Balanced Diet: the Basics of a Healthy and Balanced Diet
In this article we will cover Astralean the concept of nutritional balance.
After a brief introduction - mainly notional, but not without some moral reflections - we will discuss in greater detail how to divide a balanced diet into energetic macronutrients and which are the physiological conditions with greater nutritional needs.
We will then go into the details of the famous food pyramid, the frequency of consumption and the standard portions, such as information tools and food education.
A "standard" fragmentation of the various meals will be proposed, assuming a "reasonable" solution for the majority of the population.
In conclusion, we will mention the "practicability" of a balanced diet and, no less important, the eco-sustainability factors.
Enjoy the reading.
Definition
For balanced diet ( balanced diet , in English) means a diet characterized by the right amounts of all nutrients and nutritional factors .
" Balanced " also means " healthy " ( healty diet , always in Anglo-Saxon terms), because the nutritional balance is directly and indirectly correlated, as well as under various aspects, with the maintenance of the general state of health.
A balanced diet fully complies with the subjective nutritional needs; more specifically than:
Nutrients essential (essential amino acids, essential fatty acids, vitamins, minerals); but also limitedly or conditionally essential;
Nutrients "in any case " necessary , even if not considered strictly essential (such as minimum doses of carbohydrates in the medium-long term);
Nutritional factors , not strictly nutritious, also of vital importance ( water , fiber , non-vitamin antioxidants , etc.).
For the majority of the population, all the nutrients and nutritional factors can be introduced in the right quantities by simply following a balanced diet.
However, there is a small slice of subjects who, by choice or by necessity, are unable to satisfy their nutritional needs with food alone.
How to act in this case?
Nutritional gaps and use of food supplements
Some consider that a balanced diet should necessarily contain all the groups core of foods .
However, to evaluate such a claim we should first of all reflect on the reasoning that led industry experts to such conclusions.
“Balanced” is an adjective that refers to the “ best dietary option ”, that is, the one that fully satisfies all nutritional needs with the sole use of food .
Consequently, referring exclusively to healthy subjects, any dietary philosophy that requires "alternative" solutions could not be considered balanced.
However, the use of food supplements and dietary foods is now so widespread - even among those who do not really need them - that this reasoning is deprived of any ethical or moral value.
An athlete needs to integrate as much as a vegan subject and, for both, the reason for this need is a free choice (to face a higher than normal training load or to exclude foods of animal origin from the diet).
This is why, in the following lines, we will limit ourselves to documenting only objective data and totally independent from any current of thought.
What Benefits
Benefits of a balanced diet for health
Before going into the details of the specific requirements of a balanced diet, let's explain “ why ” it is advisable to respect a balanced diet.
The benefits of a healthy diet are numerous and all refer to the condition of psycho-physical homeostasis .
What is the purpose of guaranteeing psycho-physical homeostasis?
To survival , until death of natural causes;
To ensure general well-being ;
To ensure functionality total of the base;
To maintain a good quality of life
On the other hand, two very important considerations should also be made:
Self-regulation mechanisms, which generally work quite well, may however be imperfect ; just think of the famous individual "predispositions", both pathological and para-physiological. This means that certain metabolic or functional alterations are independent of the balance of the diet;
The lifestyle of each person, especially the level of overall motor activity, significantly influences their Ergo needs : the same diet may or may not favor homeostasis in the long term based on how much and how a subject moves. By eating inadequately, training is almost always "a double-edged sword".
To be defined balanced, any diet must necessarily satisfy all individual needs ; but, since needs depend on subjectivity, the balance of the diet is also a strictly subjective parameter.
What are
The carbohydrates available to humans, i.e. digestible and absorbable ones, are energetic macronutrients that provide 3.75 kilocalories per gram (kcal / g) - a value that can be rounded off to 4.0 kcal / g .
Synonyms: carbon hydrates, carbohydrates, glycides, sugars.
Classification based on complexity
The carbohydrates can be classified according to the molecular structure.
The simple ones are monomers. The most important is glucose , because it can be used directly in energy production; the fructose and galactose taken with food, on the other hand, must first be metabolized to glucose.
The complex ones (disaccharides, oligosaccharides, polysaccharides) are polymers that are classified according to the length and type of chains, as well as their organization.
The complex carbohydrate of greatest nutritional interest for humans is starch , a polymer of glucose that plants use as an energy reserve.
The friend's animal correspondent is glycogen , produced and stored in the liver and muscles.
Because they are important
The primary function of carbohydrates in the body is energy .
Glucose is an essential substrate because some tissues cannot do without it (nervous system, adrenal medulla, bone marrow, erythrocytes, leukocytes, retina, lens, testes).
Other tissues, on the other hand, also use mixtures of fatty acids and ketone bodies. Furthermore, skeletal muscle can directly utilize branched chain amino acids from contractile tissue.
If adequate amounts of carbohydrates are not consumed in the diet, the liver produces glucose from certain amino acids, glycerol and lactic acid (neoglucogenesis). Associated with the management of reserve glycogen, this process guarantees the maintenance of blood sugar even in the event of a nutritional deficiency of carbohydrates.
How many to hire
The amount of carbohydrates in the diet is highly dependent on the total calorie requirement. In general, however, it should take up about half the calories.
The percentage range changes according to the research body consulted but, “spannometrically”, we could consider an interval between 45 and 65% of the total energy. Wanting to estimate the amount of carbohydrates in the diet on the physiological weight instead, we could use a coefficient of 2.0-2.5 g / kg .
In the past, carbohydrates were thought to impact metabolism differently based on their molecular structure. The simple ones, in this case, have been in the eye of the storm for quite some time. In this regard, many institutions advised (some still) to limit them as much as possible (10-12% of total calories).
In reality today we know that, in the healthy person, what matters is to manage the total glycemic load and the overall caloric intake .
It is however undeniable that, by consuming large and frequent portions of sweet foods (with added sucrose, glucose, fructose), the chances of exceeding the calories of carbohydrates increase considerably.
Where are
The most common monosaccharide in foods is fructose , present in vegetables and abundant in sweet watery fruits.
Among the disaccharides, on the other hand, we can mention:
Lactose: the natural sugar of milk, composed of glucose and galactose;
Sucrose: that is the classic table sugar, composed of glucose and fructose, abundant in honey, in some vegetable fluids such as maple sap, aloe etc. and, of course, in table sugar.
Starch, the "par excellence" polysaccharide, is mainly contained in cereals (rice, wheat, corn, barley, rye, etc.), some pseudo-cereals (quinoa, amaranth, buckwheat, etc.), relative flours and derivatives ( pasta, bread, etc.), potatoes and legumes (beans, lentils, chickpeas, etc.).
