6 Important Ingredients to a Healthy Diet Meal

Regarding healthy diet meal, people often confused with what exactly the essence of it. With the current hype surrounding weight loss diets, it'd be easier than ever to get overwhelmed with the available options out there in the market. Marketers are savvy to convince potential customers into believing that their weight-loss product is the best. There are many weight-loss supplements, meals, or menus of products popping up left and right nowadays. Makes you wonder how come Neanderthals in the Ice Age can survive without these 'revolutionary' super meal products.

Actually, preparing a healthy diet meal yourself is not as tricky as you might think. As a rule of thumb, any kind of food with its own distinctive colors can be considered a healthy meal. Color is the key here. It's a natural indicator of the amount of nutrient contained in your food. In fact, the USDA (The United States Department of Agriculture) has created an easy-to-follow guide called 'Food Pyramid', which is color-coded food groups, and which in the end divide them into healthy diet categories.

Grains

Foods that can be classified as grains include wheat, oats, barley, rice, cornmeal, bread, crackers, pasta, and tortillas. There are two types of grains:
• Whole grains, which contain the entire grain kernel, and
• Refined grains, type of grains that have been milled, to increase its shelf life.

Vegetables

Vegetables can be served or consumed raw, cooked, boiled, fresh, canned, or any way possible, as long it's not over-processed which can regulate the value of nutrient contained within. There are 5 classifications of vegetables, they include:
• Dark green vegetables,
• Orange vegetables,
• Dry beans and peas,
• Starchy vegetables, and
• Other vegetables

Fruits

Most common fruits may include:
• Apples
• Apricots
• Banana
• Grapes
• Lemons
• Limes
• Orange
Also, 100% fruit juice is included in fruit classification.

Milk
All products/foods made of milk or liquid milk belong to this food group, with one important factor: they have to retain its calcium content. That is why butter, cream, and cheese are not considered as a member of this food group.

Meat & Beans
All kinds of meat which includes beef, fish, poultry, and eggs fall into this category.

Oils
According to USDA, fats are considered as oils if it stays liquid within room temperature. An obvious example would be vegetable oil that we use in cooking. Other types of everyday oils that we use includes: olive oil and soybean oil.

In a nutshell, the food pyramid can be used as an optimal nutrition guideline to put together a set of healthy diet mealand menu.