EATING WELL

EVERY YEAR THE ACADEMY OF NUTRITION AND DIETETICS celebrates March as National Nutrition Month ^® . The mission of this annual campaign is to promote nutrition education and information on healthful eating. This year, the key message is to develop a healthful eating pattern using your favorite foods.

We celebrate that America is a cultural melting pot with many different cuisines and approaches to food preparation. Eating should be a fun and joyful experience for everyone, so it’s amazing and gratifying to see supermarkets increasingly diversify their shelves to meet customer needs. It is now easier than ever to create healthful, nutritious meals that align with a variety of cultural preferences.

It is also amazing to see the wide range of restaurants in our area that offer delicious foods from different cultures, for example Indian, Asian, Lebanese, and even a very new Peruvian restaurant I can’t wait to try! Variety truly is the “spice of life,” and at mealtime, it’s the wide variety of cultural flavors that really makes life and eating interesting!

Personalize your immuneboosting plate

I’m switching gears a little here, but I wanted to expand upon the topic of making healthy food choices to boost our immune function—the subject of last month’s column and an ongoing theme here as well. As COVID-19 numbers fluctuate up and down (and hopefully continue trending downward now that the vaccination program is underway), keep in mind that it’s still important to make healthy food choices to keep your body’s natural defenses strong. After all, we still have the annual flu to contend with, not to mention newer strains of coronavirus that are starting to make headlines.

When creating your healthy plate, keep these nutrient-dense foods in mind:

• Bok choy and leafy greens like spinach and kale—These are rich in magnesium and help the body fight inflammation. They are easy to add into recipes like stir fry, omelets, and soups. Other good magnesium sources are legumes, nuts, seeds, and whole grains.

• Vitamin D—We’ve talked about Vitamin D supplementation in previous articles, but it is so important right now when we don’t have the sun to help us manufacture it. Other than the D3 supplements, you can choose fatty fish like salmon and tuna, mushrooms, and vitamin-Dfortified milk, OJ, and cereals.

• Fermented foods— Growing research suggests that most of our immune function lives in our gut. Keeping your gut healthy has a direct impact on your immune function. Good bacteria reside in fermented foods such as yogurt, kefir, kimchi, sauerkraut, and tempeh. These all contain healthy probiotics and act as prebiotics in the gut.

• Lastly, the Mediterranean diet—As regular readers know, I’ve discussed the Mediterranean diet many times in this space, but I can’t say enough good things about choosing whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and omega-3-rich foods like olive oil and seafood. This way of eating has been shown to improve immune function significantly and to be anti-inflammatory.

Of course, this just scratches the surface of ways to Personalize Your Plate with healthier food choices. For more information and ideas, visit the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics’ website at eatright.org.

Beyond that, try to use National Nutrition Month as an opportunity to spice up your menus with a variety of foods and flavors that you enjoy—as well as a good excuse to add new flavors and expand your palate. Personalize the choices to suit your preferences. And, of course, in addition to making healthy, informed food choices, I encourage you to find a healthy physical activity that you can follow all year long.

Laurie Syring, RD/LD, is Clinical Nutrition Manager at ProMedica Flower Hospital.