How balanced are your meals? – Cranbrook Medical Practice

Image of the EatWell guide — A healthy diet should be roughly in-line with the Eat Well guide

The image on the right shows the EatWell guide and is a diagram that shows roughly how our diet should be balanced.

The green section is fruit and veg, pink protein sources, blue dairy or dairy alternatives, purple oils and fats and the yellow section is starchy carbohydrates such as cereal, bread, pasta, rice etc.

Rather than trying to make each meal balance up with the EatWell guide, it can be a good idea to try to get weekly shop as similar as possible to it.

For more information, details on good food sources for each section and ideas to help you get your diet in-line with the EatWell guide go to Nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/the-eatwell-guide.

Are your portions healthy?

Image of a plate. A quarter is for protein, a quarter for starchy carbohydrates and half for fruit and veg. — A healthy meal should be divided roughly like this

The circular image on the right gives you a rough idea of how a healthy meal should be divided up. Half of your meal should be made up of fruit and/or veg, a quarter of it should consist of a protein source such as meat, fish, nuts, seeds or dairy products, and a quarter of it should contain starchy carbohydrates such as potatoes, pasta, rice, bread etc.

The image of hands (below right) shows how you might easily measure food portions using your hands.

An showing how to measure portions using your hands — This image shows another way to visually help you get your portions right

Recipe ideas

One of our favourite sites to go to for recipe ideas is the BBC Good Food website. It has thousands of recipes to suit all ages, tastes, cooking skills and allergies, and meals that can be made quickly as well as meals that take longer to make. Why not try something new from the site this week?