Track 5

Unit 3a.

Health sciences.

New diets.

Pages 42 and 43.

Listen for main ideas and Listen for details.

Good morning everybody, today I want to start by having you imagine that you’re very hungry, okay?

Then I want you to choose something to eat, something you’d buy or fix yourself.

So what foods did you select? and why?

Well maybe you were thinking about nutritional value and chose something like a tuna sandwich or a salad or maybe you were thinking fast and easy and chose potato chips or a candy bar.

Well let’s think for a minute about that fast and easy choice what happens when you eat foods with poor nutritional value like a candy bar?

I can think of two possibilities, one you won’t feel too good after you eat it and two you’ll add unnecessary body fat.

In fact people in a lot of countries and particularly the United States are getting too fat. The CDC the Center for Disease Control reports that 23% of all Americans are too fat. They’re overweight and although many of them try weight loss diets most of them don’t succeed.

So today I want to speak to you about three new popular diets now what’s different about these three diets is that they all involve making wise choices in the foods we consume, and changing how we eat and live every day not just for a short time, in other words these diets are about lifestyle.

The three diets are the Mediterranean diet, the best life diet and the traffic light diet. First is the Mediterranean diet this one has been called the best in the world by some authorities let’s examine why, as the name suggests this diet comes from the Mediterranean area specifically the Greek island of Crete, cretins eat a lot of fresh fish, fresh fruit, and vegetables and cheese and they drink wine too.

Now the surprising feature of this diet is the amount of olives and olive oil cretins consumed. These are fats and make up about 40 percent of their diet that sounds like a lot doesn’t it?

The thing is that type of fat is different from the fats in red meats, and in other oils some even call it a good fat. Scientific evidence shows that people who follow the Mediterranean diet are much less likely to develop heart disease than people who eat red meat or other sources of fat, so not only does the Mediterranean diet taste great but it seems to be very good for your heart.

And remember this diet is about making a lifestyle change it’s not a fast fix to weight or health problems.

Well let’s move on to the second diet the best life diet created by Oprah Winfrey’s personal trainer, Bob Green, this diet claims that it’ll help us live the best life possible. It’s based on eating a diet filled with lots of grains fruit and vegetables, foods from milk and low-calorie low-fat meats the best life diet also says that exercise is very important, makes sense right?

So what’s special about this diet?

Well it advises gradual not immediate changes in diet and exercise so slowly adding in low-fat items while reducing high-fat items is the way to go here, for example getting rid of snacks like potato chips and soda while adding in fruit and taking more walks, and again this diet isn’t a quick way to lose weight it’s about lifelong changes.

Our third diet example is the traffic light diet by British nutritionist Judith Wills. This one has a stink of our food choices like the three colors of a traffic light red means stop, yellow means caution be careful, and green means go.

So if a food is high in fat and calories and not very nutritious what color would that be? Red of course. Chocolate cake is a good example of a red food now if the food is a little high in calories but also nutritious like say potatoes then it’s a yellow food and green foods, those are the ones low in calories and high and nutrition think of things like fruit and vegetables and white fish these get the green light.

Again as with the other two diets I’ve discussed today the idea here is to change how you eat and live every day, to change your lifestyle.

Now between now and next time I’d like you to keep a food journal you know a daily account of all the foods you consume then in class we’ll assess those and you can see if there are areas where you can make your diet healthier.