In nutrition, the diet is usually the sum total of all food ingested by an organism or human being during a meal. Normally, each person will only need a certain amount of vitamins and minerals from the diet. However, the diet that we all follow to live healthy and longer lives are usually not balanced and are usually too high or low in calories. This leads to overeating which further contributes to obesity. Overweight people have more health problems than those who are moderately thin.
There are two broad kinds of dietary plans: The first type of diet is one in which there are fixed quantities of foods that a person can eat every day; such diets are called fixed calorie diets. The second kind of diet is one in which a person varies his or her daily intake of foods according to his preferences. The term flexible diets is used to describe diets in which a person is allowed to eat a wide range of foods at specified times and in specified portions.
Some fruits in the diet have been shown to lower the risks of heart disease and stroke. Fruits like avocado and whole-grains like quinoa, buckwheat and amaranth have high levels of antioxidants that prevent heart disease. Avocado is also rich in protein and dietary fiber, which are known to lower the risk of heart disease. Buckwheat is rich in fiber and magnesium and has been shown to reduce the risks of various kinds of cancer as well.
If you look at the definition of diet, you will see that it is a diet that reduces the intake of calories but does not allow you to eat more than you would need. A diet that allows you to eat more than you need can be called an over-diet. Usually, in America, most people define a diet as one that contains no more than about twelve hundred calories a day for women and fifteen hundred for men. There are no clear cut rules as to how many calories you should be eating or what constitutes an over-diet. Generally, though, over-dieting is a lifestyle choice that can lead to obesity, cardiovascular disease and other unhealthy conditions.
Another reason why we see diet culture is our inability to lose weight. Our culture pushes foods that are high in fat, sugar and salt into our diets. Not only do these foods make us fat, they are also very expensive. Even if we could eat all of the fruits, vegetables, meats, dairy products and nuts that are recommended by any diet we would still be limited by the amount of money that we could afford to spend. It’s only when we begin to follow some kind of diet regime that we are able to finally beat the diet culture.
Diets are a serious business. As a matter of fact, the definition of diet includes the word diet itself. If we want to be serious about dieting, we need to define it properly. What do we need to get from a good diet?