After you STOP eating so much junk food, the next step to fitness is to replace those "empty calories" with healthy foods. To do so, turn to the CROP group for fruits, vegetables, and whole-grain foods that are key to a healthy lifestyle. These foods taste great and contribute to making you fit. Rank your top five foods from these lists of fruits and vegetables:
The Food Pyramid
You are probably familiar with the "Food Pyramid." This is a graphic, designed by the federal government to show Americans how to eat a balanced diet that is low in fat. The food pyramid, which changes regularly as scientists learn more about food and its effect on the body, provides basic recommendations to help you choose foods to eat throughout the day:
One group at Harvard University has created its own version called the "Healthy Eating Pyramid."
This group's main recommendation is that you eat lots of fruits, vegetables, and whole-grain foods.
It also recommends that you limit sugars, most fats, and sodium (or salt). This version of the food pyramid suggests that you eat these foods in the following ways:
- Whole-grain foods: at most meals.
- Plant oils (such as olive, canola, soy, corn, sunflower, peanut, and other vegetable oils): as a "healthy" source
of fats.
- Vegetables: in abundance.
- Fruit: 2 to 3 servings per day.
- Fish, poultry, and eggs: 0 to 2 servings per day.
- Nuts and legumes: 1 to 3 servings per day.
- Dairy product or calcium supplement: 1 to 2 servings per day.
- Red meat and butter: sparingly.
- White rice, white bread, potatoes, pasta, and sweets: sparingly.
How does the way you eat stack up? Think about what you ate yesterday. Write down everything and compare it to these suggestions.
The Truth About Carbs
The Harvard food pyramid is surprising because it recommends that you eat limited white rice, white bread, and potatoes. These are foods that many people eat every day. Some people have stopped eating these types of foods because they believe that carbohydrates, such as bread, pasta, and rice, are bad for their health. The Harvard pyramid does not recommend that you stop eating carbohydrates altogether. In fact, it recommends that you eat them at every meal. What it does recommend is that you substitute whole-grain foods, such as whole-grain cereal or wheat bread, for less healthy white bread, white rice, and potatoes.
The American Heart Association also recommends that you eat carbohydrates, but it recommends that they be healthy carbs, such as grains and vegetables, instead of simple carbs, such as sugary foods.
My Top 5 Fruits:
___Bananas
___Apples
___Oranges
___Pears
___Grapefruit
___Tangerines
___Clementines
___Lemons
___Plums
`___Peaches
___Nectarines
___Mangoes
___Papaya
___Guava
___Kiwi
___Grapes
___Cherries
___Blueberries
___Raspberries
___Strawberries
___Blackberries
___Honeydew
___Cantaloupe
___Watermelon
___Other: ___________
___Other: ___________
My Top 5 Vegetables:
___Broccoli
??????___Spinach
___Cauliflower
___Okra
___Brussels sprouts
___Tomatoes
___Cucumbers
___Lettuce
___Red peppers
___Green peppers
___Eggplant
___Zucchini
___Squash
___Beets
___Avocado
___Mushrooms
___Carrots
___Celery
___Broccoli rabe
___Asparagus
___Squash
___Pumpkin
___Artichoke
___Turnips
___Bok choy
___Mustard greens
___Other: ___________
___Other: ___________
Learning standard: computing distance
Here's a fun way to find out what some distances would be like if you walked them. Take a walk around your classroom and count the number of steps in the perimeter. Then measure that same distance in feet. There are 5,280 feet in a mile. If it took you that many steps to walk the feet of your classroom, how many steps would it take you to walk one mile? Now turn to a map in the newspaper that shows distance. Compute the number of steps it would take you to walk across that map.
Credits: This Hot Topics supplement has:
Content by Abby and Zach Horn
Illustrations by Zach Horn
NIE activities by Debby Carroll
Editing by Ken Bookman
Design by Gilbert & Associates
?? Copyright 2005 Hot Topics Publications Inc.
Copyright 2007 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.