Many people don’t eat as well as they should, so one ASU expert gave advice on healthful eating, such as how to eat well without cutting “bad” foods out completely.

Deanne Wilson, a nutrition counselor for Campus Health Service, gave free advice during a talk on nutrition and healthful eating on Tuesday.

Wilson talked about what people should eat, how much they should eat, when they should eat, how they should eat and how desserts and sweets fit into the mix.

She focused on balance and variety when choosing types of food to eat.

“All foods can fit [into your diet],” Wilson said.

Balance means getting all types of nutrients into a diet, and variety is eating different kinds of foods overall.

“It’s not that one food group is going to be superior to the next,” Wilson said. “It’s that each of them is offering something specific and important.”

The same foods should not be eaten all the time, but certain foods do not necessarily need to be cut from the diet, she said.

“To ever start excluding any kind of food — it’s typically never going to work,” Wilson said.

Going on a strict diet usually doesn’t work for most people because they become discouraged easily or the diet is too hard to follow, she said.

“I think we can then start setting up too strict of rules,” Wilson said.
She said that people should get used to “choosing foods for pleasure but also for energy.”

Wilson said something like a candy bar is “likely not going to meet your needs.”

When choosing meals people need to look at whether they want something cold, hot, spicy, bland, sweet, salty, light or rich, she said.

Also, when deciding what food to eat, people can’t base their decisions on what is good for others, because sometimes that is inaccurate in certain situations.

“You have to think of your own individual situation,” Wilson said.

She said foods like pizza and fried foods aren’t necessarily bad unless eaten all the time, because balance and variety aren’t achieved.

She said when deciding how much a person should eat, there are external and internal approaches.

External approaches include counting calories, which can lead to obsession and preoccupation and isn’t necessarily successful, Wilson said. “It’s time consuming,” she said.

Internal approaches include listening to signals from the body, although some people say they can’t trust their body, Wilson said.

“Most people don’t listen to their body,” she said.

Wilson also talked about how she doesn’t like to use the body mass index because it is a “generic way of assessing somebody” and doesn’t look at an individual’s muscle mass and how much an individual exercises, eats, smokes and sleeps.

“Health is going to come in all shapes and sizes so don’t think that thin always means healthy,” she said.

Serena Goldstein, a psychology senior, attended the talk.

She said she was hoping to learn some tips on how to cook certain foods and other health tips.

“I’m fascinated by food and habits … what drives us to eat certain foods,” Goldstein said.

She said the main thing she learned after the presentation was to look at eating desserts differently and to be mindful of the taste of food.

“You can be hungry for something, but it doesn’t mean you really want it,” Goldstein said.

Reach the reporter at reweaver@asu.edu.