What is a healthy and balanced diet?

The Concise Oxford dictionary describes the word "healthy" as “promoting good health” and "balanced" as “establish appropriate proportions of elements”. From these definitions we can begin to understand what a healthy and balanced diet is, but there is certainly more to it.

Nutrition science is used to promote good health and to prevent diseases in our everyday lives, and our diet is a major tool to achieve good health. The word "diet" has been used by the media to increase awareness over the obesity epidemic, but it is a very misleading word. For someone will mean reduce food intake almost to the point of starvation to loose that heated fat. For some others, such as nutritionists, diet just means an “intake of foods common to humans”.

Healthy eating starts within our families and if we have a basic understanding of nutrition we can eat well without avoiding all our favourite foods. Eating has to be enjoyable and fun and there is not happiness in trying to restrict our food intake if what we eat makes our stomach turn.

So if you have any healthy and tasty recipe, do let us know!