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Healthy Eating Plate For Teens

The Healthy Eating Plate shows food groups as different colored wedges on a plate (formerly a pyramid):

Orange wedge = Grains

Green wedge = vegetables

Red wedge = Fruit

Purple wedge = Protein (meats, poultry, fish, eggs, nuts, beans)

Blue circle = Dairy (milk, yogurt, cheese)

Click the link up top to see the actual Healthy Eating Plate. Once there, click on each color for a more specific breakdown. And at this site, you can get personalized recommendations about which foods to eat and how much — including estimates of the number of calories needed to stay at a healthy weight for your age, gender, and activity level. It will allow you to create your personal profile, and doing this is highly recommended.

As you saw on the Healthy Eating Pyramid, the stripes aren’t all the same size.

Some are wider, in order to show how much of a person's daily food intake should be made up of that food group.

Example: The Orange Band (Grains) is much wider than the yellow one because people need to eat a lot more grains than oils.

What these different color stripes are saying is it’s important to eat a variety of foods. Doing that will provide a healthy balance of nutrients – plus your taste buds won’t get bored.

Why is the pyramid wider at the bottom? That’s to tell people that they can eat lots of some foods in each group, but that the other foods in this group should be kept to a minimum. Also, foods at the bottom are those with little or no solid fats, added sugars or sweeteners.

Example: The Fruit Group. You should eat whole fresh apples or cherries as opposed to apple or cherry pie.

And a special fitness fit tip to TEENS: You need to eat a variety of foods in order to get the nutrients that will help your bodies grow. This will depend on how much exercise you get.

For example, if you are very active, you should eat more food so you can fuel your activity levels, as well as your growth. And if you’re less active, you should eat less food to avoid gaining weight.

And here's a great site where you can get information on losing weight in a healthy way.

And here's a healthy weight loss product we like (offering a free trial): Acai Berry Select