Eat for health: whole grains, calcium-rich foods, and good fat

Eating a nutritious, balanced diet will help you stay healthy and strong into your old age. Here are three food groups you need to eat daily and why.

• Dietary fibre—also called bulk or roughage—is simply the parts of plant foods that your body cannot absorb or digest. Whole-grain foods are filled with it. Eat more fibre, and you'll fill up faster, making weight control a breeze.
• Fibre may also ease constipation and diarrhea. In the long term, fibre may help control cholesterol, balance your blood sugar, and lower your risk of hemorrhoids, irritable bowel syndrome and diverticular disease (the development of small pouches in the colon).
• But whole grains deliver so much more than just fibre. When you add whole-grain breads and pastas, brown rice and other grains to your diet, you're getting not only the chewy, high-fibre hulls (the bran) that cover the grain but also the nutrition-packed germ and endosperm found in each grain.
• This complete grain package is a rich source of niacin, thiamin, riboflavin, magnesium, phosphorus, iron and zinc, as well as protein and a bit of good fat. This extra nutrition may be one reason people who eat whole grains have a reduced risk of diabetes and heart disease.

• Calcium's not just for bones anymore. While 99 percent of the calcium in your body is hard at work maintaining the strong, internal scaffolding that supports bones and teeth, the remaining one percent is a major player in keeping your cardiovascular system happy and your blood sugar control mechanisms healthy.
• A growing stack of research proves that calcium helps lower blood pressure, keeps arteries flexible, and assists your kidneys in flushing blood pressure–boosting sodium out of your body.
• In concert with other minerals such as magnesium and potassium, calcium can also lower your risk of insulin resistance—a potent risk factor for heart disease, diabetes and even some cancers—by up to 71 percent. It may also guard against memory loss and cut colon cancer risk by 36 percent.
• All this said, there's a controversy brewing about just how much calcium we really need. While major health organizations still recommend high levels, some experts and health organizations suggest that less milk and less calcium may be sufficient to protect bones and more.

• Learn the phrase "omega-3 fatty acids." This is the one type of fat in our diet that is truly terrific for our health.
• Omega-3s are found in foods such as fish, nuts and olive or canola oil. They are the building blocks for hormone-like compounds that reduce chronic inflammation—a modern health problem fired up by too much belly fat, too little exercise and a diet brimming with the wrong types of fats. New lab studies show that your body also uses good fats to make useful inflammation-fighting chemicals called resolvins.
• Yet most of us eat far too few omega-3s these days, and far too many omega-6s—a fat found in high levels in corn, safflower, soybean, sunflower and sesame oils. Omega-6 fats help your body produce compounds that increase inflammation. In prehistoric times, people ate omega-3s and omega-6s in nearly equal proportions; today, we consume as many as 30 times more omega-6s.
• Eating yummy foods like salmon, peanut butter, walnuts and good-for-you oils can correct this balance. You may slash your risk of heart attack and stroke and possibly cut your odds for arthritis pain and depression, too.