How do you know whether a food is 'healthy or not'??

pinksultana

For instance I am having a all natural fellside beef casserole for lunch - 300g

and stats are 219cal, 27.3 protein, 16.9 carbohydrtaes, 10.5 of which are sugars, 5.1g fat, 2.4 saturates and 390mg sodium...

is this healthy?...what should I be looking for in terms of per 100g how much fat / sodium / carbs / protein should a meal be made up of??

Im only just learing about foods and nutrition, and at the moment to be honset im focusing mostley on calories, but as i go along i want to gradually focus also on nutritional values of foods and need some advice...

any books on this you can reccomend??

xxPINK

CasperO

I think the guideline is less than 30% cals from fat - but we have to remember to talk about the whole meal, or even the whole day's eating.

A fat gram is 9 calories, so in your casserole there are 46 cals from fat out of the 219 total, which is about 21%. Not bad at all. I'd eat it,,, :laugh:

A hot dog is massive fat - almost like sitting down with a can of Crisco and a spoon,,, but if you eat one hot dog and a big salad and some beans to balance it all out then you still haven't had a bad lunch. Balance balance balance,,,

ninaellis

For instance I am having a all natural fellside beef casserole for lunch - 300g

and stats are 219cal, 27.3 protein, 16.9 carbohydrtaes, 10.5 of which are sugars, 5.1g fat, 2.4 saturates and 390mg sodium...

is this healthy?..

I try not to eat anything over 4% fat & always go for lower where ever possible.

so if the above is for the 300G pack then the fat is about 1.7g per 100g which is pretty low!! and only 0.8g of saturated fat per 100g also.

Peronally I would query why so much of the carb content comes from sugars in a savoury dish???? But that might just be me being picky!

Most packs have a 'per 100g' chart on so it's much easier to work out the % of fat in the meal
Hope that helps x
Nina