Did you know, it’s been over a decade since health organisations advised us on the calorie intake? (2,000 calories a day for women and 2,500 for men) And even though the recommended number of calories we should be consuming hasn’t changed (thankfully!) Public Health England (PHE) has launched a new campaign: ‘One You’ which informs us on when we should be consuming these calories and how they should be distributed throughout the day.
PHE is advising that we should follow a new ‘400-600-600’ format for calorie intake, that’s 400 calories for breakfast, 600 calories for lunch and 600 calories for evening meals. Any remaining calories from your daily recommended allowance should be allocated to healthy snacks such as fruit and vegetables.
The campaign was launched after reports that the NHS is spending £6 billion a year treating obesity-related illnesses. Highlighting, that overweight or obese boys and girls consume up to 500 and 290 more calories than recommended each day and adults consume 200 to 300 calories in excess every day.
To help combat overeating across the UK, PHE is also setting a target for food manufacturers who make food products and meals over 600 calories, by asking them to reduce 20% of the calories in these foods by 2025. If this 20% target is met within 5 years, more than 35,000 premature deaths could be prevented and around £9 billion in NHS healthcare and social care costs could be saved over a 25-year period.
Our founder, Kirsty Henshaw developed all our recipes to be under 400 calories and our Minis range includes meals that are all under 300 calories too. To make things easier to digest, we’ve provided a calorie run down of all of our meals below:
It’s really important to ensure you’re getting the right amount of calories, as well as nutrients every day to keep healthy. To get started it may help to keep a food diary – You can make your own or find one here. There are also useful apps that can be downloaded to your smartphone or tablet that make recording your meals and counting your calories easier such as, Lifesum or MyFitnessPal.
We would love to hear how you are getting on with your calorie control journey, so please keep us updated on our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages.