The balanced diet

What is a balanced diet? It simply what the healthy diet pyramid shows, ie the number of servings of each type of food consumed daily.

The healthy diet pyramid

The higher one climbs, the less we need to consume food of that group. The portions are what we can consume daily (except for eggs, whose consumption is shown for a week).

The three main groups are:

• Starches.
• Fruits and vegetables.
• Dairy products, meats and fish.

The pyramid puts on top of foods that are not a group but are divided into the other: oil, sugars rapid fat. Do not consume more than needed by recipes and recipes themselves should be chosen not contain too much fat or sugar.

Within the three groups, some proportions must be preserved.

Starchy

There are in the form of recipes, bread, pasta, rice and other grains. Preferably you have to choose full or half-full for providing minerals and vitamins.
You can consume more of them than the sum of other foods but they contain carbohydrates and in excess they can also lead to overweight.

Fruits and vegetables

They are complementary, providing different vitamins and minerals and you can not be limited to one or the other,
Fruits are rich in fructose unlike vegetables and excess are a factor of overweight.

Dairy and meat

It is not necessary to eat more than 200 grams of meat per week if you eat fish the rest of the time.
Eggs are rich in (bad) cholesterol and you should limit consumption, twice a week at most.

Dairy products provide calcium but should preferably be lightweight, at 20% maximum (without fats being replaced by sugar intake!).

New pyramid from Harvard

The food distribution was amended by Harvard researchers, who took into account new researches in the field to reassess the dietary daily needs.

The new model fall vegetables and fish from a floor. Red meat is pushed on the top floor. Seeds (almonds, walnuts) have now an important part in the diet, oils containing Omega 3 appear on the first floor and red wine and vitamin D are added to the daily ration. All this is consistent with studies conducted over the past 10 years ...

Conclusion

It is easy to have a balanced diet: just keeping in mind the food pyramid. It was first defined by the U.S. Department of Health and then universally recognized.

But preferably we should rely on the new Harvard's model that takes into account new knowledge about nutrition and health.