Proper, healthy nutrition does not mean a boring menu and giving up delicious dishes. Just the opposite! It implies balance, which can be achieved by eating different foods and as much as the body requires. This way it can get the nutrients it needs to keep us healthy and active. That is why no food is healthy or unhealthy, beneficial or harmful in itself. It all depends on the portion size and frequency of meals. You can eat anything, but in the right quantities!
You can find a lot of conflicting information about healthy eating in the media. You just have to be careful and remember that there are no superfoods, genius nutrition programs, or magic cures that will be effective in achieving long-term health or weight loss.
The body must receive from food both a sufficient amount of energy for life and all the necessary nutrients. An unbalanced, monotonous diet leads to nutritional deficiencies, which affects the body in a variety of ways and can lead to serious diseases.
One of the consequences of an unbalanced diet is problems with body weight: if the body does not receive enough of the substances it needs from food, it forces us to eat more.
To ensure a healthy and balanced diet:
When choosing foods, you should pay attention not only to their health benefits, but also to their impact on the environment.
What, how much and when we eat has a big impact on the environment. By following dietary guidelines, you can significantly reduce your negative impact on the environment.
To reduce the environmental impact of your diet, follow these principles:
choose foods that are biologically diverse, e.g. vary foods both between and within food groups;
choose products that are produced as closely as possible, local and seasonal if possible;
When consuming meat, milk and products made from them, limit yourself to the amount indicated in the nutritional recommendations;
try not to waste food and reduce food waste;
plan, prepare, store and consume food consciously and be mindful of the wider impact of your habits.
Eat as needed
Our body receives the necessary nutrients and energy from food. The need for them depends on age, gender, lifestyle, health status and many other factors.
The formula is simple: you need to eat as much as your body requires and consumes.
Energy is spent on basic activities (breathing, digesting food, thinking, heart function, etc.), but it is also needed for movement. For example, adolescents have greater energy needs than older people; during pregnancy and breastfeeding, the need for nutrients increases; manual workers need more energy than office workers. The average daily energy requirement is 2000 kcal for women and 2600 kcal for men.
1 Eat a balanced diet
In nutrition, it is important not only the energy received, but also that it comes from different nutrients and the proportion of these substances is balanced. Each nutrient plays a different important role in the body, and different food groups contain different essential nutrients, vitamins and minerals.
Today, many people try, for example, to reduce the amount of carbohydrates they consume, which can cause deficiencies in some important nutrients.
2 You can eat everything in moderation
There is a common misconception that everything tasty is either harmful or leads to obesity. In fact, everything is not so bad: you can eat everything, but in the right quantities and with the right frequency. The five main food groups are equally important, but the food pyramid shows proportions based on their quantity. Particular care must be taken with very salty, sweet and fatty foods, as well as with alcohol.
3 Eat a varied diet
A varied and balanced menu should include products from different groups, but you also need to vary products within groups. For example, different vegetables and fruits contain different vitamins and minerals in different quantities. By eating a varied diet, you can get the nutrients you need and your body will be healthier and perform better.
Very often, routine and habits become the reason for a monotonous diet. The diet needs to be reviewed from time to time so that you don’t eat the same thing all the time. Nutrition may also be monotonous because a person has consciously decided not to eat certain foods or because he does not like them. In this case, you need to carefully ensure that the necessary nutrients still come from other sources.