What is a healthy diet? It’s not about counting calories, measuring portions or cutting carbs. You won't really find a healthy diet on the lite menu at your favourite restaurant and you certainly won't find it at the local fast food joint. A healthy diet is all about what you eat rather than how much you eat.

If you think the latest fad diet is your panacea to health, you are in for a big surprise. Losing weight, staying healthy and getting back into shape after many years of diet neglect is not about fads or eating in some radical new way for six to twelve weeks and then going back to the way you used to eat.

The best thing you can do to keep yourself healthy is to eat a healthy diet all the time, not just when you want to lose weight. Eating healthy is a long-term lifestyle choice, something you need to do for your entire lifetime.

But what is a healthy diet? Is it what we have been lead to believe milk for strong bones and teeth, protein in the form of lean beef or chicken and maybe a healthy microwave dinner if we are on the go. Unfortunately this diet is what is identified as the Standard American Diet or the SAD.

And what's so wrong with the SAD?

Well, has it made us a healthier people? Are we better off as a nation because of it?