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 lower carbohydrate diet pointers:
* Use soy flour or bake mix. When you have to use flour for baking, substitute it with soy flour or a baking mix like Atkins bake mix. In most situtations, you may convert your most popular recipes that use normal wheat flour to use these lowcarb alternatives.

* Understand the food labels Watch out for the food label that proclaims 'low carb' - check the actual nutritional information on the reverse of the tin or packet. Some are only a little less and in some instances still more than a competitors usual brand. In addition, beware of 'low sugar' and 'low fat' labels - 'low sugar' does not always mean 'low carb' - usually the carbs are identical.

Foods rich in lycopene
(includes apricots, papaya & tomato puree)

The chemical lypcopene is a naturally occurring coloring agent and a member of the carotenid family of phytochemicals. It is accountable for the vivid red colour of many fruits and vegetables.

Unlike many other healthy agents, it is not damaged if it is cooked, rather it is actually increased in efficacy by cooking.

. Its key health contribution is that it is an antioxidant and is thought to help reduce the probabilty of cancer.

It is the most effective remover of singlet oxygen, which is connected with skin aging. It is also thought by many experts to curtail the growth of diseases affecting arterial blood vessels.