Close Enough Nutrition

If you eat, say, 5,000 calories a day, would you like to know that at least 3,000 of those calories met the nutritional guidelines of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) that are paid for by your hard-earned taxes? You can. I've studied the 2005 and the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans over the last few years. Both are online. I printed them out and then made lists, lots of lists. Those Guidelines were not an easy read for the average Judy. But, I think I've come close enough to understanding what I need to do in order to meet their recommendations and eat better than I ever have (more like my mother always wanted me too) without giving up all my comfort foods. The Dietary Guidelines are based on a lot of scientific evidence. They used the word, preponderance, which I had to look up, and then I decided on the words, a lot, instead. The information in my book, Close Enough, is based on what I thought was the easiest way to implement their recommendations within my ability to comprehend what I read. So, if I were you, I'd definitely go online and study them yourself at www.dietaryguidelines.gov. Close Enough is not about taking away all white food. It's not about eating mostly protein. It's not about a kitchen stocked with red pepper to crush, black pepper to crack, or tarragon leaves. And it is definitely not about peeling a pound of yuca for a recipe. This book doesn't have recipes. My spice rack has only salt and pepper in it and there's been some controversy about the salt. What this book does have is more than just saying you need two to three cups of this and three ounces of that to meet your goal. I mean, how do I figure out how to have seventeen grams of oil? I need something more concrete than that. There are no forbidden foods or restrictions in this book. It's not about free days or strict ratios and definitely not a three phase plan of eat this, then eat that and last of all - eat this and that. This book contains information about what I've collected and was able to put to use on a Daily Nutrition Spreadsheet (DNS) I designed. It has different calorie level scenarios from 1,000 to 3,000 calories in 500 calorie increments. Over the last ten years the spreadsheet went through several revisions before I settled on the current one. Yes, go ahead and look for it. They are in the back of the book (DNS 1 through 5). Even if you are one of those people who read things from front to back, go ahead and look. I think it will help you understand the first chapters better when you know how the information will be applied. I realized that the best and easiest way to put some more of my hard-earned tax dollars to work was to use the Nutrition Facts label as a reference tool. Later on I decided to combine my food for the day to come as close as I could to reach the 2005 Dietary Guidelines I had found online in 2006. As time passed, and the 2010 Dietary Guidelines came out in 2011, I studied it. Information on fresh food was a little tougher, but doable. However, the Nutrition Facts (NF) label has a size problem. The government is okay with putting just some of the required information on the can or package if it is too small for everything. I had a different problem with it. It showed only the 2,000 and sometimes the 2,500 calorie levels. My math skills have never been good even though I'll never be able to forget the times tables I learned in grade school. Fractions were never my strong point, but I persevered with a calculator in my hand. So ten years ago, when all I had to use was the Nutrition Facts label, I purchased a few 28X22 white poster boards to make a chart to track the food I ate. I was surprised when the chart filled up the whole poster. And it was a complicated chart, for me at least. Across the top I put the NF label's list of items like calories, cholesterol, sodium, and protein in a separate column for each one. I included the most referenced vitamins and minerals which were vitamin A and C, plus calcium and iron. Later I added other columns for myself to use for things that I wanted to track. Down the first column at the left, I listed the different categories from the old USDA Pyramid from the 1990s. I named the first row bread, cereal, and rice. The second row was fruits, the third vegetables. Then I added the milk and cheese row, then the meat, eggs, beans, and nuts row. At the top of the Pyramid were the fats, oils, and sweets for my final row. I left some space between each of these rows to add the foods I regularly ate and wanted to find out about. When I found the 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans I saw that it had different names for the food groups than the 1990's Pyramid. So I made another using those names which were grains, vegetables, fruits, dairy, protein, and oils. On another poster I wrote down information from the DGA I didn't understand in hopes I would eventually figure it out. These included Energy Producing Nutrients and Acceptable Macronutrient Distribution Ranges. Like I said before, the DGA is a hard read for the average Judy. That's why my book is so short. In the end, I wanted the DNS to provide the approximate daily nutritional energy suggested by the DGA. I wanted to eat as healthy as possible. I don't want to shorten my life or lower the quality of it by not choosing what I eat with more care. That's my motivation.