Eatwell Everyday for practitioners

In using Eatwell Everyday, we expect that:

1. Consumers will better understand what is meant by a healthy balanced diet and the key dietary messages which support this.
2. Consumers will be encouraged to make positive changes to their own food intake.

Key messages of the resource

Moving towards a healthier diet will involve eating the types and proportions of foods and drinks shown in the Eatwell Guide. This means:

• eating at least 5 portions of a variety of fruit and vegetables every day.
• basing meals on potatoes, bread, rice, pasta or other starchy carbohydrates; choosing wholegrain versions where possible.
• eating some dairy or dairy alternatives (such as soya drinks); choosing lower fat and lower sugar options.
• eating some beans, pulses, fish, eggs, meat and other proteins (including 2 portions of fish every week, one of which should be oily).
• choosing unsaturated oils and spreads and eating in small amounts.
• drinking 6-8 cups/glasses of fluid a day.

If consuming foods and drinks high in fat, salt or sugar: have these less often and in small amounts. These messages are not new, but this resource provides a new way to start discussions on healthy eating and help individuals explore how to make changes to their own diets.

Moving towards a diet that looks like Eatwell Everyday represents a huge change for many individuals and families in Scotland; the challenges in consuming a healthy diet are many and varied. However, used sensitively by practitioners, Eatwell Everyday offers the opportunity to start discussion about healthy eating: the proportions of each food group in a healthy balanced diet, as well as eating smaller amounts of foods and drinks high in fats, salt or sugar, less often. Eatwell Everyday can be used in one-on-one or group sessions.

The resource has been designed to show what a healthy balanced diet actually looks like, and has been compiled with attention to lowering costs, widespread availability of the foods included and avoiding waste. 

Making small changes to improve diet is better than no change. Advocating a small changes approach, where individuals choose to work on one part of Eatwell Everyday at a time may be a useful tactic. For example, you may wish to talk about:

• changing meals to look more similar to the meals in the menus (e.g. higher proportion of starchy foods, less protein, fewer saturated fats or sugar).
• how individuals can incorporate their cultural food preferences in a healthy balanced diet.
• limiting the number of high fat and/or sugar foods consumed.
• adding fruit and vegetables to meals and/or as snacks.
• eating breakfast every day or preparing a packed lunch every night.
• attempting at least one home-cooked or assembled meal each week.
• looking at nutrition labels and choosing healthier products.

The menus for Eatwell Everyday are based on the energy requirements of an average female and meet current UK dietary recommendations, including requirements for macro and micronutrients, fruit & vegetables, oil-rich fish and red and processed meat.

Energy intake, proportion of energy from macronutrients, and micronutrient intakes were averaged over the course of the week, rather than on a daily basis. Achievement of nutritional criteria over the course of the week demonstrates the key principle of Eatwell Everyday, allowing flexibility and variety on a day-to-day basis.

Both menu weeks are based on the methodology and nutritional analysis for the original eatwell week, also taking into account our new recommendations on sugar consumption and health. 

Nutritional analyses for both weeks can be downloaded here.