Healthy Diet

A healthy diet contains a balance of food groups and all the nutrients necessary to promote good health. Human nutrition is enormously complex and a healthy diet may vary widely according to an individual's genetic makeup, environment, and health.

Healthy eating is the practice of making choices about what and/or how much one eats with the intention of improving or maintaining good health. Typically, this means following recommendations for a healthy diet.

The concept of healthy eating is primarily a problem in rich countries where the lifestyle includes a modicum of outdoor physical activities, high but not always high-quality food consumption, and a trend towards industrially-produced foods instead of locally-sourced, locally-prepared meals. The article below discusses the recommendations for most citizens of such countries, written from an admittedly developed world point of view. Unfortunately, the main food problems for most of the people in the planet are lack there of or malnutrition.

A reliance on a single food which composes the majority of a diet is a poor eating habit. An individual on such a diet may be prone to deficiency, and most certainly will not be fulfilling the Recommended Nutrient Intake of every nutrient.

While plants, vegetables and fruits are known to help reduce the incidence of chronic disease, the benefits on health posed by plant-based foods, as well as the percentage of which a diet needs to be plant based in order to have health benefits is unknown. Nevertheless, plant-based food diets in society and between nutritionist circles are linked to health and longevity, as well as contributing to lowering cholesterol, weight loss, and in some cases, stress reduction.

Although a number of preconceptions of a healthy diet center around plant based foods, the majority of assumptions about foods which are usually thought of as "bad" foods are usually correct. Apart from the assumption that there are "bad" foods, many people associate dishes such as Full English cooked Breakfast and Bacon Sandwiches as foods which, if eaten regularly, can contribute to cholesterol, fat and heart problems.