What do these exchanges mean?
 

I was plundering around the web and I found a dietary exchange chart. I didn't put the whole one here.

I've never done a diet with exchanges. I've seen some of the recipes on here that reference them.

Does this mean that I'm supposed to eat (1400 cal diet) 3 milk products, 3 veggies, 4 fruit, 6 bread, etc per day?

I'm asking because I'm getting ready to banish all meat (except fish and poultry) from my diet for a while.

Type of Exchange 1200 Cal Diet 1400 Cal Diet 1600 Cal Diet 1800 Cal Diet
Milk 2 3 3 3
Vegetable 2 3 4 4
Fruit 3 4 4 4
Bread 5 6 6 7
etc.

TIA

Gosh, hon, I don't know. Maybe someone else can help?

Exchanges just make things a little simpler -- instead of looking up the calories (or the carbs or the fat or whatever you are concerned about) for each individual fruit (just for example) and exchange list would tell you that a cup of blueberries; a cup and a half of strawberries; and a medium apple all equal ONE Fruit Exchange. Another (perhaps better) example is -- the average smallish piece of bread is ONE Carb Exchange -- so is 1/2 cup cooked rice or 1/2 cup cooked pasta or 6 saltine crackers. Weight Watchers used to be an 'exchange-based' system back when dinosaurs still roamed the earth.

Hope that helps a little.

Exchanges grew out of the old diabetic diet. This was usually based on how many servings you could have per day of each group. The name then changed exchanges. It just means that you don't have to restrict yourself to one food. You could exchange one fruit for another, one vegetable for another, and get more variety in you diet.

Use whatever system is the easiest for you to lose.