Last week Michelle Obama and the US Agriculture Department replaced the 20 year old food pyramid with a simple icon, “My Plate.” 

My Plate is now the quintessential guide for healthy eating: a plate divided into quarters of slightly varying sizes representing how to create a healthy meal. It contains a larger quarter for vegetables, slightly smaller for grains, and slightly smaller for both fruits and protein. The hope is that it will help eaters avoid oversized portions and eat more nutritious meals.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said after almost 20 years of preaching nutrition through a food pyramid that USDA officials now say was overly complex, obesity rates have skyrocketed. The new symbol is simple and gives diners an idea of what should be on their plates when they sit down at the dinner table.

In fact, it appears only one quarter of people who recognize the food pyramid ever used it. Further surveys show people are confused about what they should eat and most have no concept of portion sizes or balancing calories for weight control.

I heard about the “Plate Method” when Maudene Nelson, registered dietitian and diabetes educator at the Institute of Human Nutrition at Columbia University, reviewed a myth for my book, “50 Diabetes Myths That Can Ruin Your Life and the 50 Diabetes Truths That Can Save It”. In myth number 26, “There is one specific diabetic diet I should follow” Nelson called “the plate method” for creating healthful meals magic. It’s in the Tips Box on page 142. She gave a little more specific instruction:

Fill half your plate with any variety of colorful veggies low in carbohydrates, such as asparagus, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, eggplant, carrots, or cauliflower. Fill one-quarter of your plate with carbohydrate-dense foods such as potatoes, rice, beans, corn, or legumes, and fill the remaining quarter with lean protein such as chicken, fish, lamb, pork, or beef. Meals made with the Plate Method naturally contain a moderate amount of carbohydrates, little fat and cholesterol, and a good amount of fiber.

Funny thing is with the exception of fruit on my plate, I use fruit for snacks, this is how I typically eat. Dinner is chicken or fish, beans and a green veggie. 

Seems Mr. Vilsack should have come to me years ago! 

For the last several months I’ve really shifted my view about food. I see it as medicine. Not that I don’t enjoy it, but I see what I eat as either making me more healthy, or less. I see what I eat as being almost as important to my health as my insulin.  

Now that doesn’t mean I have a perfect diet. But it does mean I’m more motivated to eat foods that are nourishing me — infusing me with healthy anti-oxidants and strengthening my overall body and fitness, rather than degrading it, or setting me up for the side effects of unhealthy eating – heart disease, overweight, guilt and personal frustration with myself. 

So I wanted to share this great article from Men’s Health magazine giving their take on the 40 Best Age-Erasing Superfoods.  

My healthy eating, and by this I mean smaller portions and eating mostly vegetables, fruit, beans and lean protein, automatically maintains my weight. I’m trimmer these last several years than I’ve ever been, and without trying. Healthy eating also gives my psyche a reason to feel pretty good about myself every day instead of guilty and frustrated. But you got that already, didn’t you? 

And so you know I’m not just blowing smoke, it’s reflected in the blood tests I get twice yearly: A1C 5.7%, LDL (lousy) cholesterol 108, some would say a little high, yes, it’s in the family, but my HDL (good) cholesterol is an astronomical 107, triglycerides 50 mg/dl, blood pressure 90/60 and a heart Al Pacino would say is “Strong like bull.” 

If you’re curious what I typically eat here’s my day food-wise:

Breakfast – a bowl of steel cut oats, I cook, to which I add: flax seeds, sunflower seeds and fruit, and then top with a spoonful of non-fat Greek yogurt, non-fat cottage cheese, and a spoonful or peanut or almond butter. I can’t tell you how much I like this – it’s creamy, crunchy, sweet and delicious. I could eat it for every meal. Maybe having a breakfast I love and knowing I get to eat it every morning, helps me stick to my healthy eating throughout the day; I know a reward is coming tomorrow morning.

Lunch – usually left over veggies from last night’s dinner, or a spinach salad, with some feta cheese or a slice of turkey and some beans. I may add avocado or cooked squash depending upon what’s in the house. If I eat lunch out it’s usually a spinach feta omelette with one slice of whole grain toast. No butter. Olive oil, herbs and mustard are my main taste-boosters. Butter, mayonnaise, bottled salad dressing and such I don’t use anymore. 

Dinner – usually fish or chicken grilled, broiled or sauteed with a mix of veggies and beans. Snacks are usually nuts, particularly walnuts (yes, they have fat, healthy fat which you need, just don’t eat too many), veggies, less sugary fruits like berries, melon, peaches and after dinner usually some dark chocolate.

Now you’re thinking I must be a monk, or a martyr, keeping to such an austere meal plan. I know you think that, people have said it to me. But neither is true. It’s just that over the years, particularly after reading Bernstein’s book, Diabetes Solution, I’ve rid most of the refined carbs from my diet knowing how much they made my blood sugar swing from high to low; it was awful. Now I have tons more control. And feel better. And, to be honest, while rapid-acting insulin and pumps give us more spontaneity, routine as in eating similarly day to day, makes my blood sugar more predictable.

I’ve also lost my taste for most sweet and fatty foods. It happens when you begin to eat “real food” again. I’m a big fan of Michael Pollans, Food Rules.  I follow his mantra: Eat food, mostly plants, not too much. 

That said, I’m not a vegetarian and I’m not a zealot. Fried calamari, the occasional slice of cheese or flourless chocolate cake, crusty bread and olive oil, anything friends make for dinner and eating everything in my house – everything – those occasional nights when the world tips out of balance also co-exist with my healthy eating. Oh, yes, so does wine with dinner. Another reward. Thank goodness years ago some French marketing guy said it was healthy.

So, check out this list of 40 Superfoods and try to put more of them in your diet. And, if you’ve tried to eat healthy before only to have given up, perhaps this is the day it will take. Here are a few tips that may help:

1. Decide why being healthy is important to you – only to you – and keep that front and center

2. Fill your house with healthy foods and throw out the junk. If when you’re hungry you can reach for a carrot instead of pretzels, you will.

3. The day you fall off the wagon, is only a day. Start new the next day. What you do in a week counts more than what you do in a day.

4. Your history doesn’t have to be your future. Ever.

5. Honor yourself enough to make healthy eating important, and your mission.

6. Know that in a few weeks, your tastebuds will change. You will lose your taste for synthetic food, sweets, salt and grease.

7. Talk yourself through a weak moment. Tell yourself if you’re dying for that piece of cake at 10 PM, you can wait till morning. 

8. Nothing’s off limits. If you need it, eat a little of it. Parcel it out onto a plate, don’t stand over it in the kitchen. You won’t stop.

9. Go slow or cold turkey. Whatever works for you.

10. Remember, you can do it – millions do. It may take time, but depending upon what you do now, next year you’ll either be exactly where you are now, less healthy or healthier.

From time to time I see a book worth mentioning and my latest little thrill is Michael Pollan’s, “Food Rules.” Pollan, author of Omnivore’s Dilemma, seems poised to be another Michael Moore, aiming his sword at our food giants’ factory floors and over populated animal pens. 

The American food system, according to Pollan, sets us up for obesity and ill health as 90% of what’s in our supermarkets and is easily accessible, affordable and available isn’t real food but food-like substances. Chemicals mess with our metabolism and overly sweet and salty foods leave us craving more of the same. I happen to agree with him wholeheartedly. 

Pollan says doctors encouraged him to write the book because they don’t have time to give patients the food lecture and what they’d like is a pamphlet they can hand patients with some rules for eating wisely. In Pollan’s article on the Huffington Post, “Food Rules”: A Completely Different Way to Fix the Health Care Crisis,” a cardiologist remarks, “You can’t imagine what I see on the insides of people these days wrecked by eating food products instead of food.” 

After spending years trying to answer the supposedly incredibly complicated question of how we should eat in order to be maximally healthy, Pollan discovered the answer was shockingly simple: eat real food, not too much of it, and more plants than meat. Or, put another way, get off the modern western diet, with its abundance of processed food, refined grains and sugars, and its sore lack of vegetables, whole grains and fruit. Again, he gets my thumbs up. This is, by the way, how I’ve been eating the last several years and maintaining both my weight and my A1Cs in the 5’s.

“Food Rules” weaves humor and real life practicality into simple, straightforward rules for making healthy food choices. You can read it in an hour and be a lifetime wiser.