Your daily food choices are a major contributing factor when it comes to your health.
Healthy eating, combined with physical activity, is the best way for you to reach and maintain a healthy weight, reduce your risk of chronic diseases like heart disease and cancer as well as promote your overall health.
Prevent diseases
Even for people at a healthy weight, a poor diet contributes to major health risks that can cause illness. These include heart disease, hypertension (high blood pressure), Type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis, and certain types of cancer. By making healthy food choices, you can help protect yourself from these health problems.
Lose and maintain weight
At some point in life, most people will want to lose weight. A balanced diet consisting of healthy food helps you control your weight and maintain it over time. Generally, a meat-free diet consists of fewer calories and less fat, so it’s easier to manage weight and you lower risk of heart disease.
Realistically, you can’t be on a weight loss diet forever. A balanced diet is essential to healthy weight control in the long term.
Improves your mental health
The right combination of nutrients can help to ease symptoms of depression and anxiety. A balanced diet is essential if you want to take the steps towards good mental health.
Better skin, hair, bones and teeth
Rather than spending loads of money on expensive cosmetic products, change your diet. Eating well contributes to healthy skin and hair, giving you the ‘glow’ that we are all chasing after.
Along with its benefits for your outward appearance, a diet with the right amount of magnesium and calcium is excellent for strong teeth and bones. Keeping the bones healthy is crucial in preventing ailments like osteoporosis later in life – meaning, not only will you feel great right now, but you will reap the benefits of a healthy diet in the future too.
Improved your digestive health
Your colon is full of naturally occurring bacteria that are important in managing your metabolism and digestion. A diet rich in vegetables, fruits, legumes, and whole grains gives your gut a combination of prebiotics and probiotics that help good bacteria to thrive in the colon.
There are some strains of bacteria that also produce vitamins K and B, which benefit the colon. These strains also help to combat harmful bacteria and viruses. So try and incorporate fermented foods like yoghurt that are full of probiotics in your diet plan.
Good for growth
If you have children, a balanced diet is crucial for their development. As their bodies grow, it is important that they receive the right balance of healthy food so that they can develop at the right pace.
The health of the next generation
Most health-related behaviours that children learn are picked up from the adults around them. Parents who model healthy eating and exercise habits tend to have healthier children. So do your part and pass these positive habits on to your little ones.
Encourage them to participate in gardening and cooking at home so that they are more likely to make healthful dietary and lifestyle choices.
A healthy, balanced diet is just what you need to stave off illnesses, lose weight, have a healthy mental wellbeing, better skin and hair, improve your digestive system and allow your little ones to grow up big and strong. Knorr has an abundance of recipes to achieve this and more.
