Healthy diet

A healthy diet (or healthful diet) is a diet that maintains or improves overall health, providing the body with essential nutrition: water, macronutrients such as protein, micronutrients such as vitamins, and adequate fibre and food energy. A healthy diet may contain fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and may include little to no ultra-processed foods or sweetened beverages. The requirements for a healthy diet can be met from a variety of plant-based and animal-based foods, although additional sources of vitamin B12 are needed for those following a vegan diet. Various nutrition guides are published by medical and governmental institutions to educate individuals on what they should be eating to be healthy. Not only advertising may drive preferences towards unhealthy foods. To reverse this trend, consumers should be informed, motivated and empowered to choose healthy diets. Nutrition facts labels are also mandatory in some countries to allow consumers to choose between foods based on the components relevant to health. The lack of a healthy diet contributes massively to the global disease burden, imposing immense health, economic and social costs.

In 2025 only 30.8% of children aged 6 to 23 months, and 62.7% of women aged 15 to 49 years, consumed a minimally diverse diet. In 2024, 31.9% of the global population could not afford a healthy diet, compared to 36.9 percent in 2020 and 38.4 percent in 2017. In 2024, unaffordability was the highest in Africa (66.6% of the population), and much lower in Asia (28.1%), Latin America and the Caribbean (27.4%), Oceania (19.6%) and Northern America and Europe (5.0%). This is often a political issue. The Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization have formulated four core principles of what constitutes healthy diets. According to these two organizations, health diets are:

Adequate, as they meet, without exceeding, our body's energy and essential nutrient requirements in support of all the many body functions. Diverse, as they include various nutritious foods within and across food groups to help secure the sufficient nutrients needed by our bodies. Balanced, as they include energy from the three primary sources (protein, fats, and carbohydrates) in a balanced way and foster healthy weight, growth and activity, and to prevent disease. Moderate, as they include only small quantities (or none) of foods that may have a negative impact on health, such as highly salty and sugary foods. Despite the increase in food prices during 2024, the number of people unable to afford a healthy diet in the world fell from 2.76 billion in 2019 to 2.60 billion in 2024. However, the number increased in Africa from 864 million to just over 1 billion in this period (from 64% to 66.6%). In low-income countries, the number increased from 464 million in 2019 to 545 million (72%) in 2024, and in lower-middle-income countries (excluding India), from 791 to 869 million (52%) in the same period. Globally, about one-third of children aged 6 to 23 months and two-thirds of women aged 15 to 49 years achieved minimum dietary diversity.

Recommendations

World Health Organization The World Health Organization (WHO) makes the following five recommendations with respect to both populations and individuals:

Maintain a healthy weight by eating roughly the same number of calories that your body is using. Limit intake of fats to no more than 30% of total caloric intake, preferring unsaturated fats to saturated fats. Avoid trans fats. Eat at least 400 grams of fruits and vegetables per day (not counting potatoes, sweet potatoes, cassava, and other starchy roots). A healthy diet also contains legumes (e.g. lentils, beans), whole grains, and nuts. Limit the intake of simple sugars to less than 10% of caloric intake (below 5% of calories or 25 grams may be even better). Limit salt/sodium from all sources and ensure that salt is iodized. Less than 5 grams of salt per day can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. The WHO has stated that insufficient vegetables and fruit is the cause of 2.8% of deaths worldwide. Other WHO recommendations include:

ensuring that the foods chosen have sufficient vitamins and certain minerals; avoiding directly poisonous (e.g. heavy metals) and carcinogenic (e.g. benzene) substances; avoiding foods contaminated by human pathogens (e.g. E. coli, tapeworm eggs); and replacing saturated fats with polyunsaturated fats in the diet, which can reduce the risk of coronary artery disease and diabetes.

United States Department of Agriculture

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) recommends three healthy patterns of diet, summarized in the table below, for a 2000 kcal diet. These guidelines are increasingly adopted by various groups and institutions for recipe and meal plan development. The guidelines emphasize both health and environmental sustainability and a flexible approach. The committee that drafted it wrote: "The major findings regarding sustainable diets were that a diet higher in plant-based foods, such as vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds, and lower in calories and animal-based foods is more health promoting and is associated with less environmental impact than is the current U.S. diet. This pattern of eating can be achieved through a variety of dietary patterns, including the "Healthy U.S.-style Pattern", the "Healthy Vegetarian Pattern" and the "Healthy Mediterranean-style Pattern". Food group amounts are per day, unless noted per week.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.