A healthy diet is the diet that helps to maintain (and improve) good general health and well-being of an individual as well as society or community in general. Healthy diet is essential for reducing risk of various chronic health problems such as hypertension, obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart diseases etc. Healthy diet should be able to supply all the essential nutrients required by us. Healthy diet also include adequate intake of pure drinking water.
The basic of healthy diet is to burn calories as much as we consume or to eat as much calories as we burn. This is the basis of maintaining body weight, because, when our intake of calories is same as burning of calories, body weight is maintained.
Eat more plant based foods, such as whole grains, nuts, fresh fruits, vegetables (including leafy vegetables) etc. and reduce intake of animal based foods such as meat, especially red meat.
Reduce intake of saturated fats and consume adequate amount of unsaturated fats (both mono unsaturated fats and poly unsaturated fats). Animal fats (such as red meat, eggs, dairy products) are rich in saturated fats and should be avoided. Plant based oils are rich in unsaturated fats and should be consumed.
Reduce intake of sugar (granulated simple sugar intake should be reduced to half of current recommendation, as WHO reduced recommended sugar intake by half the current) and salt (including sodium).
Other important recommendations for healthy diet include, (1) supply of all essential vitamins and minerals, which can be ensured by consuming fresh fruits and vegetables (2) supply of all EAA (essential amino acids, which cannot be synthesized by our body), which can be ensured by eating animal proteins from fish and white meat or by eating variety of vegetable sources of proteins such as rice, wheat, maize, pulses, nuts, soy etc. One need to combine more than one source of plant protein, because no single plant source of protein contain all essential amino acids, but by combining we can get all EAA we need. (3) avoid foods which may be contaminated by pathogens such as vegetables grown by irrigating sewage, especially eating those vegetables as raw (for example eating salad), (4) avoid certain foods which may contain carcinogens such as benzene, (5) avoid foods that may contain heavy metals.
How Can You Establish A Healthy Relationship With Food?