Balanced Diet

The human body requires food to provide energy for all life process dietetic needs vary
according to age, sex and occupation. A balanced diet contains different types of foods in
such quantities and proportions that the need for calories, minerals, vitamins and other
nutrients is adequately met and small provision is made for extra nutrients to with stand
short duration of leanness. Eating a well balanced diet on a regular basis and staying at your
ideal weight are critical factors in maintaining your emotional and physical well-being.
Being over weight/under weight can lead to certain chronic conditions such as
diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease.
Fluid intake in the form of water based drinks is also essential for good health. Water is
essential for the correct functioning of the kidneys and bowels. At least 6-8 glasses of plain
water should be drunk each day, more in hot weather.
Balanced Diet and Health
A balanced diet comprising of healthy and diverse foods is key to promoting good health.

After all, we are what we eat - Research continues to prove that eating healthy
food promotes good health and unhealthy food habits lead to a diseased body. Foods
contain vital nutrients that aid our body’s metabolic function.

However, a lack of consumption of these nutrients or feeding upon the wrong kinds of
food leads to an accumulation of toxins within the body, resulting in chronic diseases in
the long run.
A nutritious diet while ensuring overall well being, helps to maintain a healthy Body Mass
Index (BMI), reduces the risk of several debilitating diseases like cancer, cardiovascular
ailments, diabetes, osteoporosis and stroke.

Thus a nutritious diet is important in the prevention and cure of various diseases.
Healthy Food Groups
Since no single food group can nourish the body with all the vital ingredients it requires, it
is important that we consume a variety of healthy foods to derive the nutrition our body
needs. There are five main food groups, they are:

• Fruits
• Vegetables
• Cereals and Pulses
• Dairy
• Poultry, Fish and Meat products
A healthy balanced diet of these five food groups ensures essential vitamins, minerals and
dietary fiber. The food group serving size will depend upon various factors like age,
activity level, body size and gender. It is also important that one eat a variety of foods from
within and across the food groups. As some foods from within a food group provide more
nutrients than others.

This will ensure that one gets the maximum recommended nutrition from the food group;
besides the food variety will make for an interesting meal.
In conclusion, it must be noted that allopathic medicine treats the symptoms rather than the
root cause of the disease, which is usually caused by wrong eating habits leading to an
accumulation of toxins within the system. Whereas a nutritious diet can rectify underlying
causes of diseases and restore one to wholeness of mind and body. Once we realize the
connection between a wholesome balanced diet and good health, our food will be our
medicine and maintaining good health will be a matter of making the right food choices
and leading a healthy lifestyle.

Our Diet Chart may help you get started quickly. Also, look for more blog posts on Diet
and Weight Loss, Cholesterol Diet Plan.

Different Types Of Diet For Good Health

A deep insight into the components of a balanced diet is essential for deriving maximum
benefits. A nutritious diet is devoid of trans fats and is a good source of omega 6 and
omega 3 fatty acids.

The calorie intake depends on the height, weight, age, activity and sex of the individual.
All the micronutrients are taken care of. A healthy and balanced diet helps in the
prevention of nerve damage and ensures good sleep pattern. It also decreases the incidence
of mental disorders. Foods contaminated with poisonous metals and human pathogens are
not recommended.

A balanced diet is healthy and is of prime importance, owing to the overall well being of
the individual.
Merits Of Balanced Diet
The merits of a balanced diet include:

1. Relaxation to the mind

2. Maintenance of body weight
3. Increase in muscle performance
4. Better workout capacity
5. Regulation of emotions and
6. Decrease in lipid levels, such as triglycerides, cholesterol and so on.

Various types of hospital diets are soft diet, full liquid diet, clear liquid diet and solid diet.
Clear liquid diet is given immediately after surgery. Full fluid diet comprises of viscous
fluids, in the form of juices, white soups and so on.

Soft diet is given after four or five days of surgery or infection. It includes mashed and
double boiled rice and so on. Many individuals, who concentrate on a balanced diet, forget
about the importance of water. About eight to ten glasses of water helps in the elimination
of waste and other toxic metabolites. Water enhances the functioning of various foods,
which comprise a balanced diet.
A nutritious diet is key to maintaining good health. The food that we eat or drink on any
given day refers to a diet. However the foods that we eat should supply the vitamins and
calories our bodies need to be nourished with for optimum function. Unlike in the past
where one only heard of a weight loss diet, today there are a variety of diet types. The diet
types range from the Atkins diet, South Beach diet, Mediterranean diet, blood type diet,
Zone diet, low calorie diet, detoxification diet, GI diet, Gluten-free diet, juice diet and a
plethora of others.
People follow various types of diets for a variety of reasons like weight loss and weight
gain, religious and personal preferences, to recuperate from illnesses, as well as to combat
diseases like diabetes, cancer, hyperthyroidism and other chronic conditions. Most of the
popular diets have been thoroughly researched and tested for their effectiveness. However
prior to embarking upon a diet, it would be prudent for you to assess whether
thenutrition objectives of these diets are in sync with your dieting requirements. Personal
considerations like your age, activity levels, health condition, daily calories and vitamin
recommendations needs must be kept in mind.
Caution must be taken to ensure that your ideal diet contains all the
essential nutrition needs your body needs. A food guide pyramid and nutrition facts label
on packaged foodstuff will help in selecting the right diet for you.
Several popular diets can actually harm instead of heal you. Especially those diets, which
totally exclude vital food groups and restrict variations in food.

For instance some diets advocate that one greatly reduce the amount of carbohydrates,
while others advice an overly excessive consumption of fruits. They make unfound and
false claims that the human body cannot digest protein and carbohydrates simultaneously.
The fact is that different parts of our digestive tract caters to varied nutrients and absorb
those nutrients. However, most of our food like beans (which contain 50% protein and
50% carbohydrate) is a combination of both proteins and carbohydrates.
Whatever diet you choose to adopt, make sure that it contains the average recommended
vitamins and minerals, protein, carbohydrates, fiber and fat your body needs.
We have some more information on diet chart here.

Diet (nutrition)
In nutrition, the diet is the sum of food consumed by a person or other organism.[1] Dietary
habits are the habitual decisions an individual or culture makes when choosing what foods
to eat. Although humans are omnivores, each culture holds some food preferences and
some food taboos. Individual dietary choices may be more or less healthy. Proper nutrition
requires the proper ingestion and equally important, the absorption of vitamins, minerals,
and fuel in the form of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Dietary habits and choices play a
significant role in health and mortality, and can also define cultures and play a role
in religion.
 Contents
1 Traditional diet
• 2 Religious and cultural dietary choices
• 3 Diet and life outcome
• 4 Individual dietary choices
• 5 Diets for weight management
o 5.1 Eating disorders
• 6 Health
• 7 Diet table
• 8 See also
• 9 Notes
[edit]Traditional diet

"Traditional diet" is the diets of native populations such as the Native

Americans, Khoisan or Australian Aborigines. Often to qualify for cultural cuisine,
traditional diets include more organic farming andseasonal food according to food origins.

Traditional diets vary with availability of local resources, such as fish in coastal
towns, eels and eggs in estuary settlements, or squash, corn and beans in farming towns, as
well as with cultural andreligious customs and taboos. In some cases,
the crops and domestic animals that characterize a traditional diet have been replaced by
modern high-yield crops, and are no longer available.[2] The slow food movement attempts
to counter this trend and to preserve traditional diets.
[edit]Religious and cultural dietary choices

Further information: Vegetarianism and religion

Some cultures and religions have restrictions concerning what foods are acceptable in their
diet. For example, only Kosher foods are permitted by Judaism, and Halal foods by Islam.
[edit]Diet and life outcome

A study published in the British medical journal The Lancet found that Guatemalan men
who had been well-fed soon after they were born earned almost 50% more in average
salary than those who had not. The blind trial was performed by giving a high-nutrition
supplement to some infants and a lower-nutrition supplement to others, with only the
researchers knowing which infants received which supplements. The infants that received
the high-nutrition supplement had higher average salaries as adults [3].
[edit]Individual dietary choices

Many individuals choose to limit what foods they eat for reasons of health, morality,
environmental impact, or other factors. Additionally, many people choose to forgo food
from animal sources to varying degrees; see vegetarianism, veganism, fruitarianism, living
foods diet, and raw foodism. Individuals may choose to follow such a diet for ethical or
moral reasons, or to try to gain some claimed health benefit. Various forms of these diets
may or may not completely satisfy ordinary nutritional needs.
[edit]Diets for weight management
Main articles: Dieting and Diet food
A particular diet may be chosen to seek weight gain, weight loss, sports training, cardio-
vascular health, avoidance of cancers, food allergies and for other reasons. Changing a
subject's dietary intake, or "going on a diet", can change the energy balance and increase or
decrease the amount of fat stored by the body. Some foods are specifically recommended,
or even altered, for conformity to the requirements of a particular diet. These diets are often
recommended in conjunction with exercise.
[edit]Eating disorders
An eating disorder is a mental disorder that interferes with normal food consumption.
Eating disorders often affect people with a negative body image.
[edit]Health

Main article: Healthy diet

A healthy diet is one that is arrived at with the intent of improving or maintaining
optimal health. This usually involves consuming nutrients by eating the appropriate
amounts from all of the food groups, including an adequate amount of water.[4][5]
[6]
Since human nutrition is complex, a healthy diet may vary widely, and is subject to an
individual's genetic makeup, environment, and health. For around 20% of the human
population, lack of food and malnutrition are the main impediments to healthy eating.[citation
needed]
Conversely, people in developed countries have the opposite problem; they are more
concerned about obesity.[citation needed]

'Industrial cuisine' and the 'traditional diet'

By Dave Riley

There is perhaps nothing so intimate as the food we put in our mouths. In our society
each morsel is personalised by an involved process of selection and preparation
reproduced in myriad acts performed by millions of diners each day. But our daily
physiological dependence on food can hide a much greater complexity. While the belly
certainly comes first, the actual relations involved in feeding it can sometimes be
hidden by a mental gravy that clouds the social significance of the act of consumption
itself.

What we consume when we eat can be answered in three ways. One is that food obviously
is related to nutrition. Foods have intrinsic properties that help sustain our biology. Like
everything else that lives we need nutrients.

The second answer to this question is that we eat nature. Our foods are taken from the
natural world and the way we encourage food from its natural environment will change that
environment and change the food itself. Bread wheat, Triticum vulgare, which probably
derived from the accidental crossing of two varieties of wild grass, has now been developed
into more than 30,000 varieties worldwide sometimes costing up to 20 bushels of eroded
top soil for each bushel of wheat produced. The significance of this is not lost on the
current greening which is keen to march forward on its stomach.

The final answer to the riddle is the one that writers such as Gyorgy Scrinis in Green Left
Weekly No. 112 fail to adequately address. While food is a biological relationship and a
relationship we have with the natural world it is also a social relationship that humans have
with one another because we produce our food collectively. We are of nature and other than
nature. We are biological and non-biological creatures.

Mystification

To separate what humans eat arbitrarily into “industrial cuisine” and “traditional diets”, as
Scrinis does, serves only to mystify the processes involved in consumption. Like
everything else in our society food is a commodity. To buy it you must sell your ability to
labour. To grow it you must purchase land. There is no such thing as a free lunch.

The social relations in our society are capitalist ones and almost every product of this
society is the result of capitalist commodity production. As a merchant in one of Bertolt
Brecht's plays pointed out, “God only knows what rice is. I only know its price!”

To call what we eat today an “industrial cuisine” serves only to obscure this preoccupation
with price and profit and goes nowhere in explaining why so many cuisines have tended
this way.

Where once there was forest, cattle now graze to supply far off ton plantations now occupy
land that previously fed the local population who must now work for a wage to buy food to
eat. Why? Is this a product of what we eat or how it is produced?

Idealising the past won't help either. “Whole grain breads and foods, beans, dairy products,
vegetables, and plenty of wild and cultivated greens”, writes Scrinis, “formed the basic
diets of most people in agricultural societies until the modern era.” This is gross
generalisation. Enjoyment of such fare was only available to the peasantry in good times
and the rich at all times. Who ate what was as much a class question then as it is throughout
most of the world today.
In fact, the innovations that led to the extensive cultivation of wheat in England in the 18th
century -- so that it substantially replaced rye, barley and oats of the past -- were part of
those same changes that led to the triumph of capitalism in the countryside. “Following
enclosure of the common lands,” writes Elizabeth David in her book, English Bread and
Yeast Cookery, “many agricultural families, who now had no strip of land of their own to
cultivate, no place to graze a cow or even to keep a pig, no free fuel, and little hope of
regular employment, were thrown on the bounty of the parish. There wasn't much of it. If
enclosing the land made for more efficient farming, greater yields and more profits for the
landowners, it left the poor dispossessed, poverty stricken and bitter.”

An ongoing diet, traditional or otherwise, was beyond the reach of this new mass layer of
paupers unless they could sell their labourpower to obtain food. Migrating to the towns,
they become factory fodder for the burgeoning industrialisation. Working up to 19 hours
each day, there was little time to prepare food properly or to even buy it. The working
class's meager diet was exacerbated by its poor quality and high price. Workers could
purchase what was too bad for the propertied classes to consume. This shift from traditional
diets was not one of choice, as Scrinis seems to suggest, but one of surviving on the
foodstuffs to hand, sold by small hucksters and oftentimes adulterated to stretch its weight
and texture.

When the peasants were driven from the land they were forced into a new social relation
which replaced production for their own use (as well as that for their lord) with the
exchange of commodities instead. The ability to work itself became a commodity. The food
did not change -- wheat was still wheat -- but their relationship with it did. Every rise of
capitalist society is predated by this process.

Alienation

In one sense it is true to say that this change alienated us from our food. But this is a partial
interpretation of the process of alienation. At no time in the history of human society did
individual humans grow, prepare and cook all their own food. Society exists as a division
of labour, sometimes of extensive complexity. If we are alienated from our food, as Scrinis
says, then we are as alienated from our shelter, from our clothing, from our tools, etc. We
don't all shear the sheep, spin the wool, and knit our own jumpers. We don't grow our own
cotton underwear in the backyard.

In modern industrial capitalism most of us are distanced from these processes. In Australia,
a mere 3% of the population produces the food for all the rest. To insist that this exile from
the soil can only be overcome by intimate agriculture and more time in the kitchen obscures
what is actually happening.

The most significant alienation in capitalist society is from each other. As the rural poor
drifted to the cities to feed the thirst for profits, Frederick Engels recognised that the
turmoil in the streets had something repulsive about it against which human nature rebelled.
In 1844, he wrote of the English working class: “And still they crowd by one another as
though they had nothing in common, nothing to do with one another, and their only
agreement is the tacit one, that each keep to his own side of the pavement, so as not to
delay the opposing streams of the crowd, while it occurs to no man to honour another with
so much as a glance. This brutal indifference, the unfeeling isolation of each in his private
interest becomes the more repellent and offensive, the more these individuals are crowded
together, within a limited space... The dissolution of mankind into monads, of which each
one has a separate principle and a separate purpose, the world of atoms, is here carried out
to the utmost extreme.” That's alienation of a depth and pervasiveness that hides the fact
that we all seek nutrition by the same way and by the same means.

The society that capitalism replaced had no such system of privatized, socio-economic or
personal relations and this was reflected in, among other things, its use of eating utensils.
Eating was communal, as individuals shared the few available eating utensils including
forks and glasses. The same piece of food was even shared as partially eaten food was
returned to the serving plate to be finished by someone else. It was only with the rise of
private capitalist socio-economic relations that modern “civilized” eating habits arose and
we each kept our own fork and plate throughout the course of the meal.

Regardless of how individual and separate we may each feel we are all mutually dependent
on one another. There is food in the supermarket because workers labored to put it there.
We produce our food collectively, but the very commodity relations in society preclude us
from deciding what we produce and how we produce it. The modern diet -- meat centred,
supplemented by highly processed and refined grains, and foods saturated with chemicals
and additives -- is not an inevitable product of industrialization but of capitalist commodity
production in which everything is alienated for the sake of profits gleamed by another class.

Reasserting the collective nature of production is the only way that the environmental
consequences of the human diet can be addressed. Such a process of democratisation can
lead to a renewal of the communal relationship early human society had with the natural
world. To blame the modern diet itself for environmental devastation serves merely to
simplify the immense tasks of repair and sustainability we have before us.

While Scrinis is keen to blame the over-consumption of meat for environmental destruction
the truth cannot be reduced to the farming tional source. The agricultural civilisation of the
Maya in Central America died out by 1200AD probably because of over cropping of corn
and beans because that is all they ate. The wheat fields in the ancient kingdoms of
Mesopotamia drowned in salt bought to the fields by a complex system of irrigation. It is
firewood rather than beef that is consuming the world's forests because most people on this
planet cook on open fires. It is not just a case of addressing the problem of what we
produce or how we produce it, but also of focusing all our social and technological potential
to deal with the environmental crisis. While what is produced and how it is produced
remains hostage to profit our response will remain merely superficial.

`Joys of traditional cuisine'

Instead, Scrinis urges us to rediscover the pleasures and simplicity of traditional cuisine.
But in our society the only way we can do that is individually. Take “real” bread for
instance. John Downes, the local sour-dough bread maker, who Scrinis enthusiastically
quotes, recognises that the highest quality food is certainly available -- but at a price.
“Authentic bread,” he writes, “is an important food having broad implications for the
individual and for society. It is a medium through which to experience the essence of our
civilisation. Baking it at home is currently your only choice.”

Baking it at home! But like preparing the humble bean, this takes time. The joys of more
labour-intensive forms of food preparation aren't possible unless we begin to replicate the
social life of previous epochs. In peasant society bread was certainly kneaded and baked at
home by women. Labour intensive forms of domestic life are oriented to the ideal of the
nuclear family with a male “breadwinner” and a full female bread (and home) maker.

The only way this can be changed is to drastically reduce the working day without loss of
pay so that we all have more time to attend to our tucker.

Unless Scrinis wants to force people into spending more of their day in the kitchen --
especially men! -- good cuisine might be available instead through the generalisation of
industrial food preparation in high quality, low-cost publicly-owned restaurants.

The strategy that Scrinis plugs for -- food co-ops -- in contrast becomes a mere appendage
of capitalist commodity relations. Food co-operatives which sell unprocessed, unpackaged,
raw and mostly organic ingredients are, strictly speaking, another form of commodity
production. This was the fare marketed by early capitalism before large-scale farming
reduced the production cost to a level where further processing became inherently more
profitable. Food cooperatives don't necessarily lead to cheaper meals because there are
immense advantages in economies of scale. Uncle Toby's Organic Vita-Brits now readily
available in every supermarket in Australia is suggestive of the dietary potential this social
system has if it were oriented differently.

But one packet of breakfast cereal and a few co-operatives won't est of us will continue to
eat what comes our way. To pretend that the path of re-engaging our food can only be
followed through more labor-intensive forms of food preparation and growing our own
ingredients misrepresents the reality that we all confront. Unless we deal with this
collectively by at least recognizing in the first instance how pervasive the socio-economic
relations of capitalism are, we will get nowhere in a hurry. Unfortunately, for our
physiology and for our natural environment time is fast running out.