Healthy diet | WHO recommendations

Contents

1 A balances Diet
2 WHO recommendations

For optimal health and nutrition, a balanced diet is required.

It protects you from heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, among other chronic noncommunicable diseases. A healthy diet requires a diversity of foods and a reduction in sodium, carbohydrates, saturated fats, and industrially generated trans fats.

A balances Diet

A well-balanced diet consists of a variety of foods. These are some of them:

Cereals (wheat, barley, rye, maize, or rice) or starchy tubers or roots are staples (potato, yam, taro or cassava).
Legume (lentils and beans).
Vegetables and fruits.
foods derived from animals (meat, fish, eggs and milk).

Here is some helpful information about eating a healthy diet and the benefits of doing so, based on WHO standards.

WHO recommendations

Baby and young children should be breastfed.

Breastfeeding promotes healthy growth and may have longer-term health benefits, including as lowering the chance of becoming overweight or obese later in life and developing noncommunicable diseases.

Breast milk should be solely fed to babies from birth to six months of age to ensure a healthy diet. It’s also crucial to start introducing a variety of safe and nutritious supplementary foods at 6 months of age, while continuing to nurse until your child is at least two years old.

Consume plenty of fruits and veggies.

Vitamins, minerals, dietary fiber, plant protein, and antioxidants are all abundant in them.
Obesity, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and certain types of cancer are all reduced in people who eat a diet high in vegetables and fruit.

Reduce your fat intake

Fats and oils are concentrated energy sources. Too much fat, especially the improper forms of fat, such as saturated and industrially manufactured trans-fat, can raise the risk of heart disease and stroke.
Use unsaturated vegetable oils (olive, soy, sunflower, or maize oil) instead of animal fats or saturated fat-rich oils (butter, ghee, lard, coconut, and palm oil) to ingest healthier fats.
Total fat consumption should not exceed 30% of a person’s entire caloric intake to avoid harmful weight gain.

Sugar consumption should be kept to a minimum

Sugars should make up less than 10% of your overall energy intake in a healthy diet.
Reducing the percentage to less than 5% has further health benefits.

Fresh fruits, rather than sweet snacks like cookies, cakes, and chocolate, help to minimize sugar consumption.

Limiting sugary drinks such as soft drinks, soda, and other sugary drinks (fruit juices, cordials, and syrups, flavored milks, and yogurt drinks) can also help reduce sugar intake.

Reduce your salt consumption

In the adult population, limiting salt consumption to fewer than 5g a day helps to prevent hypertension and lowers the risk of heart disease and stroke.
When cooking and preparing foods, limiting the amount of salt and high-sodium condiments (soy sauce and fish sauce) helps to reduce salt intake.

Healthy diet | WHO recommendations

A balances Diet

WHO recommendations