Fitness Week: Diet for Diseases

A balanced diet comprising of diverse and healthy foods is key to promoting good health. After all, we are what we eat - Research continues to prove that eating healthy food promotes good health and unhealthy food habits lead to a diseased body. Foods contain vital nutrients that aid our body’s metabolic function. However, a lack of consumption of these nutrients or feeding upon the wrong kinds of food leads to an accumulation of toxins within the body, resulting in chronic diseases in the long run.
A nutritious diet while ensuring overall well being, helps to maintain a healthy Body Mass Index (BMI), reduces the risk of several debilitating diseases like cancer, cardiovascular ailments, diabetes, osteoporosis and stroke. Thus a nutritious & healthy diet is important in the prevention and cure of various diseases.

Diet for diseases
There are several health conditions that can be caused or aggravated by the food we eat. However, there are also several foods that you can include in your diet to help prevent or treat diseases. It is simplest to draw up a balanced diet chart as this will ensure that you get all the nutrients you require on a regular basis. A nutrition diet chart is a diet chart that helps you to keep a track of your nutritional diet requirements and is a very useful tool when drawing up a personalized diet plan.

Heart diseases: Coronary heart diseases are a very common health problem and they are closely linked to a diet that is high in unhealthy fats. Decreasing one’s intake of fatty foods, especially fried food, will go a long way in preventing heart diseases. On the other hand, a healthy diet chart with an adequate amount of high fiber foods is seen to prevent heart diseases. People who suffer from heart problems are often advised to follow a specific high fiber diet for heart diseases that is rich in raw fruits and vegetables.

Diabetes: While genetics does play an important role in the onset of diabetes, an unhealthy lifestyle and bad eating habits are also contributing factors. A diabetes diet chart is a diet plan that is high in fiber and low in fat with a minimum amount of saturated fats. A Vegan diet is very effective in controlling this problem.

Anemia: Anemia is generally caused by nutritional deficiencies and is most commonly associated with a diet that is low in iron. Iron rich foods such as green leafy vegetables should be included in a diet for anemia.

In addition to these diseases, conditions such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure, gout, and even cancer are affected by the individual’s diet. There are several diet plans such as the Alkaline Acid Diet plan, the Low Glycemic Index diet and the DASH diet plan that are meant to treat specific medical conditions.

Healthy Food Groups
Since no single food group can nourish the body with all the vital ingredients it requires, it is important that we consume a variety of healthy foods to derive the nutrition our body needs. There are five main food groups, they are:

• Fruits
• Vegetables
• Cereals and Pulses
• Dairy
• Poultry, Fish and Meat products

A healthy balanced diet of these five food groups ensures essential vitamins, minerals and dietary fiber. The food group serving size will depend upon various factors like age, activity level, body size and gender. It is also important that one eat a variety of healthy foods from within and across the food groups. As some foods from within a food group provide more nutrients than others. This will ensure that one gets the maximum recommended nutrition from the food group; besides the food variety will make for an interesting meal.