How to Eat A Healthy Balanced Diet

We will provide you with some tips to get you to eat a healthy diet, as we have lready discussed in Top Healthy Eating Tips, a balanced diet made up of the correct food types is key to a happy healthy lifestyle.

So what can you do to get a healthy diet?

Eat Plenty of Fruit and Vegetables

It has been long known that you should eat at least 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day. This doesn’t necessarily have to be eaten, but you could make fruit smoothies or drink friut juice to be included as a portion. Also, it doesn’t matter if its fresh, frozen, dried or juiced, it all counts the same as a portion in your ’5 a day’. Remember however that you cannot include potatoes as a vegetable in your five a day as it is a starchy food.

Cut down on your Salt Intake

Many people believe that this doesn’t apply to them because they either don’t put salt in their food while cooking, or they don’t season with it at the meal table, but what they may not realise is that many frozen, pre-prepared foods have sometimes too much salt added, either for flavour or for preservatives.

More than 85% of men and 68% of women in the UK eat more than the recommended amount of salt each day.

to determine if a preprepared food is high in food look at the label. If it has more that 1.5g of salt or sodium per 100g, then it is high.

To much salt will raise your blood pressure, which increases the chances of stoke and heart disease.

Reduce the amount of Saturated Fat and Sugar

We all need some fat in our diets to keep us healthy and have a balanced diet. But we have to be careful we don’t eat too much fatty foods, and also eat too much of the wrong kinds of fat.. There are two types of fat found in the food we eat:

• saturated fat – too much may raise cholesterol, which increases the chance of heart disease.
• unsaturated fat – taking unsaturated fat instead of saturated fat will decrease your cholesterol levels, and thus reduce your chances of heart disease.

It is important to cut down on the foods that are high in saturated fats, and try alternatives that are high in unsaturated fats instead.these include vegetable oils (such as sunflower, rapeseed,olive oil), oily fish, avocados, nuts and seeds.

If you stick to these principles you will have a much greater chance of a happy healthier lifestyle, by avoiding the dangers of absesity that will keep you active and happy as you get older.