A few tips on healthy eating

If you enjoy eating, but want to get in shape and improve your overall vitality, then, as most people know, you need to start a thoughtfully prepared well-balanced meal plan. In a perfect world, this needs to contain 5 standard portions of grains, fruit and vegetables daily and embrace the right proportion of food types.

Some reduced carb diet pointers:
* Food labels can be misleading Don't trust food labeling that boasts to be 'low carb' - check the real nutritional information on the rear of the tin or package. Quite a few are only slightly less and in some cases still greater than a competitors standard brand. In addition, beware of 'low sugar' and 'low fat' labels - 'low sugar' doesn't always mean 'low carb' - usually the carbs are just the same.

* Use soya flour or soy baking mix. When you need to use flour for baking, substitute soya flour or a bake mix like Atkins baking mix. In many cases, you can change your most popular recipes that use standard wheat flour to use these low carbohydrate alternatives.

Lycopene foods
(includes melon, red peppers and tomato puree)

The chemical lypcopene is a natural coloring compound and one of the phytochemical group known as 'carotenids'. It is the agent responsible for the vivid red hue of a good number of fruits and vegetables.

Intrestingly, unlike many nutrients, lycopene not only survives being cooked, but is essentially strengthened by cooking.

. Its most important benefit is that it works as an antioxidant and is believed to be of use in the fight to lower the risks of cancer.

This useful phytochemical is the most powerful fighter of singlet oxygen, which is associated with skin aging. It is also believed to prevent the progression of atherosclerosis.