ALL ABOUT BALANCED DIET

A healthy diet is a diet that maintains or improves overall health. A healthy diet provides the body with essential nutrition: fluid, macronutrients such as protein, micronutrients such as vitamins, and adequate fibre and food energy.

Benefits of balanced diet:

Vitamins and minerals in the diet are vital to boost immunity and healthy development.

A healthy diet can protect the human body against certain types of diseases, in particular noncommunicable diseases such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, some types of cancer and skeletal conditions.

Healthy eating is a good opportunity to enrich life by experimenting with different foods from different cultures, origins and with different ways to prepare food.

The benefits of eating a wide variety of foods are also emotional, as variety and colour are important ingredients of a balance diet.

About Calories:

The number of calories in a food refers to the amount of energy stored in that food. Your body uses calories from food for walking, thinking, breathing, and other important functions.

Males tend to need more calories than females, and people who exercise need more calories than people who don’t.

Current #guidelines list the following calorie intakes for males and females of different ages:

Person Calorie requirements:

Sedentary children: 2–8 years 1,000–1,400 Active children: 2–8 years 1,000–2,000

Females: 9–13 years 1,400–2,200 Males: 9–13 years 1,600–2,600

Active females: 14–30 years 2,400 Sedentary females: 14–30 years 1,800–2,000

Active males: 14–30 years 2,800–3,200 Sedentary males: 14–30 years 2,000–2,600

Active people: 30 years and over 2,000–3,000 Sedentary people: 30 years and over 1,600–2,400

Foods that provide mainly calories and very little nutrition are known as “empty calories.”

Examples of foods that provide empty calories include:

cakes, cookies, and donuts processed meats energy drinks and sodas fruit drinks with added sugar ice cream chips and fries pizza

A homemade pizza with a wholemeal base and plenty of fresh veggies on top may be a healthy choice. In contrast, premade pizzas and other highly processed foods often contain empty calories.

To maintain a healthy lifestyle, limit you consumption of empty calories and instead try to get your calories from food that are rich in other nutrients.

Hope you enjoyed the reading. Thank you Dt. Priyanka Bhattacharya