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OLHA SHEVCHUK O’ QUINN, PH.D. NUTRITION BASICS FOR TODAY’S UKRAINIAN WOMAN THE FOOD PYRAMID Every person growing up in a Ukrainian household knows how much food ia part of everyday life, and especially of major celebrations and holidays. We are greeted with bread and salt, we celebrate Christmas Eve with twelve different dishes, and Easter with a Paska and Babka. Yet as we all know, Easter tradition also requires us to have kovbasa (sausage), eggs, butter, bacon fat, ham, as well as all of those wonderful Ukrain ian sweet baked goods! Those who read current news papers, magazines, or watch television will immediately recognize a dilemma — are not these foods currently on the “forbidden” list for good health? Indeed, in many ways they are. But don’t throw your hands up in despair just yet. Let me start by describing what the most recent nutrition advice is for eating healthy. Once we were taught about the four basic food groups. Current know ledge now provides us with the FOOD GUIDE PYRAMID, containing five basic food groups. It gives us a visual understanding of which foods we need to eat in which quantities. The bottom of the pyramid is the widest, and contains those foods which we need to eat the most of daily. The top of the pyramid is the smallest, and represents the foods that we must eat very sparingly. In the middle, you probably have guessed, are foods that are eaten moderately. What are the foods that belong to each section? They are as follows. The base of the food pyramid consists of GRAINS & GRAIN PRODUCTS, such as bread, crackers, cereals, rice, pasta. This section includes buckwheat (kasha), millet, and the dough in pyrohy. One ’’serving” is equi valent to 1/2 cup of pasta, rice, oatmeal; 1 slice of bread or 1/2 an English muffin; 1 ounce cold cereals. We should eat between 6-11 of these “servings” each day. It’s not as hard as it might sound. If you eat an English muffin for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch, and one cup of noodles for dinner, you already have eaten 6 servings that day. Now, some of you may be saying — “Ah, but starch is fattening!”. N o t true. All food is fattening if you eat more of it than is burned in exercise. Of the different foods, starch is a carbohydrate, which contains approx imately 4 calories per gram. So does protein. Only fat contains a whopping 9 calories per gram. It isn’t the starch, but what we put on it (butter, oil, cream) that makes us fat. The next layer of the pyramid consists of two food groups: vegetables and fruits. The VEGETABLE group contains all plant foods that are not grains, and are not fruit. Vegetables are lettuce, cabbage, onions, broccoli, beets, potatoes, etc. One serving of these is equal to 1 cup leafy vegetables (salad), 1/2 cup cooked vegeta bles, 1 medium potato, or 3/4 cup vegetable juice. We should eat 3-5 servings of vegetables daily, and prefera bly not all as potatoes! Variety is very important in good nutrition, and greed, red, orange and yellow vegetables are very important for certain needed vitamins and minerals. The FRUIT group consists of apples, bananas, oranges, pears, melons, grapefruits, plums, raisins, dates, figs, etc. One serving would be 1 apple or pear, 1/2 grapefruit, 1/4 cantaloupe melon, 1/4 cup raisins or dried fruit, 1/2 cup fruit, or 3/4 cup of fruit juice. We need to eat 2-4 fruit servings daily. The upper middle layer of the pyramid consists of two food groups as well: the meat group and the milk group.. The MEAT group consists not only of meats (beef, chicken, pork, etc.) but also of eggs, fish, peanuts and peanut butter, and cooked dried peas and beans. The reason these other foods are in the meat group, is due to their high protein and iron content. A serving of these foods would be equivalent to 2-3 ounces of cooked meats, 1 egg, 2 tablespoons peanut butter, or 1/2 cup of kidney beans or cooked dried peas. We need to eat only 2-3 servings from the meat group per day. That means that a 4-6 ounce piece of cooked meat for dinner is all that is needed for your day’s servings of meat. If any of you have weighed your food portions lately, you will realize how little that is, compared to how much meat we actually eat in America. Instead of meat being the central part of our meals, it needs to become more of ’НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, СІЧЕНЬ 1996 21
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