Consuming a healthy diet throughout life helps prevent malnutrition in all its forms and a range of noncommunicable diseases and conditions. Good nutrition is about consistently choosing healthy foods and beverages, emphasizing fruits, vegetables, whole grains, dairy, and protein. This article provides quick and easy tips on how to make healthy dietary choices, ensuring you nourish your body while enjoying the foods you love.
Understanding Healthy Eating
Healthy eating simply means fueling your body with mostly nutritious foods. The specifics may vary depending on individual characteristics such as age, gender, lifestyle, degree of physical activity, cultural context, locally available foods, and dietary customs. However, the basic principles remain the same.
Key Components of a Healthy Diet
For adults, a healthy diet includes:
- Fruits, Vegetables, Legumes, Nuts, and Whole Grains: At least 400g (i.e., five portions) of fruits and vegetables per day.
- Limited Free Sugars: Less than 10% of total energy intake from free sugars, with a further reduction to less than 5% providing additional health benefits. Free sugars include those added by manufacturers, cooks, or consumers, as well as those naturally present in honey, syrups, fruit juices, and fruit juice concentrates.
- Moderate Fat Intake: Less than 30% of total energy intake from fats. This includes avoiding saturated fats found in fatty meat, butter, palm and coconut oil, cream, cheese, ghee, and lard, and trans-fats found in baked and fried foods, pre-packaged snacks and foods (e.g., doughnuts, cakes, pies, cookies, biscuits, and wafers), and cooking oils and spreads. Ruminant trans-fats are found in meat and dairy foods from ruminant animals like cows, sheep, goats, and camels.
- Low Salt Intake: Less than 5g of salt (equivalent to about one teaspoon) per day. Salt should be iodized.
For infants and young children, optimal nutrition in the first two years fosters healthy growth and improves cognitive development, reducing the risk of becoming overweight or obese and developing noncommunicable diseases later in life. Recommendations include:
- Exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life.
- Continuous breastfeeding until two years of age and beyond.
- From six months, 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 Importance of Specific Nutrients
Most people in the United States need to increase their intake of dietary fiber, calcium, vitamin D, and potassium while decreasing their consumption of added sugar, saturated fat, and sodium.
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Dietary Fiber
Fiber helps maintain digestive health and promotes a feeling of fullness, aiding in weight management. It also helps control blood sugar and lowers cholesterol levels.
Calcium and Vitamin D
Calcium and vitamin D work together to promote optimal bone health. While our bodies can produce vitamin D from sunshine, some people may have difficulty producing enough, and excessive sun exposure increases the risk of skin cancer. Many foods and beverages are fortified with vitamin D to address this deficiency.
Potassium
Potassium is essential for the proper function of the kidneys, heart, muscles, and nerves. While some individuals with chronic kidney disease or those taking certain medications may have too much potassium in their blood, most Americans need to consume more of it.
Added Sugar
Excessive added sugar intake can contribute to weight gain, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease. These sugars come in many forms, including cane juice, corn syrup, dextrose, and fructose, as well as table sugar, maple syrup, and honey.
Saturated Fat
Replacing saturated fat with healthier unsaturated fats can help protect your heart. While dietary fat is necessary for energy, healthy cell development, and the absorption of certain vitamins and minerals, unsaturated fats are more beneficial than saturated fats.
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Sodium
Eating too much sodium can raise your risk of high blood pressure, heart attack, and stroke. More than 70% of the sodium Americans consume comes from packaged and prepared foods, with 90% of it being from salt.
Practical Advice for Maintaining a Healthy Diet
Fruit and Vegetables
Eating at least 400g, or five portions, of fruit and vegetables per day reduces the risk of NCDs and helps ensure an adequate daily intake of dietary fiber. Incorporate vegetables into every meal, snack on fresh fruit and raw vegetables, and choose seasonal varieties. Aim for a variety of colors on your plate to ensure a broad spectrum of nutrients.
Fats
Reducing total fat intake to less than 30% of total energy intake helps prevent unhealthy weight gain. Lowering saturated fats to less than 10% and trans-fats to less than 1% of total energy intake, and replacing them with unsaturated fats, can further reduce the risk of developing NCDs.
Reduce fat intake 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 that contain industrially-produced trans-fats.
Salt, Sodium, and Potassium
Most people consume too much sodium through salt and not enough potassium. Reducing salt intake to less than 5g per day could prevent 1.7 million deaths each year.
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Reduce salt intake by:
- Limiting the amount of salt and high-sodium condiments 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.
Increase potassium intake by consuming fresh fruit and vegetables, which can mitigate the negative effects of elevated sodium consumption on blood pressure.
Sugars
Reducing the intake of free sugars to less than 10% of total energy intake, with a further reduction to less than 5%, can provide additional health benefits. Reducing sugar intake can be achieved by:
- Limiting the consumption of foods and drinks containing high amounts of sugars, such as sugary snacks, candies, and sugar-sweetened beverages.
- Eating fresh fruit and raw vegetables as snacks instead of sugary snacks.
Nutrient Density
Focus on nutrient-dense foods that provide a high amount of nutrients in relation to their calorie content. These include vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, beans, fatty fish, and eggs.
Diet Diversity
Following a diet rich in different kinds of food supports gut health, promotes a healthy body weight, promotes longevity, and protects against chronic disease.
Macronutrient Ratios
Balance your meals and snacks between carbs, fat, and protein. Adding protein and fat to fiber-rich carb sources makes dishes more filling and tasty.
Highly Processed Foods
Limit highly processed products like soda, mass-produced baked goods, candy, sugary cereals, and certain boxed snack foods that contain little if any whole food ingredients.
Make Food a Priority
Make food one of your priorities. Go to the grocery store regularly to ensure you have healthy choices in your fridge and pantry. Stock up on fresh and frozen fruits and veggies, protein sources, bulk carb sources, starchy veggies, and fat sources.
Cook at Home
Cooking meals at home helps diversify your diet. If you’re used to takeout or restaurant meals, try cooking just one or two meals per week to start.
Hydrate the Smart Way
Staying hydrated is part of healthy eating, and water is the best way to stay hydrated.
Honor Your Dislikes
If you’ve tried a specific food several times and don’t like it, don’t eat it. There are plenty of healthy foods to choose instead.
Promoting Healthy Diets: A Multifaceted Approach
Diet evolves over time, influenced by social and economic factors, individual preferences and beliefs, cultural traditions, and geographical and environmental aspects. Promoting a balanced and healthy diet requires the involvement of multiple sectors and stakeholders, including government, and the public and private sectors.
Governments play a central role in creating a healthy food environment that enables people to adopt and maintain healthy dietary practices through:
- Creating coherence in national policies and investment plans.
- 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 high in 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.
- Implementing recommendations on the marketing of foods and non-alcoholic beverages to children.
- Establishing standards to foster healthy dietary practices in public institutions and the workplace.
- Exploring regulatory and voluntary instruments, and economic incentives or disincentives.
- Providing nutrition and dietary counseling at primary health-care facilities.
- Promoting appropriate infant and young child feeding practices.
The Healthy Eating Plate
The Healthy Eating Plate is a guide for creating healthy, balanced meals:
- Fill half your plate with vegetables and fruits.
- Make a quarter of your plate whole grains.
- Make a quarter of your plate protein power from fish, poultry, beans, and nuts.
- Use healthy plant oils in moderation.
- Drink water, tea, or coffee with little or no sugar. Limit milk/dairy and juice.
WHO Response
The World Health Organization (WHO) has several initiatives to promote healthy diets, including the "WHO Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health," recommendations on the marketing of foods and non-alcoholic beverages to children, and global voluntary targets for the prevention and control of NCDs. WHO also provides guidance and policy options for Member States and other United Nations agencies to achieve these targets.