What is diet?, and how to manage diet.

A healthy diet is essential for good health and nutrition.

It protects you against many chronic non-communicable diseases, such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. Eating various foods and consuming less salt, sugars, and saturated and industrially-produced trans-fats are essential for a healthy diet.

A healthy diet comprises a combination of different foods. These include:

• Staples like cereals (wheat, barley, rye, maize, or rice) or starchy tubers or roots (potato, yam, taro, or cassava).
• Legumes (lentils and beans).
• Fruit and vegetables.
• Foods from animal sources (meat, fish, eggs, and milk).

Here is some useful information, based on WHO recommendations, to follow a healthy diet and the benefits of doing so.

• Breastfeed 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 non-communicable 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.

   

• Eat plenty of vegetables and fruit:
  • They are important sources of vitamins, minerals, dietary fiber, plant protein, and antioxidants.
  • People with diets rich in vegetables and fruit have a significantly lower risk of obesity, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and certain types of cancer.

   

• Eat less fat:
  • Fats and oils and concentrated sources of energy. Eating too much, particularly the wrong kinds of fat, like saturated and industrially produced trans-fat can increase the risk of heart disease and stroke.
  • Using unsaturated vegetable oils (olive, soy, sunflower, or corn oil) rather than animal fats or oils high in saturated fats (butter, ghee, lard, coconut, and palm oil) will help consume healthier fats.
  • To avoid unhealthy weight gain, total fat consumption should not exceed 30% of a person's overall energy intake.

   

• Limit intake of sugars:
  • For a healthy diet, sugars should represent less than 10% of your total energy intake. Reducing even further to under 5% has additional health benefits.
  • Choosing fresh fruits instead of sweet snacks such as cookies, cakes, and chocolate helps reduce the consumption of sugars.
  • Limiting the intake of soft drinks, soda, and another high in sugars (fruit juices, cordials and syrups, flavored milk, and yogurt drinks) also helps reduce the intake of sugars.

   

• Reduce salt intake:
  • Keeping your salt intake to less than 5h per day helps prevent hypertension and reduces the risk of heart disease and stroke in the adult population.
  • Limiting salt and high-sodium condiments (soy sauce and fish sauce) when cooking and preparing foods helps reduce salt intake.

How to manage your diet,

1. Make half your plate fruits and vegetables

Add fruit to meals as part of main or side dishes or as dessert. Choose red, orange, and dark-green vegetables along with other vegetables for your meals. The more colorful you make your plate, the more likely you will get the vitamins, minerals, and fiber your body needs to be healthy.

2. Make half the grains you eat whole grains

Switch from refined-grain food to whole-grain food. For example, choose whole-wheat bread instead of white bread. Read the ingredients list and choose products that list whole-grain ingredients first. Look for things like: “whole wheat,” “brown rice,” “bulgur,” “buckwheat,” “oatmeal,” “rolled oats,” quinoa,” or “wild rice.”

3. Switch to fat-free or low-fat (1%) milk

Both have the same amount of calcium and other essential nutrients as whole milk but fewer calories and less saturated fat.

4. Choose a variety of lean protein foods

The protein foods group includes meat, poultry, and seafood and dry beans or peas, eggs, nuts, and seeds. Select leaner cuts of ground beef (where the label says 90% lean or higher), turkey breast, or chicken breast.

5. Compare sodium in foods

Use the Nutrition Facts label to choose lower sodium versions of foods like soup, bread, and frozen meals. Select canned foods labeled “low sodium,” “reduced sodium,” or “no salt added.”

6. Drink water instead of sugary drinks

Drink water to cut back on unnecessary calories from sugary drinks. Soda, energy drinks, and sports drinks are major sources of added sugar and calories in American diets. Add a slice of lemon, lime, apple, or fresh herbs like mint or basil to add flavor to your water.

7. Eat some seafood

Seafood has protein, minerals, and omega-3 fatty acids (heart-healthy fat). Adults should try to eat at least eight ounces a week of a variety of seafood. Children can eat smaller amounts of seafood. Seafood includes fish such as salmon, tuna, and trout and shellfish like crab, mussels, and oysters.

8. Cut back on solid fats

Eat fewer foods that contain solid fats. The major sources for Americans are cakes, cookies, and other desserts (often made with butter, margarine, or shortening); pizza; processed and fatty meats (e.g., sausages, hot dogs, bacon, ribs); and ice cream.