The Matt Roberts Food Pyramid
We designed the Matt Roberts Food Pyramid with help and observation from many nutritionists and food experts. It is designed to meet modern eating habits and modern exercise attitudes and activity levels.
Recipes
Our recipes for this month include a Super Healthy Breakfast Smoothie, Fast Re-fuel Smoothie, Omelette with Avocado and Mango Salsa, Effortless Eggs and Tomatoes and Chicken, Bean and Cabbage Salad.
Our hero foods are packed full of nutritional benefits. Read our handy guide to hero foods for your diet.
About The Matt Roberts Food Pyramid
The main body of the pyramid is designed to graphically shows the dietary requirements of a person who either burns 1600-2000 calories per day or requires that amount of calories, alongside exercise, in order to be in deficit by about 500 calories and therefore see controlled and healthy weight and fat loss.
The most important factor to this way of eating is that we based it on the healthy requirements of the body and making sure that even though it controls calories it is not at the detriment of the essential nutrients that the body needs.
The nutrients that we need to protect in a diet to make sure that the body works optimally are the vitamins and minerals, the essential healthy fats and the proteins that maintain healthy muscle and tissue and boost the metabolism.
The aim of this diet is to provide the body with a good supply of healthy fats, from a wide variety of sources. This wide variety of fats allows for the balance of Omega 3, 6 and 9 that benefit the body by reducing the build up of plaque in the blood stream, help prevent inflammation within the body and help regulate eating habits and the requirement for energy. These fats come from meat, fish, dairy, nuts, seeds, eggs and fruits like Avocado.
Protein within the body is essential for the repair and maintenance of muscle. This in return helps keep us strong, helps maintain functional stability within the body, helps to keep muscles strong so that they put pressure on the bone and help stimulate bone repair and density. This maintenance of muscle and therefore metabolism also helps maintain a healthy body shape and fat level.
Another key factor within our food pyramid is the intake of dietary fibre. Within western society the intake of dietary fibre has dropped to an all time low. This has a drastic effect on the digestive system and the ability for a person to properly digest food and pull the required nutrients out of that food. Poor digestion has also led to increases in disorders such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome and leaky gut along with increases in waste product build up within the digitise tract.
The carbohydrate within this way of eating comes from Low Glyceamic vegetables and pulses and is topped up by wholegrains, rather than the traditional food pyramid which favoured grains as the source of energy and for many people entered the diet at the detriment of the brightly coloured diversity of foods that give us the broad spectrum of nutrients. These energy rich carbohydrates are the part of the diet that we have created greatest growth within, based on activity. This is why we have the sliding scale out of the side of the fuel section of the diet. It is important that the grains and wholegrains are earned through activity rather than being the bulk of an inactive diet. Because these foods tend to not hold the same depth of nutrients as the fruits, vegetables and pulses we only want to put more of them in the diet because we need more energy to cope with expenditure. Not if we haven't earned them! That is why this food category can go from being 30% of the diet to 60% dependent on activity levels. An endurance athlete will need to have a very high level of calories every day. Therefore, a large amount of those calories will be the replenishment of the carb stores in the muscles and liver. If we are not using the carbs the body will simply store them as fat on the body. That is why you have to earn them, via activity, to increase the level of them in the diet.
The top section and smallest section of this food pyramid is processed foods. This category applies to any food that has been pre-cooked of prepared before you eat it. The biggest offenders in this category are fast food, cakes, biscuits, deep fried snacks and sugary drinks. However, packaged meals and many supposedly healthy snack bars can also fall in this category. It is a huge category of food but needs to be eaten sparingly or as an occasional treat. Generally, we should always buy fresh produce that has been altered very little before we eat it.
The pyramid is designed to be visual guide of how we should eat every day and help make important food decisions through the day.
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