Learn about HumanaNatura’s OurPlate Healthy Eating Campaign.
HumanaNatura’s OurPlate healthy eating campaign offers more than just general guidance on the best way to eat naturally and optimally. You can use the OurPlate approach anytime to quickly rate the meal options that you and others have. Rating meals with OurPlate is easy and powerful. With just a bit of practice, an OurPlate rating can be created for any meal in a few seconds, helping to improve the quality of your nutritional choices and advice.
Rating meals with OurPlate
Click for a full-size copy of the OurPlate Meal Rating Guide.
To rate any meal using HumanaNatura’s OurPlate model, just follow these five simple steps:
- Major points for raw veggies – give a meal six points if it is at least half raw vegetables (or veggies that could be eaten raw). If the amount of raw veggies is less than half of the meal, adjust the points downward proportionately. In any case, the maximum score for raw veggies is six points, reflecting the gradually diminishing benefits of adding food, no matter how healthy.
- Points for raw fruit – give the meal two points if it includes at least one serving of fruit. Again, two points is the maximum score for added fruit.
- Points for natural protein – give the meal two points if one serving of a natural protein is included. Yes, two points maximum score here too.
- Take-down for other foods – subtract two points for each serving of other foods that are included in the meal, but this time with no limit on the number of points that can be taken away.
- Special take-down for sweets - subtract four points for each serving of sweets that are included, again with no limit on the number of points that can be taken away.
As you can see, the maximum possible meal score with OurPlate is 10. In practice, this score is reserved for vegetable-rich and health-optimal salad meals made using HumanaNatura’s Natural Eating guidelines.
Note that adding more than half a plate of raw veggies, or a serving of fruit or natural protein, does not increase the score of a meal, since this generally does not increase the quality of the meal, but meals are not rated lower if there is a little extra of these foods. This flexibility makes scoring easier, is consistent with nutritional science, and accounts for variations in hunger over time and between people. Similarly, overall meal size is not considered and does not affect meal score, for these same reasons.
On the other hand, meals can easily score well below 10 and even below zero, particularly when they involve especially unhealthy and unnatural foods. For example, a meal of pasta in cream sauce with a small salad and a sweet dessert would score -6 (-2-2+2-4). To use a less dramatic example, a veggie-rich salad meal with fruit that used an unnatural protein like soy would score a 6 (+6+2-2).
We have found that this simple rating approach accurately reflects the objective quality of most meals, and is a great short-cut to quickly and reliably gauge a meal’s health impact. Note that the rating system won’t apply to snacks, but the overall OurPlate model does – favoring raw veggies and then fruits and natural proteins over all other snack choices.
Explore OurPlate & get healthier!
In upcoming NaturaLife posts, we will include examples of HumanaNatura salad meals that are perfect 10′s, and maybe also some non-HumanaNatura meals that score less favorably, just to highlight the approach and show a range of OurPlate ratings in practice.
In the meantime, learn more about creating naturally delicious and optimally nutritious meals through OurPlate, HumanaNatura’s new healthy eating campaign, and experience how this simple, science-based, and 100% natural approach to our daily meals can change the way you eat, feel, and live. You can also perfect your skills at making delicious and naturally healthy salad meals that follow HumanaNatura’s OurPlate guidelines via the Meals tab above, our popular article Perfect Salad Meals, or the Natural Eating section of our comprehensive Personal Health Program.
Once you have begun eating the HumanaNatura way, we hope you will explore your other opportunities for new, more natural, and healthier life between meals – through HumanaNatura’s complete and naturally open-ended system for lifelong and lifewide health and fitness at The Four HumanaNatura Techniques.
Tell your friends about HumanaNatura’s OurPlate…promote new health!
