Nutrition is a science
Fruit and more;
be healthy by following
the advice of
the experts
Watch your weight and always lead
an active lifestyle
Eat more cereal, pulses, fruit and vegetables
Fats: choose the quality
and limit your intake
Consume sugar, cakes and sweet drinks in moderation
Drink plenty
of water
every day
What about salt? Less is better
Alcohol: if you do drink, limit your intake
Vary your diet often
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Vary your diet often
Our diet must supply our bodies with protein, fats, carbohydrates and the energy they provide, as well as other indispensable nutrients such as water, vitamins and minerals. Our diet must also supply us with specific amino acids (found in protein) and some polyunsaturated fatty acids (found in fats). These substances, like vitamins and minerals, are defined as “essential” because the body is not able to “build” them alone: so we have to ensure we absorb them through food. However, it is important to remember that no natural or processed food is “complete” or “perfect” in itself. No one food alone contains the right quantity of the all the above-mentioned substances, so no one food alone can satisfy all our nutritional needs. Consequently, the easiest and safest way to ensure that our bodies receive all the essential nutrients in adequate quantities, is to vary the food we eat as much as possible, combining different foods appropriately. In so doing, we not only avoid the dangers of nutritional imbalance, which can result in subsequent metabolic imbalances, but we also satisfy our taste sense better and combat boredom due to a monotonous diet. What is more, systematically and rationally varying our choice of food also means reducing another risk factor that can derive from monotonous eating habits, which is the constant ingestion of extraneous substances that are sometimes contained in food, and of “antinutritional” ones, which are naturally contained in food. In the long term, the ingestion of these substances can be damaging in many ways, and the risk of certain tumours developing cannot be excluded.
Food groups
The most widely recognized food classification system, groups food into the five categories that are described below along with their main nutritional characteristics:
- The cereal, cereal product and tuber group includes: bread, pasta, rice and other minor cereals (like corn, oats, barley, spelt, etc), and potatoes, too. - The fruit and vegetable group
– also includes fresh pulses
- The dairy product group includes milk, dairy products, yoghurt and cheese.
- The meat, fish and egg group.
- The fatty condiment group includes vegetable fats just as it does and animal fats.
(taken from LINEE GUIDA PER UNA SANA ALIMENTAZIONE ITALIANA “GUIDLINES FOR HEALTHY ITALIAN NUTRITION” – Ministry of Agricultural and Forestry Policies and INRAN Italian National Institute of Food and Nutrition Research – 2003)