Page 12 - Prevention - USA (April 2020)

PUL S E

THE SECRET

TO EATING WELL
Healthy eating may seem complicated,
but the new book How to Eat: All Your
Food and Diet Questions Answered by Mark
Bittman, special advisor on food policy at higher fat percentage,
Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health, which makes your body
and David L. Katz, M.D., breaks it down in a less metabolically
a simple, smart way. Here’s a peek at some efficient machine. Eating
in balance and being
nutrition-related tidbits from the book that
consistently active can
we find especially interesting.
help you avoid those
weight cycles. Don’t
DIEt—LIVEit.
How do I know nutrients. “Diet” comes
what diet is best? from the Latin for “life- Why do I crave
style,” so it should be how sweets and
If we had to use one word
to describe a healthy diet, you eat for life and not a salty treats?
restrictive two-week way
it would be “balance.” If a It’s all about evolution-
diet is made up of mostly to lose weight. ary biology—what tastes
the right stuff—fruits and good is associated with
vegetables, whole grains, I want to lose survival. We like sugar
lean protein, nuts and weight fast—is that because breast milk
seeds, and water—then a definite no-no? and fruit are sweet. Our
most else in genuine Short-term diets will affinity for salt goes
moderation would be OK. cause you to lose both back to early life forms’
For example, the Mediter- fat and muscle; if you go origins in the ocean.
ranean diet contains some off that diet, you’ll gain And that love for fried
saturated fat, but you the weight back, and it’ll food? It’s because fat
can’t point to saturated be mostly fat. Weight is energy-dense (it has NADINE GREEFF/STOCKSY.
fat as doing harm in this fluctuations can shift more than twice as
instance because it fits in your body composition many calories per gram
with an overall balance of more and more toward a as protein and carbs

10 PREVENTION.COM • AP R I L 2020