In order for the diet to be balanced and varied, you need to eat in accordance with the recommended food pyramid above. The recommended pyramid shows the approximate amount of food that should be consumed in one week to meet the nutritional needs. The pyramid lists five main food groups - from each of them you need to eat something daily. At the top of the pyramid there are sweet and salty, which the body does not need for its functioning and should be eaten rarely, and then in small quantities.
For a healthy and balanced diet:
1. You need to eat as needed.
From food, our body receives the necessary nutrients and energy. 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 the body requires and consumes.
Energy is spent on basic activities (breathing, digestion, 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 laborers need more energy than office workers. The average daily energy requirement is 2000 kcal for women and 2600 kcal for men.
2. Eat a balanced diet.
In nutrition, not only the energy received is important, but also the fact that it comes from different nutrients and the proportion of these substances is balanced. Each nutrient plays a different role in the body, and different food groups contain different essential nutrients, vitamins, and minerals.
Today, many are trying, for example, to reduce the amount of carbohydrates they consume, which can lead to a deficiency in some important nutrients.
3. In moderation, you can eat everything.
There is a common misconception that everything is tasty or 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 the proportions by their number. You need to be especially careful with very salty, sweet and fatty, as well as with alcohol.
4. Eat a varied diet.
A varied and balanced menu should include products from different groups, but you need to vary the products within the groups. For example, different vegetables and fruits contain different and different amounts of vitamins and minerals. If you eat a variety of foods, you can get the right nutrients, the body will be healthier and will work better.
Very often, routine and habits become the cause of a monotonous diet. The diet needs to be reviewed from time to time so that you do not eat the same thing all the time. Nutrition can also be monotonous because a person has consciously decided not to eat certain foods or does not like them. In this case, you need to carefully monitor that the necessary nutrients still come from other sources.