Trying out new meal and snack ideas and recipes based on the recommendations from the Australian Dietary Guidelines and the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating is a great way to make healthy choices and lose any extra weight.
To know how much to eat, check out the number of serves from each food group that you need for your age and sex.
Recipe Modification Tips
Favourite and traditional recipes can often be modified to include more fibre, more fruit and vegetables and less saturated fat, added sugars, added salt and kilojoules.
- Recipe modification tips
- How to modify a recipe to include more vegetables and reduce fat - Original Recipe Lasagna
Steps to work out how much to eat from a recipe
- Look at the recipe ingredients.
- Classify the ingredients according to their food groups and use the serve sizes information to work out the total number of serves from each food group in the recipe.
- Divide the total from each food group by the number of people served by the recipe.
- This will tell you how many serves from each food group are in each ‘serve’ or the recipe and help you decide on each person’s portion size.
Here’s an example of how it works
Someone wanting to lose weight should aim to eat only the number of serves from each food group recommended in the tables below and avoid extra serves and discretionary foods and drinks. By doing this, you would eat fewer kilojoules than what your body uses and lose weight gradually while staying healthy.
Minimum recommended average daily number of serves from each of the five food groups
If you have extra weight to lose, it is very useful to remember to always serve yourself half a plate of coloured vegetables or salad first. Then think about how large a portion from the recipe you need to feel satisfied, but not full. The extra vegetables will fill you up for fewer kilojoules.