The perfect daily meals ?

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mavhh
mavhh Posts: 1 Member
edited April 2022 in Food and Nutrition
Hello,
I have been looking for some time for a way to achieve 'perfect meal' by being within 5% close to 100% on everything,
It was already done ? :)

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  • Cluelessmama1979
    Cluelessmama1979 Posts: 129 Member
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    Well the first problem hear is that every person has different nutritional needs. And the nutrients you need are closely tied in with calorie requirements.

    A "perfect meal" for someone who needs to eat 1600 calories per day wouldn't be perfect for someone who needs to eat 2000 calories per day.

    Plus, people who are more active need more protein. People with health conditions need more or less of certain micronutrients.

    Even if someone found a perfect combination of foods for themselves, it wouldn't be perfect for anyone else, unfortunately.

    Maybe if you post your stats someone could help with ideas for a few things that might help build your menu?
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,267 Member
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    On a meal by meal basis? Um, why?

    Shaped by millennia of natural selection, humans are adaptive omnivores. Our bodies are quite good at juggling the most important nutrients in our bodies to average things out over a day, maybe even a few days, so that we can thrive.

    Many people here will claim that macros aren't important (except for personal tastes/compliance/energy), or that only protein is important, or that micros are even less important. Personally, I don't agree with that. I think that there are certain reasonable targets that will tend to give the best odds of good health, for the average person (and that those minimums may or may not be what the MFP rules of thumb achieve, though they're plenty close enough for most people, as long as those people aren't cutting calories to aggressively low levels for their current body size/activity/etc.). Even then, I think close to targets is fine.

    Unless you're just doing this as a fun game-ification of nutrition, I don't see the point of being even +/- 5% on everything, even over the course of a day, let alone meal by meal.

    I've set personal goals for things I think are especially important (you can do this to a certain extent even within free MFP). Some of the things MFP can track are best looked at as minimums (such as as protein among others), while other things are best looked at as maximums (such as saturated fats, for example). I figure if I'm over the ones I want to be over, under the ones I want to be under, on the weekly averages display in the phone/tablet app; and reasonably close most days; all is well. YMMV.

    If you're trying to be exact day by day, something like this might be helpful:

    https://www.eatthismuch.com/

    . . . but it might require their premium features to get there. I don't think it will do it meal by meal.
  • gpanda103
    gpanda103 Posts: 189 Member
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    I mean… ideally you would have a source of carbs, proteins, and fat. But covering all of your macro and micro needs from one meal that isn’t ridiculously large is gonna be pretty difficult
  • ReenieHJ
    ReenieHJ Posts: 9,724 Member
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    I was just thinking about this same thing the other day. I don't pay a lot of attention to the macros and all that, just the carbs/fat/protein pie that's on our food diary page. I wondered what would be THE perfect meal. But yeh, it's next to impossible with everybody's different needs, goals. All we can do is think about what's best for us. :)
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,874 Member
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    mavhh wrote: »
    Hello,
    I have been looking for some time for a way to achieve 'perfect meal' by being within 5% close to 100% on everything,
    It was already done ? :)

    There is no universally perfect meal. There is no universally perfect or optimal macro ratio...these things are individual as per medical issues, fitness and fitness performance, body composition, satiety, etc. MFP's defaults are also just that...defaults. There's nothing perfect or magical about them.

    I never put a ton of focus on my macro ratios. When I was logging I customized my macros to 40c/30p/30f. I tried to hit close to that, but didn't do a whole lot of hand wringing if I didn't. I was typically over on protein which I consider a minimum and under on carbs and pretty close on fat. At any rate, I put a lot more of my energy towards quality nutrition than what the macro breakdown was or how close I was or whatever. I put an emphasis on getting more veg and fruit in my diet since that was something that was lacking. I made it a point to start eating fatty fish at least 3x per week for Omega3. I started eating more chicken and more lean cuts of other meat than the fatty cuts that predominated my diet previously. I made it a point to eat more things like oats, legumes, lentils, etc for fiber...introduced more healthy fats by way of higher quality cooking oils, nuts and nut butters, avocados, etc.
  • ganrygovard85
    ganrygovard85 Posts: 3 Member
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    The list of diets and what you can eat for lunch when losing weight can be very long, but you need to know the most important thing - the daily main meal, so it must contain all the necessary components: proteins, fats and carbohydrates. Boiled potatoes, a piece of bread, any porridge will not be an obstacle to weight loss if you eat them in reasonable doses, but exclude some foods from the diet should still be, such as sugar, flour, fried (pork chops), etc.
    I love baked meat with mashed potatoes. Nutritious and delicious!
  • 33gail33
    33gail33 Posts: 1,155 Member
    edited April 2022
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    mavhh wrote: »
    Hello,
    I have been looking for some time for a way to achieve 'perfect meal' by being within 5% close to 100% on everything,
    It was already done ? :)

    I did this on Chronometer recently, not perfect meal but a perfect day, which included as close to possible to 100% (or more) of recommended micro-nutrients (vitamins, minerals etc). It was an interesting exercise, and definitely helped me to see where I was perhaps not meeting the recommended requirements, so I could tweak my diet accordingly. I think that some people might be surprised how much their "healthy" diets are lacking in nutrients.
  • gpanda103
    gpanda103 Posts: 189 Member
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    ganrygovard85 wrote: »
    The list of diets and what you can eat for lunch when losing weight can be very long, but you need to know the most important thing - the daily main meal, so it must contain all the necessary components: proteins, fats and carbohydrates. Boiled potatoes, a piece of bread, any porridge will not be an obstacle to weight loss if you eat them in reasonable doses, but exclude some foods from the diet should still be, such as sugar, flour, fried (pork chops), etc.
    I love baked meat with mashed potatoes. Nutritious and delicious!

    No, no you don’t need to exclude anything. There’s nothing inherently wrong with sugar, flour, or fried food. Sure, they are calorie dense, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
  • Redordeadhead
    Redordeadhead Posts: 1,188 Member
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    ganrygovard85 wrote: »
    The list of diets and what you can eat for lunch when losing weight can be very long, but you need to know the most important thing - the daily main meal, so it must contain all the necessary components: proteins, fats and carbohydrates. Boiled potatoes, a piece of bread, any porridge will not be an obstacle to weight loss if you eat them in reasonable doses, but exclude some foods from the diet should still be, such as sugar, flour, fried (pork chops), etc.
    I love baked meat with mashed potatoes. Nutritious and delicious!

    No, this is totally wrong.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,420 Member
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    ganrygovard85 wrote: »
    The list of diets and what you can eat for lunch when losing weight can be very long, but you need to know the most important thing - the daily main meal, so it must contain all the necessary components: proteins, fats and carbohydrates. Boiled potatoes, a piece of bread, any porridge will not be an obstacle to weight loss if you eat them in reasonable doses, but exclude some foods from the diet should still be, such as sugar, flour, fried (pork chops), etc.
    I love baked meat with mashed potatoes. Nutritious and delicious!

    Why do you think this? What's your source for this claim?
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,267 Member
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    ganrygovard85 wrote: »
    The list of diets and what you can eat for lunch when losing weight can be very long, but you need to know the most important thing - the daily main meal, so it must contain all the necessary components: proteins, fats and carbohydrates. Boiled potatoes, a piece of bread, any porridge will not be an obstacle to weight loss if you eat them in reasonable doses, but exclude some foods from the diet should still be, such as sugar, flour, fried (pork chops), etc.
    I love baked meat with mashed potatoes. Nutritious and delicious!

    So, if grain is ground to the point of granularity appropriate to making porridge, it's a good food we can eat sometimes . . . but if it's ground further, to a finer granularity, so becomes flour . . . it's a bad food, must be excluded.

    However, if you bake the flour into bread, it can still be OK in reasonable doses, but in other cases, the flour is bad and should be excluded. (Not sure which are the bad cases: Most people don't just eat most types of flour by the spoonful, I think?)

    I'm confused by this.
  • Cluelessmama1979
    Cluelessmama1979 Posts: 129 Member
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    AnnPT77 wrote: »

    So, if grain is ground to the point of granularity appropriate to making porridge, it's a good food we can eat sometimes . . . but if it's ground further, to a finer granularity, so becomes flour . . . it's a bad food, must be excluded.

    However, if you bake the flour into bread, it can still be OK in reasonable doses, but in other cases, the flour is bad and should be excluded. (Not sure which are the bad cases: Most people don't just eat most types of flour by the spoonful, I think?)

    I'm confused by this.


    🤣 I love the way you broke this down. That was awesome.

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