While it's well known that eating healthy foods helps you stay in shape and maintain a healthy body, can you tell if your favorite foods are actually healthy for you? Between misleading food labels and increasingly "healthy" marketing, finding your way around can be confusing and difficult! Find all our tips and tricks in this article for maintaining a balanced and healthy diet.
What is a healthy diet?
Healthy foods are those that provide you with all the nutrients you need to maintain your body's well-being and maintain your energy. It's the perfect balance of essential nutrients such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, fiber, and vitamins and minerals that make up a healthy and balanced diet.
Why eat healthy?
Healthy eating throughout life helps prevent:
- malnutrition in all its forms
- diabetes
- cardiovascular diseases
- certain cancers
- and other consequences of obesity
Today, the increase in processed food production, rapid urbanization, and changing lifestyles have led to a shift in eating habits. People tend to consume fattier, saltier foods with more sugar and little fiber.
The exact composition of a diverse, balanced and healthy diet will vary depending on individual characteristics (e.g., age, gender, lifestyle and level of physical activity), cultural context, locally available foods and eating habits.
While certain diets come and go, the basic principles of what constitutes a healthy diet remain the same.
How to maintain a healthy diet?
Several government institutions offer food guides for eating better, such as Eat Move or the WHO .
Foods to favor for adults:
- Fruits and vegetables: 400g/day excluding potatoes, sweet potatoes, and cassava. Aim for 5 fruits and vegetables per day, for example, 3 portions of vegetables and 2 pieces of fruit, or 4 portions of vegetables and 1 piece of fruit.
- Legumes (beans, lentils, chickpeas): 2 times a week.
- Lipids: less than 30% of total energy intake. Unsaturated fats are preferable to saturated fats (fatty meat, butter, palm and coconut oil, cream, cheese).
- Choose sunflower, rapeseed, walnut and olive oil.
- Eat fish twice a week, including oily fish (sardines, herring, salmon)
What foods should you avoid?
Foods to avoid are:- Overly salty products and salt: one teaspoon of salt per day.
- Meat: Choose poultry instead and limit other meats to 500g per week.
- Free and added sugars, sugary drinks, and sugary products: 50g/day for a person consuming 2,000 calories (10% of intake, ideally 5%). Free sugars are all sugars added to foods or drinks by the manufacturer, cook, or consumer, as well as sugars naturally present in honey, syrups, fruit juices, and fruit juice concentrates.
- Alcohol: max 2 glasses/day and not every day.
- Cold cuts: 150g/week
Are Carbohydrates Good for You?
Consumed in moderation, carbohydrates can be a healthy tool to help your body obtain valuable nutrients. Carbohydrates (or any food) with limited or minimal processing are the healthiest choices. For example, whole-grain bread is a healthier choice than refined white bread.
Other healthy carbohydrates can also help improve your mood, promote weight loss, and lower cholesterol, such as:
- Legumes (lentils, edamame, chickpeas, peas, etc.)
- Grains (corn, barley, oats, brown rice, etc.)
- Vegetables (spinach, broccoli, mushrooms, cauliflower, etc.)
Are lipids good for you?
Fat isn't always bad for your health! You may have heard that avocados are high in fat, but it's good fat! Foods like avocados, canola oil, and nuts all contain monounsaturated or polyunsaturated fats.
Your body needs them for energy. They also help better absorb certain vitamins and minerals, build cell membranes, and are essential for blood clotting, reducing inflammation, and muscle movement.
On the other hand, saturated fats should be avoided. Common foods that contain them include cheese, coconut oil, whole milk, and red meat.
Consuming these foods can cause real health problems such as inflammation or blockages in the arteries that can lead to chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease, or even stroke.
