This is Day 5 of the 5-Day Healthier Eating Challenge. To start at the beginning, click here.
This week, we’ve thought a lot about our eating habits: We’ve tested our knowledge of ultraprocessed foods, examined them with our senses, made flavor-packed snacks and shopped for groceries.
Before this challenge, I would chuck food into my shopping cart without thinking. Now, I’m a dedicated label-reader who considers how a food was processed before I buy it.
I still eat ultraprocessed foods. And that’s OK. But the Dietary Guidelines for Americans states that 85 percent of our diets should be what’s called “nutrient-dense.” That refers to foods with high levels of nutrients and few added sugars, saturated fats or sodium. A diet high in nutrient-dense foods certainly can include UPFs, but experts recommend focusing on whole foods like vegetables and fruits, legumes, whole grains, low-fat dairy products, seafood, lean meats and poultry.
You may not be able to hit 85 percent right away (or ever), but you can consider today’s challenge a good first step.
Well Challenge Day 5: Add produce to your plate
Today, let’s try something you can do all year. If you regularly eat ultraprocessed foods at meals — like a packaged fruit bar at breakfast or a frozen meal at dinner — keep doing that, but add one fruit or vegetable to your plate. It could be an apple at breakfast or some broccoli at dinner.
“Then you don’t look at it as, ‘What do I have to get rid of?’” said Linda V. Van Horn, the chief of the nutrition division at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.