Advantages and Disadvantages of Healthy Food

Healthy food helps in maintaining or improving health. A healthy food full fills all the nutrients required by the body, i.e., micronutrients such as fibers, vitamins, and adequate food energy.

Healthy food may include sweetened beverages, vegetables, whole grains, and no processed food. Demand for healthy food can be met from plant-based and animal-based sources. Several Institutes, Government organizations, and Private Medical organizations publish material regarding healthy food habits.

Recommendations by the World Health Organisation (WHO)

The WHO (World Health Organisation) has put forth the following suggestions to individuals and populations.

1. Maintain a healthy weight by eating roughly the same number of calories the body can use.
2. Control the intake of fat-containing food items to limit to 30% of your overall calorie consumption and prefer over saturated and unsaturated fats. Ignore trans-fat.
3. It is advised to take a minimum of 400 grams of vegetables and fruits/per day, and this should not include starchy roots, sweet potatoes, or cassava. A healthy food list should contain whole grains, nuts, and legumes such as beans and lentils.
4. Control the consumption of simple sugar, which should be less than 10% of your total calorie value.
5. Control the consumption of sodium/salt from all sources and ensure the food is properly iodized.

According to the WHO, the minimum intake of fruits and vegetables is the main reason for worldwide death, and deaths account for 2.8%.

Some of the other suggestions put forth by the WHO are:

• Ignore the food mixed with pathogens, for example, tapeworm eggs, or coli
• Ensure that the food selected by you should have enough vitamins and an adequate amount of minerals.
• Completely ignore the carcinogenic, i.e., benzene and poisonous food, i.e., heavy metals.
• Select for saturated food instead of polyunsaturated fats in healthy food items that can limit the chances of coronary artery diseases and diabetes.

Advantages of Healthy Food

1. Maintenance and Weight Loss

Controlling high-calorie food is very important for maintaining and achieving a healthy weight. Intake of lean protein, whole grain, fruit, and vegetables to replace high-calorie food. Fiber-contained foods like vegetables, fruits, and whole grains will keep you longer than foods with high sugar content.

2. Blood Sugar Control

Foods such as ice cream, soda, fruit, white bread, and juice may increase your sugar level. Your body is fit to handle minimal influxes in glucose, but the repetition will cause insulin problems and could turn into type 2 diabetes. Carbohydrates such as brown rice, grain bread, and oat would help slow the sugar release into the blood and regulate the blood sugar.

3. Reduces Risk of Cancer

Fruits and Vegetables contain antioxidants. These antioxidants help eliminate potentially damaging cells, referred to as free radicals. These free radicals are loaded with an uneven quantity of electrons, which makes them highly unstable. They tend to steal electrons from healthy cells, making them suffer a lot. Antioxidants help eliminate free radicals by giving one of their electrons, which changes one free radical into a stable molecule.

4. Lowering Heart Diseases

Frequent consumption of high-fat-containing food items can increase your triglyceride and cholesterol levels and which can lead to causing plaque buildup in arteries. It could also do stroke and heart disease. Intake a moderate amount of fats in seeds, fish, nuts, olive oil, and avocadoes shields your heart.

5. Good for Mental Health

Healthy food is as good for your body as for the brain. Several neurological foods are directly connected with unhealthy food consumption patterns. Some deficiencies in the food nutrient increase the chances of depression in your mind. The nutrients that are involved in the brain cell are potassium. A healthy, varied, balanced diet keeps your mental peace stable and properly working without hiccups.

6. Improves Your Mood and Boosts Your Energy Levels

Healthy foods keep your mood light even in the depression situation and tension. It keeps your energy level high. Higher energy levels help you in doing the work more efficiently and effectively. Lighter moods help you maintain a work-life balance.

Disadvantages of Healthy Food

1. Change is Very Tough

Changes brought by Healthy food are very tough to incorporate into our lifestyle. A person has to adjust to their daily routine. It becomes very difficult for beginners to avoid their normal eating and switch to the latest healthy diet plan.

2. Need to Read Food Labels

In this era, when all food materials contain some amount of chemical in it. It becomes necessary for the consumer to check, verify and look for the food label. People must read all the guidelines and relevant information available to verify whether the product is healthy or not. Organic food and chemically free foods are not readily available in the market. The description given of the product is complex, and it takes time for the consumer to comprehend fully.

3. Expensive

Organic foods are scarcely available in the market, and they are expensive in the market. They require special maintenance and equipment to store them. Special transportation measures must be arranged because these organic products are grown in far-flung areas. This special transportation adds more cost to the product.

4. Special Knowledge

In this modernized world, it has become common for people to have some basic knowledge of what is healthy and unhealthy. This adds more strain on the consumer.

5. Boredom

Healthy foods do not often suit our tastebuds, and people get bored after some time. They start shifting to the old unhealthy food diet. Healthy foods do not arouse any serious interest in people, and they have come to eat healthy food by force. So it's natural for them to get bored after some time.

Results of Unhealthy Food

An unhealthy food plan is a major cause of numerous chronic diseases and includes

• Cardiovascular diseases
• Overweight/obesity
• High Cholesterol
• Abnormal Blood Lipids
• High Blood Pressure

Some of the problems caused by unhealthy diets are:

• 11% of the stroke
• 31% of the ischaemic
• 19% of the gastrointestinal cancer

List of Healthy Food and Unhealthy Food

A list of unhealthy and healthy food items is exhausting and long-lasting. However, we have added some included common food items to give an overall sense of food items.

Difference between Healthy Food and Unhealthy Food

Energy

Healthy food offers more energy so you can work all day without major fatigue. Some high-energy foods include green leafy vegetables, raw nuts, and fresh fruits. On the other side, unhealthy food is low in energy content and loaded with fat content. Some unhealthy food includes fried meat, burger pizza, and fried chips.

Taste

Generally, people avoid the consumption of healthy food due to its taste. They complain that the healthy food taste does not match their choice. On the other hand, unhealthy foods are present in different varieties and several tastes. This is the reason people are easily get tempted by pizza and burgers.

Consumption Data: Healthy Food and Unhealthy food

According to the available data, 92% of people opt for unhealthy food, and only 8% go towards healthy food. So looking at the data, we can predict that many people suffer from unwanted diseases due to their food habits. This can be prevented by bringing change in their food pattern. It will require just the willpower of the people.