“Finding Your Way to a Healthier You” is a brochure that goes through processes on how to choose smart, healthy foods to eat. The three main tips the brochure emphasizes to create a healthier diet includes:
-Increase fruits, vegetables, and whole grains
-Do not forget about your lean meats, poultry, fish, beans, eggs, and nuts
-Find foods low in saturated and trans fats, cholesterol, sodium and added sugars
Next, the brochure lists ways to avoid eating unhealthy whether you are shopping in the grocery store, eating out at a restaurant, or going on a long trip away from home. I feel this would be extremely beneficial to the audience because remembering your limits and restrictions when it comes to food may be a challenge once you leave your home.
The brochure includes a page that might look familiar to any nutrition advocate. It states the five main food groups that should be incorporated into every daily diet by using these sayings: Focus on Fruits, Vary your veggies, Get you calcium-rich foods, make half of your grains whole and Go lean with protein. The brochure also states to know the limits on fats, salt and sugars. After each of the five sayings are suggestions on how to bring these foods into your diet. Preparation methods, portion sizes and substitutes are all mentioned as well. I think this page is one of the most important to this brochure. People may be aware of the main food groups they should be eating, but might not know what food specifically meet each category without adding too much fats, sodium and cholesterol in the diet.
Also included in the brochure is a picture of nutrition label along with side notes to each part to help people better understand how to read it. Being able to read and interpret a nutrition label will let people compare and contrast a single food item to another by viewing the nutrient levels in each. As the brochure emphasized before, shoppers should look for the food item that has the least saturated and trans fats, cholesterol, sodium and added sugars.
Diet is not the only factor that should be of concern to someone looking to improve his or her health. Physical activity should become a regular daily routine to increase your metabolism, maintain or lower weight and balance your calorie intake. The brochure recommends taking 30 minutes out of your day to get your blood flowing faster. Kids and teenagers should take part in some activity for 60 minutes a day.
Overall, I believe this brochure is a great way to get either an individual or a family become aware on how to start or maintain a healthy lifestyle. The brochure uses multiple pictures and large text to keep your attention and provides a sufficient amount of examples to ensure that the audience understands what kind of foods and how much exercise they should be getting on a daily basis. This brochure should be placed in places such as grocery stores, schools and work facilities to increase awareness of how to live a healthy life.
To view the brochure yourself, visit: http://www.health.gov/dietaryguidelines/dga2005/document/pdf/brochure.pdf