Food Exchanges for Diaic Diet

Food exchanges are a good way to vary your diet and stay committed to your dietary changes. Food exchanges for the Diaic diet, which is a vegetarian diet, are plentiful, interesting and delicious.

Background

The food pyramid is a good guide to follow when planning a healthy, balanced diet, but food exchanges elaborate on the food pyramid, giving you not only balance but variety and control.

There are three groups of food exchange lists covering the broad categories of nutritional substances: carbohydrates, fats and proteins. Food exchanges help you control you caloric intake by controlling portion sizes while suggesting different foods you can eat that will fit your dietary needs.

Food exchanges list foods by nutritional substance content and not by ingredients. For instance, bacon is not found on the protein exchange list, but on the fat exchange list, because of its high fat content.

How Food Exchanges Work

Food exchanges are not complicated to plan, especially if you use a food exchange list like the one provided by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on its website. After planning how many portions from each exchange you want to eat, you can plan what actual foods you want from each exchange list.

For instance, if you plan to eat two carbohydrate exchanges for lunch, you could plan to eat two slices of bread (one slice of bread is equal to one carbohydrate exchange), perhaps as part of a sandwich.

Vegetarian Diet

A vegetarian diet has been lauded as a heart-healthy, low-fat diet alternative. However, many people complain that vegetarian diets, such as the Diaic diet, are restrictive and bland, not allowing for a wide variety of foods in one's diet. Food exchanges can broaden your choices and help you stay committed to your dietary goals.