Healthy Diet

Nourishing with nutrients

The food you eat supplies essential nutrients that you need to stay healthy and energetic all day long. Nutrients play a very important role in maintaining your good health.

But you can’t just walk into the grocery store and buy a bag full of nutrients! Nutrients are always more effective when consumed as part of whole foods, such as fruits and vegetables, grains and legumes. In addition to nutrients, these whole foods supply many other naturally-occurring compounds that help protect your body from disease.

The multiplier effect

Take a tomato, for example. Not only does a tomato deliver vital nutrients, such as vitamins A and C, to your body, it also supplies fibre and the antioxidant, lycopene, both of which are known to help fight disease.

Often, these protective compounds work best when they’re combined with the vitamins and minerals supplied by other foods. That’s why it’s important to eat a varied diet. Research shows that there are definite health benefits associated with a diet that combines foods containing multiple nutrients.

Nutrition Facts Labels are slowly appearing on more and more foods.  Learning to read Nutrition Facts Labels can help you to make healthy food choices.  For foods without labels, USDA National Database provides nutrition information for 10,000 food items.

Relax, enjoy and eat healthy!

In a healthy diet, there are no such things as “good foods” or “bad foods.” So you don’t have to give up the foods you love to guarantee your good health – just go easy on the ones that are high in calories and fats. You can enjoy all foods as part of a healthy diet. It’s more a question of how much and how often you eat them.