply not a very good approach. It is much too difficult, after all, to try to change all of your habits at once. You will get much better results from simply trying to change one thing at a time.

Before you start becoming religiously committed to the basic food groups, you should try to cut out fatty and unhealthy foods. Give up chips, sweets, fast food, fatty red meat, and other artificial or high cholesterol foods. After you have been doing that for a while, you can come back to the basic food groups. For most diet beginners, however, there is simply no chance to tackle the food group basics until you have stopped eating the foods that you really shouldn't have.

Once you have gone a few weeks without all of those unhealthy, processed foods, it is time for you to take a look at the basic food groups. Start with what seems most obvious to you – the area where your eating habits are farthest from healthy. If you eat few to no vegetables, start with that. If you eat enough vegetables, but too much meat, cut down on your meat consumption. Take it one step at a time. Once you get one basic food groups problem under control, try to tackle the next. Eventually, you will get your diet in order. You'll be eating a healthy blend of all of the essential food groups, and your health will improve. Pat yourself on the back.