A healthy diet is essential for good health and nutrition.

A healthy diet is essential for good health and nutrition.

It protects you against many chronic non-communicable diseases, such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. Eating a variety of foods and consuming less salt, sugars, and saturated and industrially-produced trans-fats, are essential for a healthy diet.

A healthy diet comprises a combination of different foods. These include:

Staples like cereals (wheat, barley, rye, maize, or rice) or starchy tubers, or roots (potato, yam, taro, or cassava).

Legumes (lentils and beans).

Fruit and vegetables.

Foods from animal sources (meat, fish, eggs, and milk).

Here is some useful information, based on WHO recommendations, to follow a healthy diet, and the benefits of doing so.

Breastfeed babies and young children:

A healthy diet starts early in life - breastfeeding fosters healthy growth and may have longer-term health benefits, like reducing the risk of becoming overweight or obese and developing noncommunicable diseases later in life.

Feeding babies exclusively with breast milk from birth to 6 months is important for a healthy diet. It is also essential to introduce a variety of safe and nutritious complementary foods at 6 months of age while continuing to breastfeed until your child is two years old and beyond.

 

Eat plenty of vegetables and fruit:

They are important sources of vitamins, minerals, dietary fiber, plant protein, and antioxidants.

People with diets rich in vegetables and fruit have a significantly lower risk of obesity, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and certain types of cancer.

 

Eat less fat:

Fats and oils and concentrated sources of energy. Eating too much, particularly the wrong kinds of fat, like saturated and industrially-produced trans-fat, can increase the risk of heart disease and stroke.

Using unsaturated vegetable oils (olive, soy, sunflower, or corn oil) rather than animal fats or oils high in saturated fats (butter, ghee, lard, coconut, and palm oil) will help consume healthier fats.

To avoid unhealthy weight gain, total fat consumption should not exceed 30% of a person's overall energy intake.