There are many schools of thought regarding what constitutes a healthy diet. If you discuss this topic with a vegetarian, he or she will claim that eliminating all animal products makes for a healthy diet. Similarly, a homeopathic physician may insist on raw foods, while antioxidant-rich foods may be on the menu of a cancer specialist. However, given the heaps of nutrition information we are “fed”, there are basic components that form the foundation of a healthy diet.

General Guidelines to Eating Well

Healthy eating habits include not only the food choices you make on a daily basis, but also the amount of food you choose to eat during the course of a day. Portion control is most likely one of the main culprits for the expanding waistlines and declining health of our population. Here are tips for keeping your plate full of nutritional value while maintaining a sensible caloric quantity:

• Choose fruits and vegetables as often as possible due to their low calorie amounts. One serving equals a half cup of chopped vegetables or fruit or one cup of leafy vegetables. A medium size fruit is one serving. Exceptions include grapefruit, mango, and papaya; ½ of these equals one serving. Three-quarters of a cup of vegetable or fruit juice is considered a serving. One-quarter cup of dried fruit constitutes a serving. Strive for at least 3 servings of vegetables and 2 servings of fruit each day.
• Limit the amount of empty calorie foods, such as sugar from candy and soda.
• Limit the amount of saturated fats and trans fat from baked goods, chips, margarine, hydrogenated oils and other “junk” food.

How To Eat a Healthy Diet

It is widely known that most people know what they should be eating, but the daily grind often leads us down the road of most convenient. This often means fast foods, highly processed packaged foods, or dining out. Below are some tips for making a healthy diet part of your lifestyle:

1. Plan ahead. Know what you will eat most days of the week and shop accordingly.
2. Prepare foods when time allows. For example, it may not be realistic to start cutting up the veggies for tonight’s dinner when it is 7pm already. Instead, consider chopping the veggies when they are brought home from the grocery store.
3. Use the convenience of your grocery store. Spending the extra change on already chopped produce or healthily prepared dishes can go a long way in saving you from ill-health. Many larger grocers have salad bars, which are great places to grab those prepared bell pepper rings or chopped onions.
4. Measure your portions once, but use the same size bowl and plate for every meal. This way, you are aware of proper portions by knowing the point that one cup of soup or cereal fills to.
5. Fill a large pitcher (one that can hold at least 64 ounces) with water and empty it by day’s end. Use this ration not only for drinking it by the glass, but also for filling up portable bottles, making soups, herbal tea, lemonade, or the like.
6. When dining out, divide your entrée portion in half. Eat half and take the other half home for another meal. Consider ordering a favorite appetizer and adding a large vegetable salad to go along with it.
7. To keep fat intake in check when fast foods are on the menu, choose non-breaded, non fried selections. Many fast food chains offer lite selections, but you must remember to order the lite condiments as well. “Regular” condiments can be particularly high in saturated fats, trans fat, and preservatives.
8. Keep a food journal for a week and record every bite of food and sip of beverage that enters your body. A healthy diet or a not-so-healthy diet can be easily identified when seen in black and white.

Italian scientists are testing a new diet pill that turns into a clear, gelatinous blob the size of a tennis ball that may help shrink waistlines by giving dieters a sense of satiety.

The pill, currently undergoing clinical trials at Rome’s Policlinico Gemelli hospital, would be downed with two glasses of water at the first sign of a stomach rumble.

The unnamed pill is made from a cellulose compound of hydrogel, a material that’s powdery when dry but plumps up to a cousin of Jell-O when wet. The gel can soak up to 1,000 times its weight. A gram in capsule form quickly balloons from the size of a spit wad to a ball that holds nearly a liter of liquid.

Adderall is an amphetamine used to treat ADD/ADHD. Like many pharmaceutical medications, some of the side effects include loss of appetite and weight loss (particularly in adolescents).

A CNN story has highlighted the ethical concerns surrounding a doctors decision to prescribe the drug for the purpose of weight loss.

Herballife total control a herbal supplement that claims to boost metabolism, give you energy and increase weight loss. Its all-herbal, low-intensity formula is supposed to give you benefits of a fat burning diet pill, without the nervousness and restlessness that some other supplements can give you.Herbalife was involved in the scandal over Ephedra, a supplement that was found to have caused heart problems in some dieters. However, Herbalife adopted a new Ephedra-free formulation in 2004, after the FDA banned the use of Ephedra.