Learn how to choose healthy foods for healthy meals

What is a healthy diet?

According to Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Thi Lam: "The definition of a healthy diet is a diet rich in ripe fruits, green vegetables, whole grains, fiber, beans, and limited ingredients such as free sugars, snacks and sugary drinks, processed meats, and salt."

In a healthy diet, saturated fats and industrially produced trans fats need to be replaced with unsaturated fats. A healthy diet provides the body with essential nutrients such as macronutrients, micronutrients and adequate energy, meeting the needs of each individual depending on nutritional, physiological and physical status - Associate Professor Lam emphasized.

For young children, in the first 2 years of life, proper nutrition will help develop optimal physical and mental growth. At the same time, good nutrition also reduces the risk of overweight, obesity and non-communicable diseases as children grow up.

Choose healthy foods

Healthy foods are foods that are low in saturated fat, trans fat, free sugars, and salt. Foods fall into two main categories, natural foods and processed foods (manufactured or industrial). No food is considered completely healthy, nor is any food completely bad or unhealthy.

With natural foods, it is necessary to combine them in a diverse way (eat many types of food from different groups and within the same group), ensure adequate quantity and balance of necessary macronutrients and micronutrients, ensure food hygiene and safety, choose seasonal foods. Foods are considered healthy but if used in inappropriate quantities and processing methods, they will not bring a healthy diet. For example, watermelon is considered a healthy fruit but eating a whole watermelon will increase blood sugar levels more than eating a chocolate bar (considered unhealthy food). Or vegetarian food (from plants) is considered healthy but processed in a fried form, it increases trans fat. Sweet potatoes are a tuber that is recommended to be eaten instead of rice for people with diabetes, but if processed in a baked form, it will increase the blood sugar index.

With processed foods, manufacturers must limit the use or increase the ingredients that make up "unhealthy" foods by controlling "bad" ingredients such as salt, simple sugars, saturated fats, and trans fats. In addition, communication should be strengthened to raise consumer awareness to know how to choose healthy foods among foods on the market. In many countries today, in addition to food labels, nutrition labels are also required. Nutrition labels can help consumers know how to choose products and control the amount of foods high in fat, salt, and free sugar.

To choose healthy foods, you should refer to the following information:

- Whole grains: Brown rice, wheat, barley, unrefined corn provide the main ingredient of carbohydrates. In addition, they also provide many nutrients: They are a rich source of lipids (rice oil is a very healthy oil), easily digestible vegetable protein and rich in lysine, healthy fibers, and antioxidants.

- Unsaturated fat: Energy from fat is less than 30% of total energy in the diet. Unsaturated fat found in fish, avocados and nuts (sunflower seeds, soybeans, olives) is better than saturated fat (in meat, butter, palm oil, coconut oil, fresh cream, cheese, lard) and trans fat created during processing and industrial production. The recommended ratio of saturated fat is less than 10% of total energy and trans fat is less than 1% of total energy. A diet considered healthy should not have and avoid saturated fat created during industrial production.

- Eat a variety of green vegetables and ripe fruits: The amount of green vegetables and ripe fruits is from 400-600g/person/day. Green vegetables and ripe fruits are a source of vitamins, minerals and fiber. Fiber is found in foods of plant origin, there are 2 types of fiber: water-soluble and water-insoluble.

- Water-soluble fiber is abundant in beans: Soybeans, kidney beans, green beans, vegetables, fruits, ... this fiber can reduce cholesterol and help the body regulate blood sugar. Water-insoluble fiber such as: Wheat bran, unmilled cereal grains, vegetables. This fiber absorbs water, increases the mass of waste, making the waste elimination process faster. Therefore, you should eat a variety of foods containing both types of fiber. The recommended fiber requirement for Vietnamese people is at least 20-25g/person/day.

- Fish and seafood: Salmon, mackerel, sardines, tuna... are foods with high protein content, good quality and balanced amino acids, fish has more minerals and vitamins than meat. Fish provides a valuable source of lipids, especially omega-3 fatty acids, DHA and EPA are unsaturated fatty acids. These essential unsaturated fatty acids cannot be synthesized by the body and must be taken in from food sources.

- DHA has the effect of reducing total cholesterol, reducing blood triglycerides, reducing LDL-cholesterol (bad cholesterol) to help prevent atherosclerosis and myocardial infarction. Omega3 has the effect of reducing arrhythmias, so people with myocardial infarction. Eating fish 2-3 times a week, eating 250g of fish/person/day, helps reduce the risk of stroke (cerebrovascular accident).

- Protein: Should eat a variety of protein from animal and vegetable sources, with a balanced ratio between animal and vegetable protein sources; reduce consumption of all types of meat, especially red meat 70g/day/person; increase consumption of healthy foods such as fish, seafood, eggs, milk, poultry... The older you are, the less protein you should eat from animals, need to supplement a reasonable amount of protein in the ratio of 1/3 animal protein and 2/3 real protein in each daily meal./.