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Healthy Eating Menu: A Case Study For Meal Planning Ideas

Foods For Healthy Menu Plans

One good way to illustrate a healthy eating menu is to look at one of the oldest groups of people alive in the world today. I’d like to start with the people living in Okinawa.

Most of those studied are still very healthy in their old age. There are centurions who are still involved in physical labor. Their bodies still operate in good working condition.

They are unlike Americans who at the age of sixty are probably taking medication for this or that chronic disease. One of the reasons these people are living to a very old age, by American standards, is due to their healthy eating.

Healthy Eating Menu: Simplicity

The menus of the oldest Okinawans who have reached incredible health and longevity that have been fully documented consume an average of seven servings of vegetables each day, seven servings of whole grains each day, and two servings of soy products each day.

They eat fish two or three times each and every week. The meat and dairy products they eat are almost nonexistent. In regards to added fats and sugars, they eat very little of these. We can see healthy foods are an important factor in health and longevity.

Healthy Eating Menu: A Comparison

Looking at the foods they would use for a menu is much different than the foods Americans use on their menus.

When it comes to meat, poultry and eggs, Americans eat as much as twenty nine percent. Okinawan elders eat only 3 percent of these same foods.

Americans eat twenty three percent of dairy products. While Okinawan elders eat only two percent of these same foods.

In terms of grains, Americans eat 11 percent and Okinawans eat 32 percent.

Americans eat sixteen percent of vegetables while Okinawans eat thirty four percent.

Americans eat 0.5 percent of soy foods and Okinawans eat twelve percent.

Americans eat 0.5 percent fish and Okinawans eat eleven percent.

Finally Americans eat 20 percent of fruit while Okinawans eat only six percent.

This comparison is given without even looking at the added fat and sugar Americans normally consume with their meals.

Healthy Eating Menu: Conclusion

You can see there is a huge difference when it comes to what Americans would choose to have on their menu to eat as opposed to what the Okinawans would choose to have on their menus. The selections are almost an inverse relation to each other.

Perhaps if we changed our menu choices to mimic more the choices of the oldest scientifically documented group of people currently living, our lives would grow longer as well. In fact, I know they would.

Source:

Robbins, John. Healthy At 100. New York. Ballantine Books, 2007. 69-70, 89-90

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