Do you ever wonder how you can ensure that you control what you eat and stay healthy? You should follow the six diet planning principles!
Diet planners have developed several ways to select foods. Whatever plan or combination of plans they use; they keep in mind the following six basic diet planning principles.
- Adequacy – An adequate diet should provide enough energy and enough of all the other nutrients to meet the needs of healthy people. For example, a person whose diet fails to provide enough iron-rich foods may develop the symptoms of iron deficiency anemia. The same is true for all other nutrients.
- Calorie (energy) control – This principle involves the management of food energy intake. The key to controlling energy intake is to select foods of high nutrient density.
- Nutrient density – Part of the secret to eating well without overeating is to select foods that deliver the most nutrients for the least energy. Nutrient density is a measure of the nutrients food provides relative to the energy it provides. The more nutrients and fewer calories, the higher the nutrient density.
- Moderation – Foods rich in fat and sugar provide enjoyment and energy, but relatively few nutrients. Besides, they promote weight gain when eaten in excess. A person practicing moderation would eat foods rich in fat and sugars only on occasion and would regularly select foods low in fat and sugar, a practice that automatically improves nutrient density. The principle of moderation involves providing enough but not too much of a dietary constituent.
- Balance – This entails providing foods of several types in proportions to each other, such that foods rich in some nutrients do not crowd out of the diet foods that are rich in other nutrients. The art of balancing the diet involves using enough of each type of food but not too much of each.
- Variety – A diet may have all the virtues described above and still lack variety if a person eats the same foods day after day. People should vary their choices within each class of foods from day to day, for at least three reasons.
