Maintaining a healthy diet is crucial for preventing malnutrition and noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). This article provides practical advice on making healthy dietary choices and understanding the key components of a balanced diet for people of all ages. Good nutrition is about consistently choosing healthy foods and beverages.
Understanding the Basics of Healthy Eating
Healthy eating emphasizes a variety of food groups, including fruits, vegetables, whole grains, dairy, and protein. According to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, most people in the United States need to increase their intake of dietary fiber, calcium, vitamin D, and potassium while reducing their consumption of added sugar, saturated fat, and sodium.
Key Nutrients and Their Benefits
- Dietary Fiber: Essential for maintaining digestive health, helps control blood sugar, and lowers cholesterol levels. It also helps us feel fuller longer.
- Calcium and Vitamin D: These nutrients work together to promote optimal bone health. While our bodies can produce vitamin D from sunshine, some people may need fortified foods and beverages to meet their needs.
- Potassium: Vital for the proper function of the kidneys, heart, muscles, and nerves. Most people in the United States need to consume more potassium.
Foods to Limit
- Added Sugars: Excessive consumption can lead to weight gain, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease. Be mindful of added sugars listed as cane juice, corn syrup, dextrose, and fructose. Table sugar, maple syrup, and honey are also considered added sugars.
- Saturated Fats: Replacing saturated fats with healthier unsaturated fats can help protect your heart. While some dietary fat is necessary for energy, cell development, and vitamin absorption, unsaturated fats are a better choice.
- Sodium: High sodium intake can raise the risk of high blood pressure, heart attack, and stroke. Since more than 70% of the sodium Americans consume comes from packaged and prepared foods, it’s essential to read labels carefully.
Practical Tips for Maintaining a Healthy Diet
Emphasize Fruits and Vegetables
Aim to eat at least five portions of a variety of fruits and vegetables each day. Fruits and vegetables are a good source of vitamins, minerals, and fiber, and should make up just over a third of the food you eat each day. A good practice is to aim for a variety of colors on your plate. Fruit and vegetable intake can be improved by:
- Always including vegetables in meals.
- Eating fresh fruit and raw vegetables as snacks.
- Eating fresh fruit and vegetables that are in season.
- Eating a variety of fruits and vegetables.
Choose Whole Grains
Starchy foods should make up just over a third of everything you eat. Base your meals on starchy foods, choosing whole grain or wholemeal varieties such as brown rice, whole wheat pasta, and brown or wholemeal bread. These contain more fiber, vitamins, and minerals than white varieties. Potatoes with the skins on are a great source of fiber and vitamins.
Include Lean Protein Sources
These foods are all good sources of protein, which is essential for the body to grow and repair itself. They're also good sources of a range of vitamins and minerals. Meat is a good source of protein, vitamins and minerals, including iron, zinc and B vitamins. It's also one of the main sources of vitamin B12. Choose lean cuts of meat and skinless poultry whenever possible to cut down on fat. Always cook meat thoroughly. Try to eat less red and processed meat like bacon, ham and sausages. Eggs and fish are also good sources of protein, and contain many vitamins and minerals. Oily fish is particularly rich in omega-3 fatty acids. Aim to eat at least 2 portions of fish a week, including 1 portion of oily fish. You can choose from fresh, frozen or canned, but remember that canned and smoked fish can often be high in salt. Pulses, including beans, peas and lentils, are naturally very low in fat and high in fibre, protein, vitamins and minerals. Nuts are high in fibre, and unsalted nuts make a good snack.
Read also: The Hoxsey Diet
Limit Unhealthy Fats
Reducing the amount of total fat intake to less than 30% of total energy intake helps to prevent unhealthy weight gain in the adult population. The risk of developing NCDs is lowered by reducing saturated fats to less than 10% of total energy intake, reducing trans-fats to less than 1% of total energy intake, and replacing both saturated fats and trans-fats with unsaturated fats - in particular, with polyunsaturated fats. Fat intake, especially saturated fat and industrially-produced trans-fat intake, can be reduced by:
- Steaming or boiling instead of frying when cooking.
- Replacing butter, lard, and ghee with oils rich in polyunsaturated fats, such as soybean, canola (rapeseed), corn, safflower and sunflower oils.
- Eating reduced-fat dairy foods and lean meats, or trimming visible fat from meat.
- Limiting the consumption of baked and fried foods, and pre-packaged snacks and foods (e.g. doughnuts, cakes, pies, cookies, biscuits and wafers) that contain industrially-produced trans-fats.
Reduce Salt Intake
Most people consume too much sodium through salt (corresponding to consuming an average of 9-12 g of salt per day) and not enough potassium (less than 3.5 g). This leads to raised blood pressure, which in turn increases the risk of heart disease and stroke. Reducing salt intake to the recommended level of less than 5 g per day could prevent 1.7 million deaths each year. Salt intake can be reduced by:
- Limiting the amount of salt and high-sodium condiments (e.g. soy sauce, fish sauce and bouillon) when cooking and preparing foods.
- Not having salt or high-sodium sauces on the table.
- Limiting the consumption of salty snacks.
- Choosing products with lower sodium content.
Minimize Sugar Consumption
In both adults and children, the intake of free sugars should be reduced to less than 10% of total energy intake. A reduction to less than 5% of total energy intake would provide additional health benefits. Sugars intake can be reduced by:
- Limiting the consumption of foods and drinks containing high amounts of sugars, such as sugary snacks, candies and sugar-sweetened beverages (i.e. soft drinks, fruit or vegetable juices and drinks, liquid and powder concentrates, flavoured water, energy and sports drinks, ready‐to‐drink tea, ready‐to‐drink coffee and flavoured milk drinks).
- Eating fresh fruit and raw vegetables as snacks instead of sugary snacks.
The Healthy Eating Plate
The Healthy Eating Plate is a visual guide for creating healthy, balanced meals. It emphasizes:
- Vegetables: The more veggies - and the greater the variety - the better.
- Fruits: Eat plenty of fruits of all kinds.
- Whole Grains: Choose a variety of whole grains like whole-wheat bread, whole-grain pasta, and brown rice.
- Healthy Protein: Fish, poultry, beans, and nuts are all healthy, versatile protein sources.
- Healthy Plant Oils: Choose healthy vegetable oils like olive, canola, soy, corn, sunflower, and peanut oils. Avoid partially hydrogenated oils, which contain unhealthy trans fats.
- Water: Drink water, tea, or coffee with little or no sugar. Limit milk/dairy (1-2 servings/day) and juice (1 small glass/day).
The Healthy Eating Plate does not define a certain number of calories or servings per day from each food group but suggests approximate relative proportions of each of the food groups to include on a healthy plate.
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Specific Nutritional Advice for Infants and Young Children
In the first two years of a child’s life, optimal nutrition fosters healthy growth and improves cognitive development. Advice on a healthy diet for infants and children is similar to that for adults, but the following elements are also important:
- Infants should be breastfed exclusively during the first 6 months of life.
- Infants should be breastfed continuously until 2 years of age and beyond.
- From 6 months of age, breast milk should be complemented with a variety of adequate, safe, and nutrient-dense foods.
- Salt and sugars should not be added to complementary foods.
The Role of Government and Public Health Initiatives
Governments play a central role in creating a healthy food environment that enables people to adopt and maintain healthy dietary practices. Effective actions by policymakers include:
- Creating coherence in national policies and investment plans to promote a healthy diet and protect public health.
- Increasing incentives for producers and retailers to grow, use, and sell fresh fruit and vegetables.
- Reducing incentives for the food industry to continue or increase production of processed foods containing high levels of saturated fats, trans-fats, free sugars, and salt/sodium.
- Encouraging reformulation of food products to reduce the contents of saturated fats, trans-fats, free sugars, and salt/sodium, with the goal of eliminating industrially-produced trans-fats.
- Implementing the WHO recommendations on the marketing of foods and non-alcoholic beverages to children.
- Establishing standards to foster healthy dietary practices through ensuring the availability of healthy, nutritious, safe, and affordable foods in pre-schools, schools, other public institutions, and the workplace.
- Exploring regulatory and voluntary instruments (e.g. marketing regulations and nutrition labeling policies), and economic incentives or disincentives (e.g. the addition of front-of-pack labeling to facilitate consumer understanding; and providing nutrition and dietary counseling at primary health-care facilities.
- Promoting appropriate infant and young child feeding practices.
Maintaining a Heart-Healthy Diet
A healthy diet and lifestyle are key to preventing and managing cardiovascular disease. It’s the overall pattern of your choices that counts. Start by knowing how many calories you should eat and drink to maintain your weight. Nutrition and calorie information on food labels is typically based on a 2,000-calorie-per-day diet. Aim for at least 150 minutes of moderate physical activity or 75 minutes of vigorous physical activity (or an equal combination of both) each week. Regular physical activity can help you maintain your weight, keep off weight that you lose and reach physical and cardiovascular fitness. It is possible to follow a heart-healthy dietary pattern regardless of whether food is prepared at home, ordered in a restaurant or online, or purchased as a prepared meal. Read the Nutrition Facts and ingredient list on packaged food labels to choose those with less sodium, added sugars and saturated fat.
WHO's Response to Promote Healthy Diets
The World Health Organization (WHO) has been actively promoting healthy diets through various initiatives. The "WHO Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health" was adopted in 2004 to support healthy diets and physical activity at global, regional, and local levels. In 2010, the Health Assembly endorsed a set of recommendations on the marketing of foods and non-alcoholic beverages to children. In 2013, the Health Assembly agreed to nine global voluntary targets for the prevention and control of NCDs, including a halt to the rise in diabetes and obesity, and a 30% relative reduction in the intake of salt by 2025.
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