Good nutrition is essential to maintain your health at its maximum. Specialists say that about 80% of premature strokes and heart conditions are due to harmful dietary habits, besides a sedentary lifestyle, smoking, alcohol abuse, and so on.
A healthy lifestyle keeps heart attacks at bay by balancing cholesterol levels. Furthermore, it reduces blood pressure, maintaining a healthy weight, and balancing blood sugar levels.
With so much information available, it might be difficult to understand what proper healthy alimentation is. Let’s find out more about what it looks like.
What Does a Healthy, Balanced Diet Look Like?
Health experts promote eating a variety of foods daily. Plant-based meals should be included more, while processed foods must be either rare or totally ditched from your diet.
Eating Lots of Vegetables and Fruit
Good nutrition must include vegetables and fruits. That’s an essential aspect of a healthy diet, according to specialists. Fruits and vegetables are rich in minerals, vitamins, and fibers. Also, they contain high amounts of antioxidants, which are essential to keep healthy and postpone aging.
As experts recommend, we should have our plates half-full with vegetables and fruits at each meal.
Choosing Whole-Grain Foods
Whole-grain bread, oatmeal, quinoa, hulled barley, brown or wild rice, and more make up for the category known as whole-grain foods.
Good nutrition must also include this type of food. Whole-grain foods are produced using the whole grain, and they are rich in fibers, proteins, and B vitamins.
Processed and refined grains should be replaced with whole-grain foods. For good nutrition, about 25% of your plate must be filled with whole-grain foods at every meal.
Eating High Protein Foods
Protein-rich foods are nuts, legumes, soy, and soy-based products, eggs, shellfish, lean red meat, milk, yogurt, and cheese, among others. Protein is useful in maintaining healthy muscles, bones, and skin.
For good nutrition, try eating protein-rich foods every day and try to include two servings of fish per week. Don’t forget about eating plant-based foods, though. Also, dairy products are a good source of protein. Try filling up a quarter of your plate with protein-rich foods.
Limiting Highly Ultra-Processed Foods
Ultra-processed foods (alternatively known as highly processed) are those foods that contain many other ingredients than the original sources. These additives are not always healthy. Even more, vitamins, fibers, minerals, and other nutrients are eliminated during processing, and sugar and salt take their place.
Frozen meals, pizzas, fast foods, chips, and many others are good examples of ultra-processed foods. About 50% of the Western diet consists of highly processed foods, as per a Heart & Stroke study.
Low-processed foods are assessed as okay to be consumed, but not in significant quantities daily. These foods keep most of their original nutrients, but they also contain small amounts of additives.
Frozen vegetables, packed salad, oil, dried fruits, cheese, and brown rice are just some examples. Fresh variants of these foods are healthier, though, and would be ideal for good nutrition.
Making WATER Your Drink of Choice
Try replacing sugary drinks with water. Water promotes proper nutrition and health and, obviously, is free of any calories. On the other hand, sodas, fruit drinks, flavored coffee, and other soft drinks are rich in sugar, contain lots of calories, and have no nutritional value.
Avoid fresh fruit juices (although they’re made 100% of fruits) unless you prepare them yourself and add no sugar. If you buy them from your local store, they will most likely contain a lot of sugar.
In areas where water is not safe to drink, you can replace it with unsweetened tea or boiled water for good nutrition.
As a result, we must limit sugary drinks as much as possible. Milk is also a good option to stay hydrated, as long as you drink it unsweetened. Also, it is a source of protein. Always have a bottle of water in your bag or purse and refill it whenever possible so that you will always be hydrated, especially during hot summer days.
Summary
All in all, good nutrition is based on a balanced meal choice. Make sure you choose fresh, homemade meals as much as possible instead of highly processed foods.
