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Learn about HumanaNatura’s OurPlate Healthy Eating Guide

HumanaNatura’s OurPlate healthy eating model offers more than just important overall guidance on the best way to eat naturally and optimally.

You can also use the OurPlate model to quickly rate meals and meal options anytime. Rating meals with OurPlate is easy and often quite powerful – quickly leading to new food health awareness and improved eating choices.

With just a bit of practice, an OurPlate meal score can be created for any meal, following a few simple steps.

Rating Meals Naturally With OurPlate

HumanaNatura’s OurPlate Meal Rating Summary (Click to Enlarge)

To rate a meal using HumanaNatura’s OurPlate healthy eating model, follow these five steps:

#1: Points for vegetables – give a meal six points if it is at least half vegetables by volume (excluding grains and beans, foods that are not part of the OurPlate approach, but including starchy vegetables and plant roots). If the amount of raw veggies is less than half of the meal, adjust the points downward proportionately. In any case, the maximum score for included vegetables is six points, reflecting the diminishing natural benefits of adding further vegetables to a meal, however healthy they may be.

#2: Points for natural proteins – give the meal an additional two points if one serving of a natural protein is included. As before, two points is the maximum score for protein foods, regardless of how much is included. In this case, this limit reflects not only diminishing benefits from added proteins in a meal, but also the significant waste of natural resources and even risks of health reduction from long-term excesses of protein foods in our diet. As indicated in the OurPlate graphic, note that HumanaNatura defines natural human protein foods – in rough order of desirability – as naturally raised fish, nuts and seeds, eggs, dairy, meats, and poultry (while dairy is not strictly natural, we view it as an acceptable and perhaps superior substitute for meat, if dairy is well-tolerated and especially when it is 100% pasture-raised and grass-fed).

#3: Points for natural fruit – give the meal an additional two points if it includes at least one serving of fruit, either in the form of sweet fruits or lower-carb vegetable fruits. However, do not give points for sugar-rich and appetite-elevating dried fruits, which HumanaNatura discourages. Once again, two points is the maximum score for added fruit.

#4: Take-down for other foods – subtract two points for each serving of other foods that are included in the meal, such as grains, cereals, legumes, or beans, but this time with no limit on the number of points that can be taken away.

#5: Special take-down for sweets – subtract four points for each serving of sweets, including sugary foods and beverages, that are part of the meal, regardless of the sugar source and again with no limit on the number of points that can be taken away.

As you can see, the maximum possible meal score with the OurPlate rating formula is 10. In practice, this score is most easily achieved via vegetable-rich and health-optimizing Salad Meals and Steam Meals that follow the Natural Eating guidelines in HumanaNatura’s Personal Health Program.

Importantly, however, many modern meals will score well below 10, and even below zero, reflecting their potential to have strongly negative health effects on us and the environment. As highlighted by the five-step OurPlate rating formula, this is especially true when meals include unhealthy processed foods, unnatural sweets and foods with added sugars, or ecologically harmful grains and beans grown as annual monocrops.

Explore OurPlate & Become Naturally Healthier!

In practice, HumanaNatura has found this simple approach to meal rating accurately reflects the overall quality of most meals, and is a great short-cut to quickly and reliably gauge the personal and ecological health impacts of the meals we eat each day. Note that the OurPlate rating system doesn’t apply to snacks, but the overall OurPlate model does – favoring raw veggies and then natural proteins and fruits over other snack choices.

Learn more about preparing delicious OurPlate meals and HumanaNatura’s overall approach to modern nutrition via the many example meal posts on NaturaLife, and explore HumanaNatura’s detailed dietary principles and guidelines via the Natural Eating section of our Personal Health Program.

As you will quickly see, the OurPlate healthy eating guide and HumanaNatura’s larger technique of Natural Eating form a powerful but flexible approach to modern nutrition. Using the OurPlate model and Natural Eating guidelines, even for just a few weeks, you will find that HumanaNatura and OurPlate offer a clear, natural, and health-transforming approach to both our daily meals and lifelong eating patterns.

And as you achieve new personal health, fitness, and well-being from the HumanaNatura approach to Natural Eating, perhaps you will become interested in HumanaNatura’s other natural health techniques – Natural Exercise, Natural Living, and Natural Communities – which you can learn about at The Four HumanaNatura Techniques.

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