What food type are you?

Press, 8 October 1987, Page 9

What food type are you?

your FOOD STYLE

JANKE BREMER

DIETITIAN

Heart week is a good time to take a look at whether you are achieving the dietary recommendations for avoiding or delaying the effects of heart disease. As this series about the various dietary aspects associated with coronary heart disease draws to a close, I ask you these questions. Which of these diets is most like yours? To find your food-type ask yourself ... (1) Do you eat too much junk food? You start the day by rushing off to work before having breakfast. At morning tea break you dash off to buy a bun and an energy bar.

At lunch time you have a meat pie, a sausage roll, and a cake or chocolate bar. At afternoon tea time you dive for the firm’s supply of bikkies, and through the day you probably have several cups of coffee or tea, maybe with sugar, or some soft drink. At home in the evening — a couple of times a week — you have a “good” meat and vege meal with roasts or chops or sausages, roast or mashed potato with butter, a vegetable such as frozen peas, and icecream for afters. Another night you might have fried takeaways; another, a good helping of pizza. Sundays, are baked beans on toast; one night you might go out or have packet chow mein. You like the odd choco-

late bar, icecream, and plenty of chips to keep you going, especially at week-ends. Alcohol is an “important” part of your life.

This routine might sound like an exaggeration, but I do interview people who have similar eating styles. They may live alone, in a flatting situation, or just simply do not take time out to plan a balanced diet. This diet is unlikely to be nutritionally adequate. It may lack folate, vitamin C, B vitamins, pyridoxine (B 6 iron, zinc, and other minerals. It is also too high-fat, highsugar, high-cholesterol, high-saturated fat, too low in fibre, and probably has too much salt and alcohol to help wash it all down!

If this is your diet it requires urgent attention. Start with a nourishing breakfast similar to diet 4. Even a physically active life cannot compensate for such an eating style. (2) Is your diet too traditional?

You like to start the day, with last night's leftovers, or eggs and bacon, or simply settle for white toast with butter and lashings of jam or honey. At morning tea you take a few bikkies. At lunch, you like meat or cheese sandwiches or rolls — usually white bread, often have a cake or two or a few meat savouries; sometimes an apple. At afternoon break there are more bikkies.

At home you might take a snack of salty crackers and cheese before dinner, often with a beer or two or a gin. At dinner it’s a square meal — meat, spuds and a vege or two. Once or twice a week there might be takeways, or a meal-on-the-run. Icecream is dessert nine times out of ten. Cookies are the bedtime snack — or maybe cheese on toast. In general you don’t like bread much, but you like a “good” helping of meat — a meal is not a meal without it. Even lunch-time needs meat You like the odd chocolate bar and bag of chippies in the week-end. You rarely eat fruit and drink soft drink rather than juice. This diet is likely to be low in some vitamins, but otherwise may be nutritionally adequate. But, it is too high-fat, too high-saturated-fat, is too low in fibre, probably highcholesterol, high-sugar and high-salt Alcohol may provide too many of the calories at the expense of foods that carry more nutrients with their calories. Attention to cutting fat off meat, choosing leaner

cuts, avoiding or having less fried food and using more low-fat dairy products and less Cheddar cheese, cream, and icecream is needed. Having breakfast cereal and some of the brown or wholemeal bread varieties will complement these changes.

(3) You are just keeping up . with the times?

You start the day with toasted muesli and corn or wheatmeal toast with butter and honey. You avoid morning tea; have a salad roll at lunch with meat or cheese and a large buttered muffin. Sometimes you have “health” salads (but they are heavily dressed), or a salad croissant.

At your evening meal you have meat about twice a week; quiche and pizza some nights, cheese or egg dishes on other nights, with takeaways perhaps on one night. You like salads and vegetables; baked potatoes with sour cream, pasta and cheese dishes, and have fruit for dessert, often with yoghurt, sometimes with icecream. Alcohol is in moderation; mainly wine with meals, and one or two pub nights a week, or the occasional spirit at home. You drink a lot of fruit juice, and a little soft drink on occasions. This diet will more than likely be nutritionally adequate but may not promote health in the strictest sense. You are probably changing, but can do more.

Your diet’s fat content will still be largely saturated if you continue to put butter on your bread, which is forming a larger part of your diet than it used to. Your cheese intake may be quite high, and will provide more saturated fatty acids than lean meat which it often replaces when we eat quiche and pizza. You may be deceived by the apparent “healthiness” of some foods that are high-fat and . highsugar — toasted muesli, muesli, and carob bars, big cookies and “health” slices, dried fruit and nuts, snack packs, wholemeal pastry pies. You could probably eat more fresh fruit and plainer bread items rather than sweet muffins and croissants. (4)You go as far as you can within reason You start fresh with .fruit and plain yoghurt with raw, soaked, or cooked oats; and wholemeal toast with margarine and tomato slices (without

You have fruit inbetween meals on more active days. For lunch you have salad-filled pita buns, or wholemeal rolls with cottage cheese; fruit; homemade muffins (low sugar/low fat) or banana sandwiches; stuffed baked potatoes or homemade pancakes in the week-end. .You might have a snack of bread and low-fat cheese before dinner sometimes, and the evening meal comprises a small serving of grilled (or baked/microwaved-without-fat/oll) lean meat, skinned poultry, or at least once a week, fish; potatoes or pasta or rice, and a large serving of a variety of vegetables. You like to have a few meals of bean-grain-vege savouries instead of meat

You might have a fruit or bread snack later in the evening. If you are very physically active you might eat quite a few homemade “goodies” that are low-fat.

You prefer to appreciate wine with meals as your alcohol intake: you do not add salt to meals, and largely avoid salty foods. You drink a lot of water and use low-fat milk. You don’t like the smell of fish and chips, and have no desire for pastry pies. Bought snacks probably amount to the odd icecream in summer; an occasional hamburger when desperate for a fast meal.

In general you prefer to eat meals in a civilised fashion with foods that are not too fussy, the preparation methods enhancing the natural flavours.

If you .. have regular physical activity, you are not overweight, and you don’t smoke, you are probably doing as much as is practical to avoid heart disease and other diseases prominent in affluent cultures.

If you have a high blood cholesterol level or high blood pressure you will need more defined advice from a dietitian and a physician.

The National Heart Foundation has opened its “Eat to Beat” campaign, and for the next two years will be encouraging all New Zealanders to eat well and stay healthy. For Heart Week this week their new recipe book “Fine Food for The Heart” has arrived in Christchurch. It retails at $l5 and serves as an excellent starting point for those who want to change their foodstyles. The. recipes are low in fat, sugar, and salt, and list the calories and kilojoules per serving. The book gives microwave as well as conventional cooking instructions. Only the most appropriate types of added fats are used as ingredients, but if you are on a cholesterol-lowering diet you may wish to lower’ the amounts of these in some of the recipes. This is a very worthwhile buy for. $l5 — more appropriate .■ than many of the overseas books available.. Buy for Christmas! !1