What is a Diet Plan?

While there’s no single definition of a healthy diet, it is essential to follow a good diet plan as it optimizes your overall health. A healthy diet provides the body with essential nutrients and protects you against developing chronic non-communicable diseases, such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

A healthy diet may contain fruits, vegetables, and whole grains along with little to no processed food or sweetened beverages. Some individuals may want a healthy diet for weight loss while some may follow it to reduce their sodium intake, avoid diabetes or to improve their heart health.

A balanced diet mainly consists of six components.

• May help you live longer
• Keeps skin, teeth, and eyes healthy
• Supports musclesBoosts immunity
• Strengthens bones
• Lowers risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and some cancers
• Supports healthy pregnancies and breastfeeding
• Helps the digestive system function
• Helps achieve and maintain a healthy weight

• Keeps skin, teeth, and eyes healthy
• Supports muscles
• Helps achieve and maintain a healthy weight
• Strengthens bones
• Supports brain development
• Supports healthy growth
• Boosts immunity
• Helps the digestive system function

• Include dairy products in your daily diet for stronger bones. If you are lactose intolerant, then you can have non-dairy milk like soy milk, almond milk, and coconut milk.
• Eat foods that are low in glycemic index (GI) value. Foods with GI value of more than 55 increases the blood sugar level faster.
• Avoid soft drinks, carbonated drinks as they are high in sugar. Instead, keep yourself hydrated with regular water.
• Choose whole grain foods instead of refined grains. Whole grain comprises fibre, proteins, and complex carbohydrates, which keeps you full for a longer time and avoids overeating.
• Incorporate green veggies in your daily diet for essential vitamins and minerals. Most importantly, ensure that you have an adequate amount of good quality proteins from eggs, lentils, cottage cheese, chicken, soybeans, tofu, and fish. A sedentary adult should consume 0.8 g of protein per kilogram of body weight.

• A healthy diet helps to protect against malnutrition in all its forms, as well as noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), including diabetes, heart disease, stroke and cancer.
• Unhealthy diet and lack of physical activity are leading global risks to health.
• Healthy dietary practices start early in life – breastfeeding fosters healthy growth and improves cognitive development, and may have longer term health benefits such as reducing the risk of becoming overweight or obese and developing NCDs later in life.
• Energy intake (calories) should be in balance with energy expenditure. To avoid unhealthy weight gain, total fat should not exceed 30% of total energy intake. Intake of saturated fats should be less than 10% of total energy intake, and intake of trans-fats less than 1% of total energy intake, with a shift in fat consumption away from saturated fats and trans-fats to unsaturated fats, and towards the goal of eliminating industrially-produced trans-fats.
• Limiting intake of free sugars to less than 10% of total energy intake is part of a healthy diet. A further reduction to less than 5% of total energy intake is suggested for additional health benefits.
• Keeping salt intake to less than 5 g per day (equivalent to sodium intake of less than 2 g per day) helps to prevent hypertension, and reduces the risk of heart disease and stroke in the adult population.
• WHO Member States have agreed to reduce the global population’s intake of salt by 30% by 2025; they have also agreed to halt the rise in diabetes and obesity in adults and adolescents as well as in childhood overweight by 2025.