Healthy eating – the South African guidelines in plain language

Most eating advice you will read online was written for someone else's supermarket. South Africa has its own set of official guidelines, built around a South African plate — pap, samp, bread, beans, maas, seasonal vegetables — rather than around foods that are hard to find or expensive here.

They are deliberately simple, because they are meant to be usable by everyone from a household on a tight budget to a dietitian. There is no calorie counting and nothing you have to weigh.

• Enjoy a variety of foods — no single food gives you everything.
• Be active.
• Make starchy foods part of most meals.
• Eat plenty of vegetables and fruit every day.
• Eat dry beans, split peas, lentils and soya regularly.
• Have milk, maas or yoghurt every day.
• Fish, chicken, lean meat or eggs can be eaten daily.
• Drink lots of clean, safe water.
• Use fats sparingly, and choose vegetable oils rather than hard fats.
• Use sugar, and foods and drinks high in sugar, sparingly.
• Use salt, and foods high in salt, sparingly.

A lot of imported diet advice treats starch as something to eliminate. The South African guidelines do not, and that is deliberate: starchy foods are the affordable base of most households' meals, and telling people to cut them out mostly succeeds in making them feel they have failed.

What changes the outcome is which starch and how much. Whole-grain or higher-fibre versions — brown bread instead of white, samp, whole-wheat pasta, sorghum — release their energy more slowly and keep you full longer. Maize meal and bread in South Africa are also fortified by law with vitamins and iron, which is one of the reasons they remain in the guidelines rather than being dismissed.

If you only change two things, make them these. Both are named in the guidelines and both are the subject of their own South African regulation, which tells you how much they matter here.

1. 1Cut down on salt. Most of the salt South Africans eat was already in the food before it reached the kitchen — bread, stock cubes, soup powders, processed meat and snacks.
2. 2Cut down on sugary drinks. A cool drink delivers a large amount of sugar with no fullness at all, so it adds to everything else you eat rather than replacing any of it.

Neither requires a special product, a supplement or a subscription. Both are free to do, starting with the next meal.

Dry beans, split peas, lentils and soya get a guideline of their own. They are among the least expensive protein available in South Africa, they are high in fibre, and swapping some of your meat for them lowers saturated fat without lowering protein.

Maas, milk and yoghurt likewise have their own guideline, mostly for calcium — which matters for bone strength across a whole life, and which very few South African adults get enough of.

Vegetables do not have to be fresh to count. Frozen mixed vegetables retain their nutrients well, keep for months, and are often easier to have on hand than fresh ones that spoil.

Diet is one lever among several. If you have high blood pressure, diabetes, kidney disease or high cholesterol, the guidelines still apply, but your clinician may adjust them — protein and potassium in kidney disease, for example, or carbohydrate timing if you use insulin.