To live a healthy life, we are to eat and maintain a balanced diet. Why is a balanced diet important to our health? A balanced diet gives the right amount of nutrients that our body needs. A balanced diet should consists of the right proportion of fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, lean proteins, etc. to provide the needed calories. Calories is the measurement of the amount of energy stored in the food we eat. Our body burns the calories when we exercise, work, think, and do other important body functions.

Each one of us need a certain amount of calories daily to maintain our body weight. The amount of calories we need varies for each person, depending on our gender, age, and the physical activities we do. People who are more active need more calories than those who are less active. Getting enough amount of calories is important. We shouldn’t be consuming too much of sugar, solid fats which are not good for our health such as bacon, sausages, cakes, cheese, cookies, doughnuts, energy drinks, fruit drinks, ice cream, pizza, sodas, etc.

Keeping a balanced diet is important to keep our body organs and tissues healthy.  When our body is lacking in good nutrition, we are more prone to fatigue, poor performance and concentration, attacked by diseases, and infection, etc. Growing children needs balanced diet for healthy growth and development, especially in their brain development. Children should be encouraged at a young age to eat healthy meals and discouraged from consuming too much of sugar and junk food that will lead to obesity and diabetes later on in life.

In modern society today, we have many overweight children and young adults because of  bad eating habits and lack of exercise. These could later lead to many kinds of diseases such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, etc. Due to the increase of obesity in children and young adults, there are many health awareness programmes and gyms to encourage people to eat healthy and have good workouts. Dieting and workouts are good for health reasons but one need to eat right to maintain a healthy body. That is why many health instructors are promoting protein shakes to their gym members to be taken before and after their workouts

To stay healthy, we need a balanced diet that are low in unnecessary sugar and fats and high in minerals, vitamins, other nutrients, and food that is high in fibre. Food that form part of balanced diet should be fresh, unprocessed and unrefined food.