A healthy diet is essential for overall well-being, protecting against chronic noncommunicable diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. Good nutrition involves consistently choosing healthy foods and beverages, emphasizing fruits, vegetables, whole grains, dairy, and protein. This article provides practical tips and guidelines for developing a healthy diet, drawing on recommendations from experts and scientific studies.
Understanding the Basics of a Healthy Diet
A healthy diet comprises a combination of different foods, including:
- Staples: Cereals (wheat, barley, rye, maize, or rice) or starchy tubers or roots (potato, yam, taro, or cassava). Choose wholegrain or wholemeal varieties of starchy foods such as brown rice, wholewheat pasta, and brown, wholemeal, or higher fibre white bread.
- Legumes: Lentils and beans.
- Fruits and Vegetables: Important sources of vitamins, minerals, dietary fibre, plant protein, and antioxidants.
- Foods from Animal Sources: Meat, fish, eggs, and milk. Dairy recommendations include low-fat or fat-free milk, lactose-free milk, and fortified soy beverages. Other plant-based beverages do not have the same nutritional properties as animal's milk and soy beverages.
Most people in the United States need to increase their intake of dietary fiber, calcium, vitamin D, and potassium, according to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. At the same time, it's crucial to reduce the consumption of added sugar, saturated fat, and sodium.
Key Nutrients and Their Benefits
- Fiber: Helps maintain digestive health, promotes a feeling of fullness, controls blood sugar, and lowers cholesterol levels.
- Calcium and Vitamin D: Work together to promote optimal bone health. The body can produce vitamin D from sunshine, but some individuals may require fortified foods or supplements.
- Potassium: Helps the kidneys, heart, muscles, and nerves function properly.
Reducing Harmful Components in Your Diet
- Added Sugars: Can contribute to weight gain, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease. Common names for added sugars include cane juice, corn syrup, dextrose, and fructose. Table sugar, maple syrup, and honey are also considered added sugars.
- Saturated Fat: Replacing saturated fat with healthier unsaturated fats can help protect your heart. Unsaturated vegetable oils (olive, soy, sunflower, or corn oil) are preferable to animal fats or oils high in saturated fats (butter, ghee, lard, coconut, and palm oil). Consumption of total fat should not exceed 30% of a person's overall energy intake.
- Sodium: Eating too much sodium can raise the risk of high blood pressure, heart attack, and stroke. More than 70% of the sodium Americans consume comes from packaged and prepared foods. Aim to reduce sodium intake by using food labels to help you cut down. More than 1.5g of salt per 100g means the food is high in salt. Adults and children aged 11 and over should eat no more than 6g of salt (about a teaspoonful) a day.
Practical Tips for a Healthier Diet
Here are 25 ways to make your usual diet slightly healthier over time:
- Eat from Smaller Plates: Using smaller dinnerware can trick your brain into thinking you’re eating more, reducing the likelihood of overeating.
- Eat Your Greens First: Enjoying vegetables as a starter can lead to eating fewer calories overall and benefit blood sugar levels.
- Keep Dressing, Dips, and Condiments on the Side: This allows you to control the amount of high-calorie additions to your meals.
- Slow Down: Eating slowly allows your brain time to register fullness, potentially reducing calorie consumption.
- Don’t Shop Without a List: Planning your grocery list ahead of time and avoiding shopping while hungry can prevent impulse buying of unhealthy items.
- Stay Away from “Diet” Foods: These foods often contain added sugar and other ingredients to compensate for reduced fat content.
- Cook at Home More Often: Cooking at home allows you to control ingredients and portion sizes, reducing the risk of obesity and improving diet quality.
- Try at Least One New Recipe Per Week: This can add diversity to your diet and introduce new, nutritious recipes into your routine.
- Bake or Roast Instead of Grilling or Frying: Healthier cooking methods don’t promote the formation of harmful compounds linked to health conditions.
- Opt for More Nutritious Foods When Ordering Out: Choose restaurants with healthier options and make mindful choices when eating out.
- Increase Your Protein Intake: Protein is filling and helps retain muscle mass, making you less likely to overeat.
- Add Greek Yogurt to Your Diet: Greek yogurt is a good source of protein and contains fewer carbs and less lactose than regular yogurt.
- Eat Eggs, Preferably for Breakfast: Eating eggs in the morning increases feelings of fullness and reduces calorie consumption at later meals.
- Replace Sugary Drinks with Sparkling Water: This reduces intake of non-beneficial calories and excess sugar.
- Drink Your Coffee Black from Time to Time: Avoid added sugar, syrup, heavy cream, and sweeteners.
- Eat Your Fruits Instead of Drinking Them: Whole fruits contain fiber and plant compounds that are digested slowly, preventing major spikes in blood sugar levels.
- Choose Whole-Grain Bread Instead of Refined: Whole grains have been linked to a variety of health benefits, including a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
- Pick Popcorn Instead of Chips: Popcorn is a whole grain that’s loaded with nutrients and fiber.
- Eat Fresh Berries Instead of Dried Ones: Fresh berries are lower in sugar and contain fewer calories than dried varieties.
- Opt for Heart-Healthy Oils: Swap highly processed seed and vegetable oils for less processed alternatives like extra virgin olive oil, avocado oil, or coconut oil.
- Choose Baked Potatoes Over French Fries: Baked potatoes contain significantly fewer calories than french fries.
- Drink Enough Water: Drinking enough water can reduce your appetite and food intake during meals. Aim for 6 to 8 glasses every day.
- Take Omega-3 and Vitamin D Supplements: These nutrients are often lacking in diets, and supplements can help ensure adequate intake.
- Become More Active: Exercise improves mood, decreases feelings of depression, anxiety, and stress, and may help you lose weight. Aim to do about 30 minutes of moderate to high intensity exercise each day.
- Get a Good Night’s Sleep: Sleep deprivation disrupts appetite regulation, leading to increased appetite, calorie intake, and weight gain.
The Healthy Eating Plate
The Healthy Eating Plate, created by nutrition experts at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, offers a visual guide for creating healthy, balanced meals:
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- Vegetables: The more veggies - and the greater the variety - the better.
- Fruits: Eat plenty of fruits of all kinds.
- Whole Grains: Eat a variety of whole grains (like whole-wheat bread, whole-grain pasta, and brown rice).
- Protein Power: Fish, poultry, beans, and nuts are all healthy, versatile protein sources.
- Healthy Plant Oils: Choose healthy vegetable oils like olive, canola, soy, corn, sunflower, peanut, and others, and avoid partially hydrogenated oils.
Breastfeeding Babies and Young Children
A healthy diet starts early in life. Breastfeeding fosters healthy growth and may have longer-term health benefits, like reducing the risk of becoming overweight or obese and developing noncommunicable diseases later in life. Feeding babies exclusively with breast milk from birth to 6 months of life is important for a healthy diet. It is also important to introduce a variety of safe and nutritious complementary foods at 6 months of age, while continuing to breastfeed until your child is two years old and beyond.
The Importance of Balance and Moderation
The key to a healthy diet is to eat the right amount of calories for how active you are so you balance the energy you consume with the energy you use. If you eat or drink more than your body needs, you'll put on weight because the energy you do not use is stored as fat. If you eat and drink too little, you'll lose weight. You should also eat a wide range of foods to make sure you're getting a balanced diet and your body is receiving all the nutrients it needs.
Additional Tips for a Healthy Lifestyle
- Limit Intake of Sugars: For a healthy diet, sugars should represent less than 10% of your total energy intake.
- Starchy Carbohydrates: Should make up just over a third of the food you eat. They include potatoes, bread, rice, pasta and cereals. Choose higher fibre or wholegrain varieties, such as wholewheat pasta, brown rice or potatoes with their skins on.
- Saturated Fat: On average, men should have no more than 30g of saturated fat a day. On average, women should have no more than 20g of saturated fat a day.
- Stay Hydrated: The government recommends drinking 6 to 8 glasses of fluids every day.
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