Maintaining a healthy diet throughout life is crucial for preventing malnutrition in all its forms and reducing the risk of various noncommunicable diseases and conditions. The global food system has shifted towards increased processed food production, rapid urbanization, and evolving lifestyles, leading to significant changes in dietary patterns. Globally, there’s a rise in the consumption of energy-dense foods high in fats, free sugars, and salt, while intake of fruits, vegetables, and dietary fiber like whole grains remains insufficient for many.
The specifics of a balanced and healthy diet are personalized, varying based on individual factors such as age, gender, activity level, lifestyle, cultural background, food availability, and dietary traditions. However, the core principles defining a healthy diet are universally applicable.
Healthy Eating Guidelines for Adults
A cornerstone of a healthy diet for adults includes a variety of nutrient-rich foods from all food groups:
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Fruits, Vegetables, Legumes, Nuts, and Whole Grains: Prioritize unprocessed options like maize, millet, oats, wheat, and brown rice to form the base of your daily intake.
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Daily Fruit and Vegetable Intake: Aim for at least 400 grams, or five servings, of fruits and vegetables daily. Remember that this recommendation excludes starchy roots like potatoes, sweet potatoes, and cassava.
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Limit Free Sugars: Reduce your intake of free sugars to less than 10% of your total daily energy. For a 2000-calorie diet, this equates to a maximum of 50 grams (approximately 12 teaspoons). Ideally, for additional health benefits, aim for less than 5% of total energy intake from free sugars. Free sugars encompass sugars added during manufacturing, cooking, or consumption, as well as those naturally present in honey, syrups, fruit juices, and concentrates.
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Manage Fat Consumption: Limit total fat intake to under 30% of your daily energy. Prioritize unsaturated fats found in sources like fish, avocados, nuts, and oils such as sunflower, soybean, canola, and olive oil. Minimize saturated fats, commonly found in fatty meats, butter, palm and coconut oil, cream, cheese, ghee, and lard. Avoid trans-fats, including industrially produced trans-fats in baked and fried foods, pre-packaged snacks, and ruminant trans-fats present in meat and dairy. It is advisable to keep saturated fat intake below 10% and trans-fat intake under 1% of total energy. Industrially produced trans-fats should be completely eliminated from a healthy diet.
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Reduce Salt Intake: Limit salt consumption to less than 5 grams per day, equivalent to about one teaspoon. Use iodized salt whenever possible.
Healthy Eating Guidelines for Infants and Young Children
Optimal nutrition in the first two years of life is fundamental for healthy growth and cognitive development. It also plays a vital role in preventing overweight, obesity, and the onset of noncommunicable diseases later in life.
Nutritional recommendations for infants and children align with adult guidelines, with some crucial additions:
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Exclusive Breastfeeding: Infants should be exclusively breastfed for the first six months of life.
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Continued Breastfeeding: Breastfeeding should continue until two years of age and beyond.
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Complementary Feeding: From six months onwards, introduce a variety of safe, nutrient-dense complementary foods alongside breast milk. Avoid adding salt and sugars to these complementary foods.
Practical Tips for Maintaining a Healthy Diet
Focus on Fruits and Vegetables
Consuming at least 400g of fruits and vegetables daily is key to lowering the risk of NCDs and ensuring adequate fiber intake.
Enhance your fruit and vegetable consumption by:
- Incorporating vegetables into every meal.
- Choosing fresh fruits and raw vegetables for snacks.
- Opting for seasonal fruits and vegetables.
- Eating a diverse range of fruits and vegetables for varied nutrients.
Smart Fat Choices
Reducing total fat intake to less than 30% of total energy is important for managing weight. Furthermore, minimizing saturated and trans-fats and prioritizing unsaturated fats is crucial for preventing NCDs.
Reduce unhealthy fat intake by:
- Steaming or boiling food instead of frying.
- Replacing butter, lard, and ghee with polyunsaturated-rich oils like soybean, canola, corn, safflower, and sunflower oils.
- Choosing low-fat dairy and lean meats, and trimming visible fat from meat.
- Limiting consumption of baked, fried, and pre-packaged foods that often contain industrially produced trans-fats.
Salt, Sodium, and Potassium Balance
Globally, sodium intake is excessive, mainly from salt, while potassium consumption is insufficient. This imbalance contributes to high blood pressure, increasing the risk of heart disease and stroke.
Lower salt intake by:
- Limiting salt and high-sodium condiments during cooking and food preparation.
- Removing table salt and high-sodium sauces from the dining table.
- Reducing consumption of salty snacks.
- Selecting low-sodium product options when available.
Increase potassium intake to counteract the effects of sodium by consuming more fresh fruits and vegetables.
Reduce Sugar Consumption
Limiting free sugar intake to less than 10% of total energy, and ideally below 5%, offers significant health benefits for both adults and children.
Lower sugar intake by:
- Reducing consumption of sugary foods and drinks, including sugary snacks, candies, and sugar-sweetened beverages like sodas, juices, and flavored drinks.
- Choosing fresh fruits and raw vegetables as snacks instead of sugary alternatives.
Promoting Healthy Diets: A Multi-Sector Approach
Dietary habits are shaped by a complex interplay of social and economic factors, including income, food prices, personal preferences, cultural norms, and environmental influences. Creating a healthy food environment requires a collaborative effort from governments, public and private sectors, and various stakeholders.
Governments play a pivotal role in shaping healthy food environments through policies that:
- Align national policies and investments across sectors like trade, food, and agriculture to prioritize public health and healthy diets.
- Incentivize the production and retail of fresh fruits and vegetables.
- Disincentivize the food industry from producing processed foods high in unhealthy fats, sugars, and salt.
- Encourage food product reformulation to reduce levels of saturated fats, trans-fats, free sugars, and sodium.
- Implement WHO guidelines on marketing unhealthy foods to children.
- Establish nutritional standards in public institutions and workplaces to ensure availability of healthy, affordable food options.
- Explore regulatory and economic tools like marketing regulations, nutrition labeling, taxation, and subsidies to promote healthy dietary choices.
- Encourage food services and catering outlets to improve the nutritional quality of their offerings, ensure healthy and affordable options, and review portion sizes and pricing.
To drive consumer demand for healthy foods:
- Raise consumer awareness about healthy diets through public health campaigns.
- Develop school-based programs promoting healthy eating habits from a young age.
- Provide nutrition education to children, adolescents, and adults.
- Foster culinary skills, especially among children.
- Support clear point-of-sale information, including standardized nutrition labeling and front-of-pack labels.
- Offer nutrition and dietary counseling at primary healthcare facilities.
Promote optimal infant and young child feeding practices by:
- Enforcing the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes.
- Implementing policies that protect working mothers to support breastfeeding.
- Promoting and supporting breastfeeding within healthcare services and communities through initiatives like the Baby-friendly Hospital Initiative.
WHO’s Commitment to Global Nutrition
The World Health Organization is dedicated to improving global nutrition through various strategies and action plans, including the “Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health,” recommendations on marketing food to children, the “Comprehensive Implementation Plan on Maternal, Infant and Young Child Nutrition,” and the “Global Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases.” WHO continues to provide guidance and support to member states in their efforts to create healthier food environments and reduce the global burden of diet-related diseases.
