VIDEO: The Traffic Light Diet

What is the Traffic Light Diet?

The Traffic Light diet was created by a PHD and nutritionist Leonard Epstein. It’s based on foods as well as ingredients which are arranged into three categories these of which have a definitive colour. The green foods are counted as the healthiest of them, the amber foods are equivalently high in nutrients and calories and the red ones are the foods that should be consumed less often or if not avoided.

How it works?

The Traffic Light Diet is really simple to follow and is easy to use as well as helping you to embark on a healthy diet. The traffic light diet consists of using the three colours of road signalling systems. The red stands for danger, amber stands for caution and green for go. However many supermarkets have started to use this colours on their labels.

The traffic light diet is made up of three colours red, amber and green.
The three colours act as markers for the food groups of that colour. Foods in the red category cause problems as they are the ones which contain a high amount of calories and only a tiny amount of nutrients. Yellow, these are the foods that are less healthy they are rich in calories but they do have a higher amount of nutrients an example of these could be pasta, poultry and potatoes. Green, these are the foods that are healthy the foods that are both very low nutrients as well as calories and you can eat as much as you want. An example is fruits and yoghurts.

Each category has different foods in it:

Red Foods:
• Anything that is not included in the Green and Amber category will almost certainly be placed in to this group. These foods are high in calories and they contain lesser nutrients than the other two groups.

Amber Foods:
• This group of foods will be rich in both nutrients and calories. The colour coded charts on the back of foods should help you determine how much of food is still healthy as well as adding benefits to your diet plan. The foods that are listed in this group are high fibre cereals and breads, seeds, pasta, oily fish, lean meat, poultry, potatoes, low fat cheese, nuts and rice.

Green Foods:
• This is the healthiest group and is highly recommended for losing weight as well as to improve your overall health. The foods that are in this group consist of Fruits and vegetables, low-fat yoghurt and milk as well as seafood and white fish.

How much weight can you lose?
On this diet if followed properly you can lose up to at least one pound a week and with consuming more healthy foods you are giving yourself a much healthier lifestyle.

Diet tips

Even though the red foods are to be avoided or consumed less, this diet does not mean that you should eliminate eating the red foods but overall to consume less of these would be better for health.

The categories can then be divided into size so it’s easier to manage. The foods in the green group can be eaten as much as desired, however the amber group foods are to be consumed moderately and should be balanced along with red foods being consumed only occasionally.

When on this diet it’s best to consume more meals per day which preferably consist of more green foods on the plate such as fruits, vegetables or fish. Then you can start to add small amounts of amber foods such as cheese, yoghurt or eggs and finally have less of the red food on your plate such as whole milk and red meat.

The Traffic Light Diet will help you control your calorie intake as the meals need to be planned carefully. The point of the diet is to reduce the amount of calories that you take in but still have the nutrients the food offers us. Also perseverance is needed as well as motivation to help you get into a healthy eating routine.

A good benefit of this diet it has no cravings or even side effects and as well as that it will help you to change your lifestyle. However with portions not being restricted you will need to have self control. It’s also followed by many people just because it is a simple plan to follow and to adjust to.