Make healthier food choices every day

SALT LAKE CITY – March is National Nutrition Month, which is a great time to remind ourselves to make healthier food choices. What does a healthy diet look like, and how much food is too much?

In the latest Let’s Get Moving with Maria podcast episode, Maria Shilaos spoke with Brent Franson, Founder and CEO of Most Days, to learn some tips that can improve our daily eating habits.

A lot of people tend to have a hard time maintaining healthy eating habits. Why?

“There’s a whole bunch of physiological and neurological feedback loops that reinforce the pleasure around the things that we like to eat that aren’t necessarily good for us,” Franson said.

He described this by using a candy bar as an example. When you eat a candy bar, your brain acknowledges the immediate reward you get from it. In this case the reward is the taste.

On the other hand, eating something that’s not as tasty doesn’t trigger an immediate reward.

“Even though I get the long-term reward, the primitive part of my brain is not really aware of that. That’s why it’s so much harder to do things that are good for us and easier to do the things that are bad for us,” Franson said.

It’s so important to make healthy lifestyle choices most days because that determines 50% to 75% of our lives.

Franson says the best advice for eating well comes from Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. To summarize it in seven words: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.

Follow Let’s Get Moving with Maria on Facebook and Instagram.