So what is a healthy level of carbohydrate and fruit? It depends on where you start and possibly also how your metabolism is functioning.

But the bottom line is this… fruit and carbohydrate-rich foods contain vast amounts of energy.

When energy is eaten and not burned off, it is what….?

STORED is the answer. Stored as body fat in fact.

What can you do?

Let’s say that you are currently consuming a combination of typical carbohydrate sources such as;

• bread
• cereals
• pasta
• crackers
• rice
• potatoes
• and sweet drinks

If you’re seeing one of those at just above at every meal, this would be qualified as a high carbohydrates diet.

All we encourage you to do is to take it down and substitute your carbohydrate with protein (fish, red meat, poultry) veggies and fat! Yes, you read correctly – fat!

Let’s look at some other guidelines:

1. Eat better quality: How much? As much as possible.

• Instead of fibre from bread, use vegetables. Instead of cereal get up 3 min earlier and cook an omelette with vegetables in, some left over from last night (who says that we HAVE to have cereal in the morning – it is just a habit!) and maybe some natural yoghurt (if they can handle it).
• Instead of giving your children juice, give them an orange – juice is concentrated fructose!
• Instead of having potato chips, have a few nuts, a slice of coconut and a carrot.
• Instead of pasta, use cabbage, cauliflower or any other vegetable.
• Take it one step at a time, make a real commitment to change, monitor and evaluate. Give it some time, be patient.

2. Limit processed foods: Especially sugar sweetened items. How much? As much as possible.

• If you are to buy something, find one with no sugars added. When you see a produce label showing that they have added fructose, you should hear alarm bells ringing and immediately put it down > that’s sugar!!
• Substitute your processed food with real, free range, grass fed foods.

3. Eat some fruit, but choose the ones in season, and don’t go crazy: If you carry too much fat around the waist, go easy on the fruit for a while, until you start seeing and feeling some improvements. Fruit is mainly water, and 1-4 pieces of fruit is probably not where we need to emphasize our efforts, but it is also still sugar – fructose and if somebody has insulin issues as mentioned in this article, we strongly recommend a more cautious approach.

The bottom line is that we need to make some changes in the way we not only perceive food but also in our common understanding of what is supposedly bad or healthy.

We humans are notoriously poor at acknowledging when we have made a mistake, but at some point, someone has to question what has happened over the last 30 years. We have been told to reduce fat intake to 30 percent of our daily intake and replace it with carbohydrate calories instead.

Have we managed to reduce heart diseases as set out being one of the targets?

Have we reduced obesity?

Have we reduced cancers?

Have we reduced cases of diabetes?

You all know the answers, so step back, gather the information and most importantly, make a positive change