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This website breaks down the latest scientific information to help you put into practice a healthy diet. A diet that helps you control your weight, reduce the risk of disease, and that tastes good too.
There is a wealth of information on healthy diet already out there. But it is mixed in with information on fad diets, unsubstantiated health claims, obsolete dietary guidelines, and lots of food propaganda.
My goal with this website is to give you the facts about food, plain and simple. No fad diets, no gimmicks, no charge, just the information on which foods harm health and which foods enhance health.
So what’s a healthy diet? Michael Pollan’s mantra, “eat food, not too much, mostly plants” is a good starting place but needs to be fleshed out. What’s too much? Do I really have to eat a bunch of plants? And what’s his definition of food? Hint: carrots = food; 30 ingredients with strange sounding names listed on the side of a package = not food; promises of hours of lasting energy for little to no calories, also not food. Explore the website to find out more. And welcome!
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Ever wondered what a healthy diet is? Or how about a diet that will make you feel full and help you lose and control weight? Or one that reduces your risk for getting chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes? A diet I can tell dad about because I’m concerned about his health and want to help? What about a diet that keeps energy levels high and allows for top athletic performance, including adequate protein intake? Oh yeah, and I want it to taste good and not cost too much, and I want to be able to stick with it and enjoy it for the rest of my life. What if there was one diet that did all of this?
Currently there is a lot of false nutrition information on the Internet, in popular magazines, books, and even from some doctors/scientists. It isn’t a surprise then that about 2/3 of Americans are overweight and that, among the 35 wealthiest countries in the world, America is in the bottom ten percent in life expectancy at birth. Sure, many factors are involved, but diet is an area where America falls way short and that, with a few changes, can be improved by any individual who wishes to do so. What you eat and how much you eat are BIG determinants of how long and how well you will live.
My goal with this website is to give you the facts about food, plain and simple. No fad diets, no gimmicks, no charge, just the information on which foods harm health and which foods enhance health.
This website will defend, discuss, and show you how to put into practice a diet that maximally promotes health.
The website is all about prevention. Prevention is really just nutrition and exercise/lifestyle and it will go a long way toward keeping you out of the hospital and enjoying life. And yes, there is substantial scientific evidence to support the link between diet and health. This website would not exist if there weren’t substantial scientific evidence to support the information presented.
I feel that this work is important because the information on healthy diet is out there but it’s all mixed in with information on fad diets, unsubstantiated health claims, obsolete dietary guidelines and lots of food propaganda. All of this creates a huge mess in which it is hard to pick out fact from fiction.
A Couple Themes of This Website
Why focus on food? Certain foods have been shown to decrease the risk for disease. Multivitamin pills do not. And neither do candy bars and other products that have a lot of ingredients with names that look like a foreign language or like you need a degree in chemistry to understand. In the supplement/multivitamin section this theme will come up a lot.
Don’t stress, or bother calculating, percentages of calories consumed from fat, protein, and carbohydrate. Focus on what foods the fat/carbs/protein are coming from. Case in point: getting 30% of your calories from fat from burgers will increase your risk for heart disease and cancer. If instead you got those calories from fat from extra virgin olive oil, your risk for heart disease and cancer would actually decrease. Always ask, what’s the food source of your calories?
Phytonutrients serve as defenses for plants and for us when we eat them. Plants are the foundation of a healthy diet. I may have just lost your interest with that statement. I admit, the first time I heard it I was discouraged. But don’t be. You can still eat animal products and there are a ton of delicious recipes and cooking tricks that will ensure you can make a healthy diet your own. There is a lot of variety in this diet (including those of Mexican, Italian, and Asian cuisines) and I urge you to just try a couple recipes or even make your own dish. Odds are you already like a bunch of the healthy foods discussed in this website. Also, the word “plant” extends farther than you may think.
Why focus on food? Certain foods have been shown to decrease the risk for disease. Multivitamin pills do not. And neither do candy bars and other products that have a lot of ingredients with names that look like a foreign language or like you need a degree in chemistry to understand. In the supplement/multivitamin section this theme will come up a lot.
Don’t stress, or bother calculating, percentages of calories consumed from fat, protein, and carbohydrate. Focus on what foods the fat/carbs/protein are coming from. Case in point: getting 30% of your calories from fat from burgers will increase your risk for heart disease and cancer. If instead you got those calories from fat from extra virgin olive oil, your risk for heart disease and cancer would actually decrease. Always ask, what’s the food source of your calories?
Phytonutrients serve as defenses for plants and for us when we eat them. Plants are the foundation of a healthy diet. I may have just lost your interest with that statement. I admit, the first time I heard it I was discouraged. But don’t be. You can still eat animal products and there are a ton of delicious recipes and cooking tricks that will ensure you can make a healthy diet your own. There is a lot of variety in this diet (including those of Mexican, Italian, and Asian cuisines) and I urge you to just try a couple recipes or even make your own dish. Odds are you already like a bunch of the healthy foods discussed in this website. Also, the word “plant” extends farther than you may think.
A Short and Sweet User’s Guide
I tried to break the sections down so that you aren’t overloaded with information if you don’t want to be. The “myths” pieces and the section on fad diets will steer you away from some common nutrition pitfalls. The “bottom line recommendations” and “healthy, neutral, unhealthy” breakdowns of foods are short and give you the most relevant information if you don’t want to read about all the scientific studies that back it up. If you want to read even less, you could start with the “Start a Healthy Diet Today” section and jump right into the recipes to start a healthy diet immediately. Both of these sections are courtesy of Nutrition Professor, Mary Flynn.
If you love all the nutrition information and want to know why some foods promote health and some hurt health you won’t be short changed either. I go into detail about the scientific studies and proposed mechanisms by which some foods are considered healthy and some are considered unhealthy. I also cite the studies so that you can have a look at them for yourself.
This website is catered toward students and is very useful for kids and adults. I hope you enjoy reading it and that you put this knowledge into practice.
Sincere suggestions and feedback are welcome and encouraged. Questions are welcome too though I ask that you make sure the information is not already on the website before asking. Email me at chris.westley@gmail.com
I tried to break the sections down so that you aren’t overloaded with information if you don’t want to be. The “myths” pieces and the section on fad diets will steer you away from some common nutrition pitfalls. The “bottom line recommendations” and “healthy, neutral, unhealthy” breakdowns of foods are short and give you the most relevant information if you don’t want to read about all the scientific studies that back it up. If you want to read even less, you could start with the “Start a Healthy Diet Today” section and jump right into the recipes to start a healthy diet immediately. Both of these sections are courtesy of Nutrition Professor, Mary Flynn.
If you love all the nutrition information and want to know why some foods promote health and some hurt health you won’t be short changed either. I go into detail about the scientific studies and proposed mechanisms by which some foods are considered healthy and some are considered unhealthy. I also cite the studies so that you can have a look at them for yourself.
This website is catered toward students and is very useful for kids and adults. I hope you enjoy reading it and that you put this knowledge into practice.
Sincere suggestions and feedback are welcome and encouraged. Questions are welcome too though I ask that you make sure the information is not already on the website before asking. Email me at chris.westley@gmail.com
About the Author
Hi, I’m Chris Westley, Brown class of 2011, Sc.B. Biology concentrator, premed, and author of this website. This website was written in 2009-2010 as an independent study in Biology at Brown University. In researching and writing this website I’ve learned a lot that changed my eating habits and my vision for a career in medicine. Below is a brief account of how I came to write this website.
When I was a freshman in college I had no idea what a healthy diet was. I knew desserts and trans fats were bad, but I also thought red meat was fine and that eating vegetables carried health benefits synonymous to those of eating a bucket of fiber (oops). I was curious about diet and, though I didn’t know it at the time, was receptive to a lot of false information. Then I took two nutrition classes at Brown, Bio 0030 and 0860, and got the record set straight.
For the final paper in Bio 86, I examined the current scientific literature on the link between diet and health. All students in the class did this with either an emphasis on overall health or a particular disease and if you’re interested in learning more about nutrition and learning to read the current scientific literature I would recommend the two courses and a statistics class.
After Bio 86, I realized that I knew a lot about nutrition and that this knowledge isn’t that hard to convey to people. I started small with my Dad. After that I realized that I could reach the most people if I took all of this knowledge and made it into a website (that, and my friends and family were getting sick and tired of my nutrition rants).
I drew further inspiration from my summer internship at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a non-profit organization that has been instrumental in nutrition advocacy work including in the creation of nutrition facts labels, in getting trans fats on those labels, and currently in trying to get chain restaurants to post calories on menus and menu boards across the nation.
Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and the movie, Food Inc. also inspired me to act and to create a website that the Brown community and general public could use. Beginning in the fall 2009, I completed a year-long independent study that continued the research that started in bio 86 and culminated in this website.
A lot of the information presented may be intuitive to you, especially if you follow a diet that is typical of a lot of other nations besides America. But there will also be a lot of information that surprises you. Thus, it is my hope that this website will change the way you think about food and what foods you eat just like it did for me.
Hi, I’m Chris Westley, Brown class of 2011, Sc.B. Biology concentrator, premed, and author of this website. This website was written in 2009-2010 as an independent study in Biology at Brown University. In researching and writing this website I’ve learned a lot that changed my eating habits and my vision for a career in medicine. Below is a brief account of how I came to write this website.
When I was a freshman in college I had no idea what a healthy diet was. I knew desserts and trans fats were bad, but I also thought red meat was fine and that eating vegetables carried health benefits synonymous to those of eating a bucket of fiber (oops). I was curious about diet and, though I didn’t know it at the time, was receptive to a lot of false information. Then I took two nutrition classes at Brown, Bio 0030 and 0860, and got the record set straight.
For the final paper in Bio 86, I examined the current scientific literature on the link between diet and health. All students in the class did this with either an emphasis on overall health or a particular disease and if you’re interested in learning more about nutrition and learning to read the current scientific literature I would recommend the two courses and a statistics class.
After Bio 86, I realized that I knew a lot about nutrition and that this knowledge isn’t that hard to convey to people. I started small with my Dad. After that I realized that I could reach the most people if I took all of this knowledge and made it into a website (that, and my friends and family were getting sick and tired of my nutrition rants).
I drew further inspiration from my summer internship at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a non-profit organization that has been instrumental in nutrition advocacy work including in the creation of nutrition facts labels, in getting trans fats on those labels, and currently in trying to get chain restaurants to post calories on menus and menu boards across the nation.
Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and the movie, Food Inc. also inspired me to act and to create a website that the Brown community and general public could use. Beginning in the fall 2009, I completed a year-long independent study that continued the research that started in bio 86 and culminated in this website.
A lot of the information presented may be intuitive to you, especially if you follow a diet that is typical of a lot of other nations besides America. But there will also be a lot of information that surprises you. Thus, it is my hope that this website will change the way you think about food and what foods you eat just like it did for me.
Credits:
Thank you to Andrew Loftus for the web design and to my Dad for the nitty-gritty editing jobs. Thank you to Professor of Nutrition, Mary Flynn, for the content editing of this website, recipes with costing, meal plans, exchange sheets and, above all, teaching and inspiring me. This website would not have been possible without you.
Thank you to Andrew Loftus for the web design and to my Dad for the nitty-gritty editing jobs. Thank you to Professor of Nutrition, Mary Flynn, for the content editing of this website, recipes with costing, meal plans, exchange sheets and, above all, teaching and inspiring me. This website would not have been possible without you.
Disclaimer:
This website provides information on nutrition and health for the Brown community and the public. This website is not meant to offer personal medical treatment. You should seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health professional with any questions you have regarding a medical condition. Do not ignore professional medical counsel or delay in getting it because of something you have read on this site.
This website provides information on nutrition and health for the Brown community and the public. This website is not meant to offer personal medical treatment. You should seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health professional with any questions you have regarding a medical condition. Do not ignore professional medical counsel or delay in getting it because of something you have read on this site.
