Taping a healthy food list on your fridge door or anywhere in the kitchen can help you and your family maintain a healthy diet. The health condition of the general population today is looking dismal as more and more diseases seem to crop up, taking many lives and risking many others. If there is a good time to start thinking carefully about what you eat, this is that time. Doctors are actively stressing the importance of a healthy diet to a healthy body that’s not prone to sickness.
Aside from maintaining the body’s normal functions, a healthy diet can help prevent many chronic health problems. On top of the list of diseases that eating right can help prevent are obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and even cancer.
But what exactly is a healthy diet?
What You Need to Know to Have a Healthy Diet
- What Makes A Healthy Diet?
- What the WHO and Other Experts Recommend
- Healthy Diet and Weight Loss
1. What Makes A Healthy Diet?
A healthy food list can help you identify which foods are healthy and which are more harmful than healthy. However, such a list is not enough to help you maintain a healthy diet your doctor would approve of.
A healthy diet is an entire diet – the combination of different health foods, each one with a specific role in nourishing the body. It should consist of foods that supply the appropriate amount of all the different nutrients the body needs, which include macronutrients and micronutrients. Macronutrients refer to carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, while micronutrients refer to nutrients that are needed by the body in small quantities. Vitamins and minerals are considered as micronutrients.
The diet should also be topped by a sufficient amount of water. You can come up with different combinations so you’ll have a pretty interesting meal every time as long as your daily food consumption meets your body’s requirements.
2. What the WHO and Other Experts Recommend
The World Health Organization and doctors in general hold themselves responsible for the overall health of human beings. As such, WHO has made its own recommendations regarding the healthy diet ideal for an individual. Here are some of the reminders WHO stresses upon.
- Avoid saturated fats and use unsaturated fats as main energy source
- Eliminate trans fats from diet
- Increase consumption of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and legumes
- Limit sugar intake
- Limit salt consumption; if salt must be used, it should be iodized
- Eat foods rich in amino acids including avocados, soy, hemp, and pumpkin seeds
The American Heart Association also backs up the recommendations against saturated fats because this type of fat is said to be responsible for raising the risk for chronic heart diseases.
Aside from these recommendations and healthy food lists making their rounds today, the health organizations all over the world are also building a list of food additvies that are unhealthy. These additives include food colorings, artificial sweeteners, and preservatives. According to studies, these additives can cause cancer or ADHD.
3. Healthy Diet and Weight Loss
For those who are trying to lose weight, the regular healthy diet recommended for the average individual should be modified a bit. The first requirement is that a weight loss diet should be low in calories to prevent accumulation of unused fat. The second requirement is that the diet should have greater amounts of certain foods that help to burn more fat.
However, a healthy food list and meal plan is often not enough to bring about substantial weight loss. Weight loss diets should always be supplemented by exercise and a healthy lifestyle.
How Important Is A Healthy Diet Today?
Unhealthy diets are now the known culprits behind several of the life-threatening diseases plaguing both men and women these days. The obesity rates in both children and adults also show us that the general condition of public health nowadays isn’t so good.
According to the WHO, every year, 2.7 million people die due to causes related to unhealthy diets or deficiency of fruits and vegetables in their diets. Also, an unhealthy diet is said to be the cause of 31% of ischaemic heart disease, 19% of gastrointestinal cancer, and 11% of strokes. What’s even worse is that it is one of the major causes of death that can easily be prevented.
And the best way to prevent them is to eat a healthy diet made up of foods that are found healthy enough to be included in a doctor-approved healthy food list.