The renewed Canadian Food Guide and many popular holistically-balanced diets have come to use
★Plate Balance
rather than the old-fashioned
▲Food Pyramid or Triangle
HGI has developed “HoliGou” bear plate
(sounds Holiguu with English/French pronunciation) which can help us to memorize visually and make our plate healthier and balanced-nutritious.
There are 6 parts on the HoliGou bear, namely
1)Water
2)Seasoning picking from the 5 choices of Ssssm(See below)
3)VegeFru
4)Carb
5)Protein
6)Fat
VegeFru Part of 3) is further divided to 5 parts, namely
31)Fruits
32)Veg Dark
33)Veg Light
34)Wild Veg Mountain-Mushroom
35)Wild Veg Sea-Sea Vegetable like Kombu(Kelp)
Let’s try to
Pick up our favorite foods/produces for the each part-Japanese Example
Here is my ‘Traditional Japanese’ (Wa-shoku’) example.
Seasoning part of 2), we can pick up one of the 5 choices, namely, Ssssm that stands for
21)Salt (might be the most essential choice to live)
22)suger
23)sourness (ex. vinegar, lemon)
24)soy sauce (fermented Soy liquid)
25)miso (fermented Soy paste)
I picked up 24) Soy sauce instead of Salt because
+traditional healthy diet in Japan has been based of Soy & Rice,and
+fermented food like soy sauce and Miso makes dishes delicious by adding complexed flavors including ‘Umami’.
These foods/produces could be cooked as below,
traditional Japanese healthy recipes, Rice and Soup (with Kombu/Shitake broths) plus fresh raw Tofu.
The right photo is when extra dark veg and apple are added.
To conclude, I would like to say
We DON’T NEED TOO MANY KINDS OF FOODS, but
All we need is simply the 6 categories on the HoliGou bear with 10 food ingredients
in order to realize healthier but gourmet eating!
You don’t need to make a long line at supermarkets every days, but
just need to check
You ONLY have your FAVORITE 10 food ingredients at minimum in your fridge and pantry.
This is Japanese and Asian friendly version, but the Western version is based on the same HoliGou Bear Plate with Western-local ingredients. Since I am a global nomad who love both the East (Asian) and West foods/diet, I would show the Western-versioned HoliGou Bear soon.
Lastly but importantly,
this HoliGou Bear plate is almost in line with the renewed Canadian Food Guide (2019)
which shows and recommends the following plate balance without Water, Seasonings, Fat parts.
Again, you don’t need so many various food ingredients under the current Covid19 circumstances with limited shopping and ingredients. It is more delicious and gourmet with many varsities, but
★at first, start thinking simple with 10 ingredients, which could make you free from food stacks, clutters, then stressed.
