Healthy Eating

A healthy diet may help to prevent certain long-term (chronic) diseases such as heart disease, stroke and diabetes. It may also help to reduce your risk of developing some cancers and help you to keep a healthy weight. This leaflet explains the principles of a healthy diet. It is general advice for most people. The advice may be different for certain groups of people, including pregnant women, people with certain health problems or those with special dietary requirements.

Your body needs energy to work normally and keep you alive. You obtain this energy from nutrients in the food that you eat - mostly, carbohydrates, fats and proteins. Minerals and vitamins are other nutrients that are also important in your diet to help your body stay healthy.

It is important to find the right balance between these different nutrients to achieve maximum health benefits (see below). A balanced diet generally contains food from each of the following food groups:

Starchy foods such as bread, rice, potatoes, pasta, etc.
Fruit and vegetables.
Milk and dairy foods.
Protein foods. These include meat, fish, eggs and other non-dairy sources of protein (including nuts, tofu, beans, pulses, etc).
Fatty and sugary foods are the fifth food group that you eat. However, only a small amount of what you eat should be made up from fatty and sugary foods.

In addition to the above, having plenty of fibre and water in your diet is also important for your health.