As a dietitian who is a visible minority with a diverse background, one of my main goals is to help others eat healthy without eliminating their cultural foods. As a Canadian, I love that we celebrate diversity. However, I don’t see the diversity reflected on the new food guide.

This post is sponsored by Halal Living SPC. As always, all opinions are my own.

When starting to work towards a healthier lifestyle, many people get overwhelmed by the amount of information regarding health. A simple question can lead someone to multiple tabs open on their browser, left with even more unanswered questions. This sense of overwhelm often turns people away from healthy eating because it feels too complicated to even start.

One of those questions is often which vitamins you should be taking. Today, I wanted to go over some simple guidelines to help you determine if you should be taking vitamin supplementation. Here are 5 guidelines to help you decide which vitamin supplements you should be taking:

1. Review Your Current Food Intake

Before adding any supplementation, you should first review your current food intake. If you aren’t eating optimally to begin with, adding vitamins will not provide you with the energy and optimal health that you are looking for. Ideally, you can spe...

When you think of eating healthy, the first thing that comes to your mind is probably salad right? Well, what's salad without salad dressing? Just raw, boring vegetables, if you ask me! (OK fine you got me, I love eating raw veggies on their own too, I can't help the dietitian in me!) Regardless, I still think that the right salad dressing can make or break a salad.

That doesn't necessarily mean you should pick up any salad dressing while you are at the grocery store. While salad dressings may be disguised as a healthy condiment, they can quickly rack up on calories, fat, and sugar. Not to mention, a long list of ingredients you can't pronounce. Before you know it, your colourful salad isn't the healthiest option on your plate. 

Now you might be thinking, hey! I'll just pick up a low-fat or fat free salad dressing to avoid the extra calories and fat. Here's my dietitian tip for you: when an item is labelled as "fat-free" or "low fat", the fat is usually replaced with something else so th...