Meal plans that follow the Food Guidelines?

**MomToTwoBoys** · 06-11-2010, 05:35 PM

Canada has their own set of guidelines when it comes to nutritional eating. It's found here:

Eating Well with Canada's Food Guide - Main Page

They have a customizable food guide that you can make, as well as a basic table that covers both age and gender. That one is here:

How Much Food You Need Every Day - Canada's Food Guide

DH and I discussed last night that we think we're missing some and we may be overeating on others, which results in a completely unbalanced diet. With the boys getting older and growing so fast, plus DH and I reaching middle age, we wanted to make sure that we're putting the right foods into our bodies to help us continue to be healthy. And so our journey begins!

I started to peel through the page and look for the first question that came to my mind and that was...

What the heck is a correct serving size for each category?

I found these links as well:

What is a Food Guide Serving of Vegetables and Fruit? - Canada's Food Guide
What is a Food Guide Serving of Grain Products? - Canada's Food Guide
What is a Food Guide Serving of Milk and Alternatives? - Canada's Food Guide
What is a Food Guide Serving of Meat and Alternatives? - Canada's Food Guide

And with that information, I am officially stumped.

So do I go through the meal plan I've been giving to ourselves and see if I'm giving us the right amount of servings, or do I just start over fresh again? Does anyone follow either the US or Canadian Food Guide and have some tips?

Once I come up with a meal plan of my own, I'll post it here. I just wanted to see what others have done and how easy/hard it was to do just that while staying in budget.

Our grocery budget is $250 per biweek.

**pollypurebred39** · 06-11-2010, 06:08 PM

Wow! I haven't seen the 4 food groups for a long time. The only thing I remember from health class is that you are supposed to get X amount of servings from each group a day. It changed for age groups. It was extremely easy to understand. I'll see if I can find an old one for you.

We now have this pyramid chart that my boys both found too confusing to grasp. It was the only section of health class they both failed. First there were no X amount of servings listed, later the added servings but frankly it's still confusing. Can't imagine why we needed to change from the understandable 4 food groups to the pyramid.

Reminds me of new math, too confusing. Both my boys struggled with the new math, they'd present their homework completely stumped, we'd show them how to do it the way we learned and they both got it no problem. Anyway, I'll give a look and see if I can locate the old chart, maybe that will help.

**pbobber** · 08-08-2010, 01:26 PM

MyPyramid.gov - United States Department of Agriculture - Home has a cool food tracker. Enter everything that you eat and it will give you a complete nutritional breakdown

**zakity** · 08-09-2010, 03:41 PM

We gave up on the food pyramid thing also. We do the four food groups (adjusted slightly - protein, calcium, fruits/veggies, starch/carbs).

They have to have something from each group at each meal. Since they are growing boys, I don't limit what they can eat from each group really. I do have a slight limit on the starch/carbs group.

Junk food (chips, fast food, candy, twinkies, ice cream, cake, store-bought pies, chocolate milk, pudding, etc) actually has it's own category as "crap food". Crap food has little to no nutritional value and is severely limited.

Homemade things (pies, muffins, etc) do count towards the four food groups though. Well, depending on what is in them. Cookies are junk food whether they are homemade or not.